Security

I was planning to continue my ongoing discussion on Disk Imaging in this issue of the Gazette, but my mail box has been inundated with emails from folks who have fallen prey to a chain-letter virus hoax. C'est la vie. I've decided to take this ... opportunity to let you know about this hoax before you go deleting the wrong file from your system. Virus Hoax: jdbgmgr.exe. On the weekend I received multiple email chain-letters from users who have my email address on their Contact List / Address Book, and decided to pass on the message. The start of the message varies, but it all boils down to the ... (view more)

Did you mail all your Christmas cards out yet? I've got a small collection starting on top of the mantel, but I'm surprised that I haven't received any (tangible) Holiday cards yet from Infopackets Readers! Sending an e-greeting is nice to receive, ... but it's hard to differentiate the spam mails from the legit. Sometimes when I write a newsletter, I get up to 200 emails in a day! That can get kind of nutty after a while. And, that brings me to my next point. MBMaser emailed me the other day and told me about a web site called FriendGreetings.com which is allegedly responsible for incorporating ... (view more)

Dustin S. from Texas asks: " I purchased Windows XP home edition some time back, and have always had a question about some of the programs that it executes. The program that I am speaking of is scvhost.exe. I have tried to stop it from running but ... this just has the nice reaction of crashing my system. Any help would be appreciated! " My Response: The Pac's Portal web site says that there is a legit version of svchost.exe, which runs on Windows 2000 and XP; however, there is also a malicious program called svchost.exe floating around the 'net. The nasty version of the program is also ... (view more)

Do you have Spyware unknowingly installed on your system? What are the latest Spyware threats? In general, Spyware is defined as: Software that is installed onto your machine without your permission, and tracks your activity for no user benefit. ... There are a lot of sites on the 'Net today which distribute software that promises to make life easy -- the only thing you need to do is download and install it on your machine. But what is the software really doing? RE: Spyware Info There is a web site that is dedicated to keeping the Internet community up-to-date with Spyware news. The name of the ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Lavandran R. write s: " Dear Dennis, I have a program called Bargain Buddy installed on my computer, and I don't know where it came from! I'm not sure, but I think it's Spyware. When I tried to uninstall it, it refuses to ... uninstall and gives me error messages saying that I should make sure that the disk isn't full (which it isn't). It also asked me to make sure that the disk is not write protected and to make sure that the program is not actively in use. I'm confused! " My Response: Personally, I'd like to take Bargain Buddy and his cousin Bonzi Buddy and shoot ... (view more)

Last week, Stan L. Jr. sent in a question which asked what should be done when a program attempts to suddenly "call home" and request a connection to the Internet. Recall: " A few days ago, I was using my computer when all the sudden, I noticed that ... some program decided that it wanted to access the Internet. I tried to cancel the request to connect to the Internet, but the bugger kept coming back asking for a connection. I then decided to try the "3 finger salute" by pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL at the same time to bring up Task Manager, but no programs were listed here ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Stan L. write s: " Dear Dennis, A few days ago, I was using my computer when all the sudden, I noticed that some program decided that it wanted to access the Internet. I tried to cancel the request to connect to the Internet, but ... the bugger kept coming back asking for a connection. I then decided to try the "3 finger salute" by pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL at the same time to bring up Task Manager, but no programs were listed here that seemed to be "out of the ordinary" that might have been attempting to access the Internet. Is there a program which ... (view more)

Almost a month ago we were knee-deep in discussion with respect to tracking down a hacker. In short, our ongoing discussion probed possibilities and known methods which might be used to track down a hacker, if one ever attempted to hack into *your* ... computer system. RE: Can I track down a Hacker?, Part 1 , and Can I track down a Hacker?, Part 2 . Shortly after Part 2 was released, I received an email from Dan Daily (editor / webmaster) of Danny's Daily . Dan's comments focused on a proposed supposition, which was sent in from John B. in Part 2 of our Discussion . To recap: John suggested to ... (view more)

I was fortunate enough to receive a message from the Product Manager of Alexa, Geoff Mack. His concerns were about our ongoing discussion of whether or not Internet Explorer contains Alexa Spyware . I'd like to take this time now to share his ... concerns. Geoff writes: " Hello, My name is Geoffrey Mack, Product Manager at Alexa, an Amazon.com company. I am writing to disagree with your assertion that the Alexa Toolbar is spyware. First, it is helpful to define Spyware. The definition is here . In short, Spyware is: software that gets on your machine without your permission, and tracks your ... (view more)

Yesterday's Visitor Feedback of the Gazette addressed why two program files ( internat.exe and ptsnoop.exe ) might be present in the Windows msconfig startup. To be honest with you, I have never encountered these programs before. The name ... "internat.exe" seemed to me that it was a purposely misspelled version of the word "Internet" -- most likely misspelled to dupe users into thinking that it was a friendly Internet-related program. In all likelihood, I thought, the program name "internat.exe" could have been a trojan. I was right. Sort of. As always, I use Google ... (view more)