Crapware's bad enough, but having your life torn asunder simply by plugging in that shiny new (insert USB-connected device here) is an exciting new trend -- viruses find their way into the darnedest places, don't they? It seems an employee at anti-malware firm Panda Research who'd ordered a new Magic off Vodafone UK's site was greeted with no fewer than three nefarious executables upon plugging the device into her PC: a bot client, a password stealer, and a Conficker variant, and running a network sniffer quickly confirmed that the virii were live and ready to do harm as soon as the autorun in the Magic's mounted mass storage was executed on her Windows machine. If this were a widespread issue, we'd certainly have heard about it in other places, so odds are good (as Panda points out) that this was simply a case of HTC or Vodafone doing an awful job of wiping a refurbished set -- but it gives you pause and kind of makes you wish you worked for an anti-malware firm, at least on days when you're plugging in a new phone for the first time. The silver lining, we suppose, is that Vodafone has recently discontinued the Magic, though that creates another problem: the only Android device it currently stocks now is the lowly Tattoo, so the X10 and Nexus One can't come soon enough.Customer greeted with malware on Vodafone-issued HTC Magic (good thing it's discontinued) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink Daring Fireball  |  Panda Research, Android Community  | Email this | Comments Continue Reading »

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and these days it’s very common to send Valentine wishes electronically. Electronic greetings can save time, paper, and postage and can contain go beyond the standard heart-shaped doily with music and animation. However, some e-greetings can spread malicious software or be used for identity theft. Here are a few tips on how to send and receive e-greetings more safely.

• Recognize the sender of the e-greeting. If you don't know the sender, do not trust the greeting. Legitimate companies have standard, obvious ways for you to recognize that an e-greeting is not a fraud.For example, with MSN Greetings, the "from" area in the message header always shows "Ecard from MSN Greetings" as the display name and "ecards@msn.americangreetings.com" as the e-mail address.Make sure you check both the display name and e-mail address of the sender.
• When in doubt, use alternative viewing methods. Do not click any links when you are not sure of the sender or intent of an e-mail message. For example, if you use MSN Greetings, you can view your greeting on the MSN Greetings Web site. Type "msn.americangreetings.com" into your Web browser and click the link in the upper right-hand corner that says “ecard pickup.”
• Never download or click anything from an unknown source.
• Use antivirus and antispyware software that updates automatically, like Microsoft Security Essentials.

  For more information on how to send e-greetings more safely and how to avoid other e-mail scams, see Phishing scams that target interests, activities, and news events. Continue Reading »

The Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) establishes security and privacy throughout the Microsoft development process. SDL has proven to be effective in making flagship Microsoft products more resilient to security and privacy threats and to better protect Microsoft customers from malicious and costly attacks. For more information on SDL see: ·         Learn about the SDL process ·         Get SDL training resources ·         Read about the history of the SDL at Microsoft ·         Find out how to reduce the total cost of development with SDL ·         SDL: Frequently asked questions Continue Reading »

Lately we’ve been recommending that you to download our new free antivirus and antispyware software called Microsoft Security Essentials. Read what others are saying about it. The Lifehacker blog recently called Microsoft Security Essentials “a great antivirus application” and told readers that they could stop paying for other antivirus software suites and download the free Microsoft Security Essentials instead. Read the full article. In their Microsoft Blog, the Seattle PI cited a report that said that Microsoft Security Essentials ran faster and tested better than Symantec and McAfee. Read the full article. For more information and to download the software, go to Microsoft Security Essentials. Share this post : Continue Reading »

I’m looking for a couple authors that are also interested in contributing back to the community. We all receive a lion-share of input, utilities and resource from the online community and this blog is designed to be a forum to allow us to give back.

It’s not mandatory that the posts be long and since this is wordpress, we’re happy to take posts from a wide array of topics as tagging and categorizing are built in. The requirements are minimal. Of course, we ask that you have a technical background so that the posts are related to technology. Within that scope, we are open to desktop support, programming, new technological advances, articles on resolving worms/virus issues. security alerts, etc.

If you’re interested, reply to this post or send an email to shaun-at-olebox-com. I am excited to open this up to a broader forum and look forward to reading the articles that our community contributes.

Of course, we are a free forum of volunteers with the focus of being an open resource for end users. Unfortunately we do have expenses (hosting/broadcasting) we ask that you visit our ad sponsors to help us cover these re-occuring fees.

- Shaun

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