Microsoft has released security updates for their operating systems and applications. The June 2010 patch day consists of 10 security bulletins that fix a total of 34 30 different security vulnerabilities. The updates are already available via Windows Update but can also be downloaded from the Microsoft website in case they need to be deployed [...]

Microsoft Security Essentials is a security software for Windows operating systems that is offered as a free download by Microsoft. The program provides additional protection against all sorts of malware from viruses over trojans to keyloggers and computer worms. Security Essentials is a signature based security software which means that it can only protect the [...]

Two new vulnerabilities affecting the Adobe products Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash were reported by Secunia earlier this day. They have in common that they have been both rated as extremely critical, the highest available severity rating for vulnerabilities posted at Secunia. Highly critical is a rating for “remotely exploitable vulnerabilities that can lead to [...]

Panda Cloud Antivirus made quite an impact in 2009 when it was officially released after an initial beta testing period. The cloud driven antivirus solution combined effective virus protection with a smaller local footprint and lesser updating hassles thanks to its cloud based design. But resource efficiency is only one benefit of cloud based antivirus [...]

The domain name system is a naming system for computers and other devices connected to private computer networks or the Internet. One of its most important tasks is to translate domain names (e.g. ghacks.net) into IP addresses that computer use for communication purposes. Most Internet users use their Internet Service Provider as the DNS provider, [...]

The popular online store Amazon keeps a record of a customer’s preferences by tracking actions on Amazon properties but also on third party sites that display Amazon advertisements. These information are then used to display personalized ads to the user. Personalized advertisements can appear both on Amazon websites but also on third party websites that [...]

Partimage is a unique open source rescue tool in that it can be used as an installed application or as a stand alone rescue tool with SystemRescueCD. So if whether your system is working or not, Partimage might be able to save you. But what does Partimage do? Partimage saves partions (in various formats) to [...]

Spam makes between 90% to 95% of all email on the Internet. This huge number means that most Internet users have to deal with spam on a regular basis. Many email providers use spam filters to sort out most of the spam before it reaches the user’s inbox. It is however often the case that [...]

By now most Internet users know what phishing stands for, or so they think. If you ask them to define phishing most will likely mention that it is about fake email links that lead to look-a-like copies of popular websites. What most users do not know is that their definition of phishing is not entirely [...]

A common rule for Windows users is to install and use only one antivirus software solution at a time. Most developers ask the computer user to uninstall other security software before the new software can be installed. It is however possible to install different types of security software that can be run next to each [...]

Are you tired of that pesky GNOME keyring reminder popping up everywhere you go? You know what it does right? The GNOME keyring manager manages passwords for things like ftp connections, email password logins, wireless network authentication, and much more. Typically this is set up encrypted – by default this is the case with the [...]

Google recently enabled SSL on their main search engine google.com allowing search engine users to access https://www.google.com/ instead of the standard Google search domain. This secure search encrypts the data that is exchanged between the user’s computer and Google search so that third parties like other network users or the Internet Service Provider cannot spy [...]

The Microsoft Security Response team published a security advisory yesterday. The team is investigating a publicly reported vulnerability that is affecting 64-bit editions of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 as well as Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium systems. The vulnerability was discovered in the Windows Canonical Display Driver (cdd.dll) which is used [...]

Encryption is the only way to go if you are serious about protecting data from unauthorized access. Programs like True Crypt or Microsoft’s Bitlocker ensure that data is protected by a secure algorithm so that it can only be accessed by the user who knows the password to unlock the data. But sometimes these programs [...]

The Microsoft security updates for May 2010 are now available for download and installation. Microsoft has released a total of two security bulletins that fix vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and Microsoft Visual Basic. The maximum severity rating has been set to critical. The critical rating applies only to some operating systems and applications. [...]

The Windows Task Manager lists the processes that are currently running on the computer system. Security conscious users monitor the processes regularly to make sure that no new or rogue processes are running on their personal computer. Some processes, like firefox.exe or explorer.exe can be identified immediately by their name while others, like taskhost.exe or [...]

Facebook’s popularity makes it a prime target for hackers, phishers and other malicious users who try to steal your login information, invade your privacy or do other malicious things with your account. Many Facebook users do not know that Facebook has an option to notify account owners about logins from other computer systems and mobile [...]

