In this New York Times article they discuss FaceBook sharing your personal information with 3rd parties.  This is probably not a surprise to anyone in IT, but you may not realize how much data they share and with whom.  Two of the companies have links to the Russian and Chinese government.  You may not care if Microsoft has your info or Apple, but how do you feel about a Russian search engine being able to tell who & what you like, where you are and even possibly information in private messages.  All while trying to effect the outcome of a presidential election.  In their research the NYT finds that permissions were given above what was needed and they weren’t monitored or rescinded when there was no longer a need.  I encourage you to read more on the link below.

  Internal documents show that the social network gave Microsoft, Amazon, Spotify and others far greater access to people’s data than it has disclosed.

Source: As Facebook Raised a Privacy Wall, It Carved an Opening for Tech Giants

The Hacker News reports a serious flaw in Outlook that has exited since 2016 and took about 18 months to patch is only a partial fix. Users even after the patch can still be compromised. Read more at the link below or contact us for help securing your network.

  An information disclosure vulnerability (CVE-2018-0950) has been discovered in Microsoft Outlook that could allow hackers to steal Windows users’ login credentials.

Source: Flaw in Microsoft Outlook Lets Hackers Easily Steal Your Windows Password

Teams of software experts have discovered a bug in both Intel and AMD processors that can allow malicious code access to confidential information.  Some patches are currently available, but not all aspects are fixable at the moment.  This issue is serious and effects Microsoft Windows, Apple MacOS and Linux as well as as mobile devices Apple iOS and Google ChromeBooks.  Basically anything with an Intel or AMD effected CPU. Keep up to date on your patches, Retire old Out of Service Operating systems.  Yes people are still using XP, 2003, etc. It’s time for them to go away finally.  No patches will come out for older OS making them just huge targets. Keep your OS and AV up to date or just ask us about RMM and WebRoot. Read more in the links below. https://www.pcworld.com/article/3245606/security/intel-x86-cpu-kernel-bug-faq-how-it-affects-pc-mac.html http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/04/intel_amd_arm_cpu_vulnerability/  

CCleaner a widely used utility was hacked opening a backdoor and allowing Malware to be attached to some seemingly legitimate versions of the software. As a precaution to our clients (Those under our IDMax protection) we set a global removal of any older versions. There are updated versions that are not susceptible and the 64Bit versions are not effected by this specific issue.   If you would like more info read below: Forbes – Hackers Hid Backdoor Avast Blog Response / Update  

A Bug allows a malicious website or link to crash Windows 7 and 8.1 computers. The Temporary Solution? Use Chrome to Browse the net, not Internet Explorer (IE) or FireFox as both are susceptible. Read more below on the Register. Master File Table Exploit

In case you haven’t heard (if you follow our Blog or Facebook page you should have) there is some fallout from the NSA hacking tools being leaked.  At least allegedly.   Our  WebRoot customers are covered and our IDMax customers have been updated.  Are you one?  If not contact us and stay protected. The ‘new’ Ransomware has been wreaking havoc, causing outages, effecting Hospitals, telecoms and business in the UK, Russia, Tiawan and elsewhere. Microsoft has put out patches for it’s operating systems as well as offering some patches for it’s older XP and 2003 OS even though it discontinued support for them sometime ago.   Read More: Here on NetworkWorld, Here on ZDNet.com, More here on ZDNet.com including links to the Patches for Older OS (XP/2003)  

Is it right for Big Brother to be able to snoop on you indefinitely without you ever knowing?  They seem to think so.  MS Disagrees…  We do too.

Microsoft sues the US government over the right to tell its users when federal agencies want access to private data.

Source: Microsoft sues US government over secret data requests – BBC News

You may already have heard about this.  If not, read more below.  In Any event, get ready for some serious/critical patches in the near future. Adobe Flash has a significant number of Vulnerabilities so bottom line, if you don’t need it on your computer Don’t Install it or Uninstall it and you have one less source of stress.  Unless you are one of the fortunate (#Sarcasm) that needs it for some mission critical software you use.  In that case.  My heart felt condolences and contact us about keeping up to date.

Adobe is working on an emergency patch for its Flash Player after attackers are reportedly exploiting a critical flaw.

Source: Adobe to issue emergency patch for Flash vulnerability

Wondering about Padlock?  You should!  It’s touted as a “Serious Flaw” in SMB variations of which are used in Linux, Windows and yes even Mac.  What does the flaw exactly do?  We don’t know that yet.  But the company that discovered the flaw has also been writing the effected code for the last decade.  So the question is…  Are they just finding one of their own mistakes now and using it as a marketing tool to draw more business.  Either way, we won’t know until the details are released on April 12th.  No word on wether or not software manufactures will have the patch available by then though.  Read more on Wired Below.

A web site and logo created to draw attention to the mysterious bug is instead drawing criticism for the people who discovered the flaw.

Source: Hype Around the Mysterious ‘Badlock’ Bug Raises Criticism

The future will be here soon!

Microsoft has gained incredible mindshare for its HoloLens virtual reality headset, which is all the more remarkable since it’s pretty much been vaporware. However, development continues at quite a pace, and one of the more incredible ideas to sprout up is “holoportation.”

Source: Microsoft’s HoloLens might allow you to travel without ever moving | Network World