[Sksouth-l] Just doing my job

[Sarah Kaye]

Another part of my job here is squishing viruses,
removing spyware, and educating users. We're better
protected against worms, viruses, etc than most here:
all of our "station" PCs have our centrally-managed
antivirus software, and we check all incoming laptops
for up-to-date antivirus programs. However I can't
help but feel protective, both of our computers and
our people, and also I want my friends to know what's
what when they go back home and aren't behind our
firewall any more. So I send out email from time to
time when there's a new phishing scam, or a new worm
vector like the IM bots, or a threat that is ahead of
the AV updates like the WMF vulnerability. More than
notifying people about any one threat I want to raise
general awareness and change browsing/clicking/etc.
habits.

I care about most of you folks too so here's the
latest: "Blackworm" (AKA Grew, CME-24, Kama Sutra,
Nyxem) is on a lot of PCs out there. It isn't doing
anything yet but on Feb 3 it will attempt to delete
files on your hard drive. Not so nice! Make sure that
your antivirus definitions are up to date: all the
standard AV programs have been detecting/cleaning this
one since Jan 23d. More information online at
http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=1067. Mac,
LINUX, etc. users: yes you still get to be smug. Dang.

This is also a good opportunity for one of my favorite
subjects: MAKE BACKUPS. If I had a nickel for every
time I couldn't help a user because their only copy of
an important file (document, report, scientific data)
was on some sort of media that is now TOAST I would
have a bunch more nickels than I want. I don't like
nickels.

I won't go on and bore the geek types on the list but
if it all makes your head hurt check out
http://www.murkworks.net/~sarah/safety.html. This is a
"basic info for normal people" handout that I made
when it was my turn to do the weekly station Safety
Meeting. I also made some brightly wrapped packages to
hand out that had "You have a virus" messages inside
but oddly enough people were suspicious and didn't
want to accept them from me. Guess they've actually
been reading my email messages!


Best to all,


-Sarah


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com