Reports began to appear on the Internet two days ago that suggested that a new mass hack was underway. It was first assumed that the hack was only targeting WordPress blogs but it soon became known that other scripts were also affected by it. The common denominator of the hack was that all affected websites [...]

WordPress, like any other popular script or online service, is heavily targeted by malicious users who try to get access to it to use the high-jacked blogs or services to execute malicious activities. This includes spamming ads to the blog’s visitors or placing links to their sites on the blog’s pages. WordPress administrators can improve [...]

If you open Windows Explorer in the Windows operating system you will eventually come upon some folders with a lock icon. If you try to open those folders you will get an access denied error message. The lock icon indicates a file or folder with special permissions and that the active user is restricted from [...]

Microsoft has released a stability and reliability update for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 which fix a number of issues in both operating systems. The issues that have been fixed in the update are: Windows Explorer crashes and then restarts when you access a third-party Control Panel item. You cannot connect to [...]

Foxit Reader has recently been affected by a series of security vulnerabilities which the Foxit developer’s managed to close shortly after they were disclosed. The developers have just released Foxit Reader 3.3 which introduces a new feature called Secure Trust Manager. It basically is a new component that blocks potentially malicious attacks before they can [...]

Cloud based security solutions seem to be one of the latest trends in the security world with more and more companies releasing fully or partially cloud based applications. Panda Cloud Antivirus embraces the cloud. It basically runs a lightweight client on the user system and stores most components including the virus signatures in the cloud. [...]

One of the best options to keep an operating system safe is to use virtualization. Virtualization ensures that everything that happens in the virtual environment is not affecting the real computer system. Benefits of this approach include preventing threats from malicious software such as viruses and spyware and leaving no traces on a computer system [...]

Facebook privacy has been in the news lately with many users thinking that the privacy settings on the site are to darn complicated and hidden to be effective. As a result information are publicly available which some users might have no intention to share with the world. Facebook itself is not really helpful when it [...]

The Web in 2010 seems to be all about personalization. First we got search engine personalization and now we got Facebook’s Instant Personalization feature introduced a few days ago at the F8 conference. Instant Personalization has caused some unrest amongst tech savvy Internet users. But what does it do? It basically allows partner sites (currently [...]

A few days ago we reported that Symantec started the public beta test for their 2011 security lineup. Windows users were able to download and test beta builds of both Norton Internet Security 2011 and Norton Antivirus 2011. Kaspersky has also starting to publish public beta versions of Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 and Kaspersky Antivirus [...]

Norton Safe Web is an url scanning service offered by Norton. It scans websites and urls and displays possible threats found on those websites to users of the service. It is in this regard similar to other url scanning services like AVG Linkscanner or Web of Trust. Norton Safe Web For Facebook is a Facebook [...]

Countries all over the world, especially those that claim to be democratic (when in fact we all know that they are not), plan to introduce various control mechanisms to increase their control over the content that is published and shared on the Internet. Cleanternet is satirical website that tries to educate Europeans (and users from [...]

I had been hoping to accomplish this for some time now. At work we work under a Windows domain and I have a Ubuntu test machine that I have been hoping to join to that domain. Finally, thanks to Likewise-Open5, it happened. And, believe it or not, it’s not all that difficult. Oh sure you [...]

Norton Power Eraser is a free portable software program for the Windows operating system that has been designed to remove deeply embedded and difficult to remove malicious software from a computer system. It can specifically detect crimeware such as rogue antivirus programs that are being used to trick the user into either downloading threats to [...]

Taking a cue from Martin’s helpful article (see “How do I find my IP Address“) I thought it would be a good idea to offer the same information for the Linux operating system. But with Linux there is one issue to get around – that of the number of different tools available to use to [...]

Security companies like Symantec or Kaspersky release new versions of their products each year. Norton is now offering beta versions of their upcoming security applications Norton Internet Security 2011 and Norton AntiVirus 2011 that can be downloaded directly from the Norton Beta Center. A registration is required before the programs can be activated on the [...]

