Conficker Worm In The News

On Sunday night, 60 Minutes aired a story on the Conficker Worm (a virus).  I thought the story had some pretty good information, although it came across as an ad for Symantec as well.  Here is a link to the segment of the show.

Conficker attacks a known issue in Windows that Microsoft created a patch for back in October 2008.  I posted an article here back in October that discussed how to get the patch and how to tell if the patch has been installed on your computer.  You can view that article here.

This worm is getting a bit of air play right now because one of the variants is expected to cause various types of issues on April 1st. 

So what should you do regarding this virus.  First, make sure you have the latest virus definition files for your AntiVirus software.  If you hover over or click on your AV icon on right side of your taskbar, you should see the version and possibly date of the last update.  Make sure it is recent.  Note that one of the symptoms of this virus is that it disables the updating portion of your AV program.  If you are not getting updates you may be infected.  The next thing is to make sure you have the latest Windows updates installed on your computer.  If you are on our Monitoring Service that includes updates, you should be all set.

Make sure your staff are aware of this issue.  Computer users need to be constantly reminded of safe computing practices.  Your computer usage policies need to be constantly reviewed to insure that you are protecting your IT assets as well as you can.

Let me ask this question.  You know those users that are logging in to your network from home.  Do they have the latest AV updates on their computers? The latest Windows updates?  Are they already infected and connecting in? 

How about the person that comes in to your office for what ever reason, the accountant, consultant, auditor.  If they connect their laptop to your network either by wireless or wire, can you answer the above questions?  Just something to think about.

Internet Explorer 8 Released

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 on Thursday 3/19/09. IE8 is the latest version of Microsoft's browser. It brings more security and several more features to the Internet browsing experience. A new, smarter address bar allows searches to be done right from the address bar. At the same time, the address bar will present search suggestions that can enhance the Internet Search process.

A new function called Accelerators is included. This features allows you to highlight text in any website and perform web based functions using that information automatically. For instance, you could highlight a street address and instantly go to a mapping site which will present the directions to that address.

Another new feature is Web Slices. Web Slices are a way to stay up to date with a small piece of a website. For instance, if you wanted to keep an eye on the weather in your area, you can install the Web Slice from the weather site and it will install a little button in your IE Toolbar. Any time the weather info changes the little button will light up and you can take a look. You don't have to keep going to the website to check the weather. I think you're going to see a bunch of Web Slices get created.

Tabbed browsing has been available since IE7. IE8 adds a bunch of new features and refines the tabbed browsing experience quite a bit.

I have been using IE8 at home since the early betas. I like it a lot. However, there can be some compatibility issues so you need to be careful. Some websites may not display correctly. Fortunately, IE8 includes a "Compatibility Button" that has corrected any problems I have run in to.

As usual, I suggest our Clients hold of a little on installing IE8. At least install it on one or two machines to test your environment before rolling it out to everyone. At some point it will be offered as a critical update in Windows Updates, so it will get installed automatically if you are not careful. My experience with IE8 has been very good. Because of the new features and the increased security, I suggest Clients move to it as soon as they complete their in house testing. More info on IE8 and the download link can be found here.