More information has been trickling out regarding the massive Target PCI breach that took place during the 2013 Christmas shopping season. Forensic researchers first learned that hackers penetrated Target’s network by means of a business transaction portal. It appears that Fazio Mechanical Services was the source. Fazio is a Pittsburgh-area nationwide mechanical contractor that services […]
Tag Archives: exploit
The “CryptoLocker” virus has been making a great deal of noise lately. Though we at Thom Infotech have not personally encountered it, we know others who have. We’ve written this post to help you to understand and defend against the CryptoLocker virus. What is it? CryptoLocker is an insidious twist on the all-too-familiar virus or […]
As of this writing there are roughly four useble business weeks left in the current year. As 2013 winds down, businesses should consider performing needed upgrades sooner rather than later. At the risk of creating a lengthy blog post I’m planning to provide 179 reasons to upgrade before January 2014. First, we should discuss the […]
There is welcome news for web developers this week as WordPress now offers automatic updates to the uber-popular web development platform. Starting out as a blogging tool, WordPress has morphed into a full website development ecosystem. Like many, this author has embraced WordPress due to its simplicity, flexibility, and easy search engine optimization. The importance […]
I’m sure you’ve seen this, and I hope you haven’t fallen for it. Nevertheless, it must work because the bad guys keep doing it. The term is “Trendjacking”, and it refers to spammers and malware authors using current trends to trick you into opening malicious email messages. Trendjacking threats are a growing concern for computer […]
It’s nearly time to say goodbye Windows XP. This past April marked the one year count-down to the eventual discontinuation of support for the venerable operating system (technically on April 8, 2014). What does this mean to you? In short, it’s high time you moved on and adopted Windows 7 or Windows 8. Windows XP […]
Oracle announced today the release of updates for Java versions 5, 6, and 7 to patch a critical java vulnerability actively being exploiting in the wild. The patches were reportedly slated for release in April but the timetable was pushed up in response to a recent report demonstrating the active exploit. This further prolongs the […]
“Anti-virus software alone is not enough”… so says the number one antivirus provider Symantec in this post. A rather stunning admission I would say, and something many in the security industry have known for quite some time. The admission comes on the heels of the successful infiltration of the New York Times by Chinese hackers […]
Kudos to Apple. Last week they decided to start blocking vulnerable versions of Adobe Flash plugins from running in the built-in Safari web browser. This is in direct response to the active exploits in the wild affecting Macs as well as PCs. Users who fail to update when prompted are now receiving an error message […]
Researchers at the respected security firm FireEye have discovered yet another Java zero-day attack that leverages previously unknown vulnerabilities with the latest versions of Java (as of this writing Java v1.6 Update 41 and Java v1.7 Update 15) to install malware. This comes on the heels of a discovery of two other holes (as yet […]