Security issues with Adobe products seem to be in the news quite frequently in the last months. No week passes by with yet another report about a security vulnerability or update of one of the popular Adobe software programs. Recently an Adobe Reader vulnerability was discovered that allows attackers to execute code on a target [...]

Microsoft has just added the security updates for April 2010 to Windows Update from where every Windows user can download and install them on their operating system. A total of eleven security bulletins have been released that update the Windows operating system as well as other Microsoft software like Microsoft Office. The updates fix security [...]

Windows maintains a list of programs that have been executed on the operating system in the Windows Registry. This Windows program history contains detailed information about the programs that have been launched by the active Windows user. The feature has been available since for a long time and Microsoft has continued to implement it in [...]

If you read yesterday’s article a life without flash you already know where this article is heading. The attacks using pdf documents have increased as have the vulnerabilities that have been found in Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat, the two most popular software programs ti view pdf documents. Recently security vulnerabilities have also been found [...]

Adobe Flash has a market penetration of 99% which means that it is installed on 99 out of 100 computer systems according to a study posted on the Adobe website. Security vulnerabilities on the other hand become more frequent and users have to update their versions of Flash regularly to secure their computer systems. A [...]

A standard Windows operating system has a number of ports open after installation. Some of these ports are needed for the system to function properly while others might not. These ports can pose a security risk as every open port on a system might be an entry point for a malicious user. A port basically [...]

Here we are again, back witho ur old friend Nagios. If you’ve been following you know I have covered quite a bit of ground with this outstanding network monitoring tool (check all Ghacks Nagios articles). There is a reason for this, Nagios is an incredible tool. But for many of you, you might have come [...]

If you have been following my latest entries, you know I have been covering the Nagios monitoring system (see my articles “Quickly install Nagios on Ubuntu“, “Easily extend Nagios’ functionality“, and “Configure hostgroups for Nagios“.) This time around we are going to look at the notification function of Nagios. Specifically, I am going to show [...]

Today seems to be the day of the security patch. The Java Runtime Environment has received an update to JRE 6 Update 19 which fixes several security vulnerabilities. Users who have Java installed on their computer systems are encouraged to update to the latest version immediately to fix the security issues. The changelog lists all [...]

Microsoft has released an out-of-band security patch for Internet Explorer which fixes a security vulnerability that has been actively exploited on the Internet. The patch has caused some confusion as reported by Ed Bott since the the security vulnerability that caused the emergency update to be released is only affecting Internet Explorer 6 or IE7. [...]

Alternate data streams (ads) are a feature of Microsoft’s Windows NTFS file system that can be used to add data to existing files, for instance text to a text file that does not become visible if the original file is opened in a text editor. The hidden nature of alternate data streams have made them [...]

Webmasters need to be jack of all trades. They need to configure and design their websites, interact with the community, make regular backups and ensure that the website is secure and up to date so that it cannot be hacked, at least not by button pushers. Tools aid the webmaster in securing and testing the [...]

If you’ve been following my Nagios articles here on Ghacks (see “Easily extend Nagios’ functionality” and “Quickly install Nagios on Ubuntu” for more information) you are probably impressed with how powerful Nagios is. Well, I can happily say you haven’t seen anything yet. Nagios is amazing in it’s ability to extend and report. Of course, [...]

Virus Total is one of the most useful security services on the Internet. The service can be used by everyone to upload and scan files using multiple antivirus engines. It can be used directly from their website or by installing the Virus Total Uploader in Windows to send files directly from Windows Explorer. No Virus [...]

My last article described how to “Quickly install Nagios on Ubunut“. That article had you up and running with the powerful open source network monitoring tool, but not much more. If you really want to make Nagios useful you have to do a bit of work. Some might see this work as too time consuming [...]

USB flash drives have been used in the past to attack computer systems. One of the most popular worms that was spread via removable devices was the Conficker worm which infected millions of computer systems. Some – but not all – security programs protect the computer system from attacks carried out from USB flash drives [...]

Nagios is not just a tool, it’s one of the best open source network monitors available. Nagios has a simple plug-in design that allows administrators to easily create their own checks and monitors. The problem that so many see with Nagios is that it is supposedly so difficult to install. That is not the case. [...]