The PasteBoard

Next came a post about a new botnet attack that Microsoft patched on 23rd October but is making inroads. My advice is simple. Get updated and get protected and do it now.

Which just goes to show one thing. I had seriously high hopes for Vista preventing these sorts of attack. I really want Microsoft to succeed in this so I am in no way gloating over a vulnerability being found.

However one post I read just yesterday kind of put the frighteners on me a bit. Apparently the Anti-Virus software we buy and pay to maintain are seemingly pretty crap at protecting us against botnet attacks and exploits. So for all you know your Windows PC could be compromised even as you speak and the Anti-Virus software you have installed is really not doing what you think it should be doing. This worries me for obvious reasons. Is your PC slowing down to a crawl and yet your SpyWare and Anti-Virus software is saying things are hunky-dory? Well, it could be that the just don't know that you have some sort of botnet infection and seemingly they cannot respond quickly enough to the work the botnet scummy crims are up to.

However, what made this whole thing really come together is a report today that says Apple are now recommending users get Anti-Virus software for the Mac. Don't believe me? Here is the link, you doubting Thomas you.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2550?viewlocale=en_US

Now, in itself, this does not shock me one little bit. For far too long there have been way too many smug Mac users who feel they don't need to worry about virus protection. Why pay money when there are no viruses (virii???) for the Mac? Here is where I lay my cards on the table. I have anti-virus software on all our computers here at BMG irrespective of their platform. Now, admittedly, the principal reason I went down this path was to make sure that any files the Macs got cleaned them up if they ever went anywhere near a Windows box. Kind of like a sterile environment to get rid of the bad bug before it got to the potential victim.

Have those days gone with this announcement from Apple? I don't think that matters as a question. My own take was I wanted to be protected by a good company who knew their stuff and could provide a world class service to protect this company from cyber harm. That still holds true. Interestingly Apple recommend Intego, Symantec and McAfee. We use none of those. Instead we put our faith in Sophos. They make great Windows based products and ours is server based as well and the fact that they make a pretty reasonable (not spectacular) Mac OS X client led me to them.

However, all of these guys are going to have to make very serious improvements to their botnet attack detection and eradication. From what I have read over the past couple of weeks they could have their work cut out for them.

If you were going to ask me what to do about all this I would say a couple of things.

Don't bury your head in the sand and pretend you won't get anything. I have seen some outlandish posts and even spoken to friends who say they are careful and have firewalls and don't go to strange sites and all that. I find this utter rubbish. Get a good piece of Anti-Virus software and possibly a good piece of spyware software. There are many around and some of them are even free. A good piece of spyware software I go to for Windows is free from pack.google.com. SpyWare Doctor has been a good servant to us. Ironically I avoid almost anything these days with Symantec or Norton in the name. Why Apple would recommend them strikes me as a bit odd.

Try and restrict the amount of sites you go to limiting yourself to the sensible ones that you know are reputable. There is always the temptation to see something new. That is where you might run in to trouble if the website has been compromised without them knowing. Even Adobe had a recent incident so you just never know. Limiting what you do on the internet defeats the purpose of it in many ways, just don't go to the stupid sites and by that I mean porn. Let's be honest about it. Those are the places that will get you into trouble in more ways than one and when I use the term "impregnate" it has unfortunate overtones. But that is what is going to happen to you with sites like that. They will stuff your machine as full of unwanted crap as possible. Stay away. It's coming up to Christmas, get yourself amused with more healthy avenues of recreation for the love of God. Go visit friends, go shopping, get rubbered on a nice bottle of wine, just stay away from biggirliesonline.com (must check to see if that exists...)

Be careful out there.