Tag Archives: Anti-Virus

Cryptolocker – A virus that holds your business on ransom

Over the past few days we have seen an increased spread of a dangerous Ransomware virus…commonly known as Cryptolocker and Anti-viruses have been UNSUCCESSFUL in detecting it which is why we request your attention.

So what is a Crypto Locker virus ?

Crypto Locker is a virus which essentially encrypts (or in other words locks) all commonly known file formats such as doc, xls, jpg, pdf, mp3 etc. on your computer and whatever your computer is connected to with Military grade encryption mechanism making them unusable.
This means that if one of the employees in your business downloads this infection, the virus can potentially damage all files/folders that their PC is connected to including Network shares and files stored on the server making it inaccessible for everyone else… essentially bringing the business to a complete halt.

The virus makers then ask you to purchase the decryption key to unlock the files and the price you pay depends entirely on how many files they have managed to encrypt. From what we have read and seen ourselves, it could be anywhere from $600 – $9000.
This is a view of how your files will look like once infection has penetrated.

Example of Files infected by cryptolocker

Click here to see Example of Files infected by Cryptolocker

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Is your IT Infrastructure at risk because of the Heartbleed bug?

On the 9th of April 2014, security researchers announced a security flaw in the popular data encryption standard, OpenSSL that gives hackers the ability to extract all data from services that companies use every day. OpenSSL is basically giving you protection when you’re sending an email or chatting on IM by making the data that is sent look like nonsense to everyone except the intended.

The Heartbleed bug effectively decrypts all information sent from server to client, and client to server making it visible for hackers to see what you are sending. A lot of popular chatting IM sites that businesses use such as Google (Gmail), Pinterest, Tumblr, Yahoo and more could have been used to exploit this bug as they use OpenSSL.

How to protect yourself and your business from the Heartbleed bug.

What Mulink Technologies recommends:

–          Changing your password on Web-accessed software (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc)

–          Do not user the same password on every website and routinely change it (30 days)

–          Implement a password saving software such as Password Safe.

If you or your company is re-using the same password across multiple websites, you could still be vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug.

Any good IT Service provider will ensure that your company is safe against the Heartbleed bug, if that is not the case you may want to re-think your IT and Infrastructure needs and call Mulink Technologies on 1300 978 938.

Security Alert – eBay Hacked

This is to bring to your attention that eBay has requested all its users to urgently change their passwords after a security breach was identified on Wednesday.

Everyone should take this warning seriously and change their password as soon as possible. Further, if your PayPal account is linked to eBay, we would highly recommend changing its password too.

This has once again reminded us the importance of keeping all your online accounts to have unique passwords. Consider the implication if your password goes into the hands of a hacker and then he has access to your email and bank accounts.

More details here – http://www.cnet.com/au/news/ebay-hacked-requests-all-users-change-passwords/