Tag: bug

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Stop Using Microsoft Internet Explorer

If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), there are hackers actively using a software bug to gain control of Microsoft Windows computers.  Stop using IE now! This is twice as dangerous as the Heartbleed Bug because an attacker can take control of your computer and do whatever they want with it.

US-CERT issued an alert about the active exploitation of a use-after-free vulnerability in Microsoft Internet Explorer. This vulnerability affects IE versions 6 through 11 and allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system.

US-CERT recommends that users and administrators review Microsoft Security Advisory 2963983 for mitigation actions and workarounds. If you are still using Windows XP, Microsoft will not provide updates or solutions and you should consider installing and using an alternate browser such as Mozilla Firefox (free) or Google Chrome (free).

For more details, please see VU#222929 and FireEye’s Blog entry.

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Heartbleed Bug – End of the World or Non-event?

heartbleed xkcd comicThat about covers the risks.  Now what can you do about it?  First, update your computer (Windows, Mac OS X or Linux/Unix), right now!  Before you read the rest of this post.

Most software vendors/service providers recognized the serious nature of this bug and updated their software (the easy part).  So getting the fix is usually easy. The biggest problem is trying to determine if your information has been compromised.  You can’t!  Attacks leave no trace or very little on the computers that gave up their private secrets.  This bug has been out in the wild for 2 years!  Maybe nobody found it and took advantage OR somebody did and has all our passwords.  N.S.A is that you?  The actual risk is probably somewhere in between those extremes.

Most security experts are recommending that we change all our passwords and replace all of our SSL certificates.  At the very least change your password on you bank account log-in, but you probably don’t need to change your Facebook password (everybody has all that info).  And definitely change your password if you use one password for everything.  Yea, it is hard to remember all of them, but you can let your computer do the remembering.  Start using a password safe like KeePass or KeePassX to create and store long secure password using one password, that you have to remember, to save them on your system in an encrypted file.

More info about Heartbleed Bug: