Ccleaner Ccompromised

Several publications are reporting that Windows efficiency tool Ccleaner has been compromised and the compromised version was distributed for over a month to over 2.3 million computers. Our company has never deployed or used this tool, nor advocated it's use. It was originally designed as a way to free up space on hard drives and evolved into a psuedo-privacy tool. I personally used it once in college and it removed some things that I needed, so it left a bit of a distate in my mouth, and I haven't given it a second look.

Anyway, if you use Ccleaner, make sure you are now using the current version, released on or after September 12th - and then once you are up to date with the latest version, I recommend unisntalling it - you don't really need it.

Yahoo!

By now you've probably heard about the Yahoo! breach. This is almost certainly the largest known breach of passwords and user information of all time. What makes it worse is that the breach not only includes passwords and email accounts, but also security questions and answers.

If you've ever been a Yahoo! user, which I suspect is almost everyone reading this, you should first change your Yahoo! password and all your security questions and answers, but secondly, and this is very important, you should enable multi-factor authentication for Yahoo! which provides a second layer of protection. You should actually enable multi-factor authentication for any service that allows you to do so, but especially for email accounts, banking and social media (the most likeley targets of hacking).

The worst part about this is that it is likley Yahoo! has known about this for several months, and it may just be coming out now only the purchase of Yahoo! by Verizon.

Good luck, and please contact us with any questions.

Be careful with wireless keyboards

Another day, another article about data vulnerabilities. This time the problem is wireless keyboards. Apparently several brands of wireless keyboards use no encryption whatsoever, and merely rely on obscure radio frequencies for minimal security. This leaves the end user open to key logging as well as key insertion. In other words someone could capture everything you type, or type directly on your computer. Your only recourse would be to unplug your wireless keyboard dongle / receiver. If you have a wireless keyboard from one of the brands listed in the article, you should switch to another brand or even a wired keyboard. I have been using the Logitech K750 for a few years and I love it. First off, Logitech is not one of the brands listed in the article. The keyboard has a low profile, tactile keys and the best part: it is solar powered so there are no batteries to die and replace. I recommend it.