Microsoft released a Critical patch today for pretty much all versions of Windows, from XP on up. (This doesn’t mean it doesn’t also apply to earlier versions; just that earlier versions are no longer supported.)

The issue behind this patch lies in that when you create a shortcut for something, Windows actually reads part of the underlying file to pick up things like the icon to use for the shortcut. Well, they’ve found a problem in the way that this works, and that very process of displaying the icon can be exploited, enabling code of the attacker’s choosing to run, with the privileges of the locally logged-on user.

In other words, you don’t even have to run the program, in order to be attacked. All they have to do is make an icon appear on your desktop, and when Windows reads the file to display the icon for it, it will run the malicious code with your permissions. Since many people use Windows XP with Administrator permissions, this means they own your system. And since many people with Vista or Windows 7 routinely ignore (or even turn off) the UAC warnings, they’re going to to own them too.

If your system is set for automatic updates, you’ll have already applied this patch this morning. If not, do! It’s a Critical level security patch, and it will likely require a system reboot – it did for me.

It’s true… Once again, those security guru’s at FaceBook have decided that your privacy isn’t all that important. At least, not important enough to do something novel like… ask your permission before divulging your personal information!

This time, it’s your phone numbers. Recent changes now have the defaults set to show your phone numbers to your Friends only. I guess I can hear the logic on it: If they’re my friends, then maybe it’s okay for them to have my phone numbers. Unfortunately, that’s not in line with the way most people actually use FaceBook. They have business acquaintances, the guy they met at that last trade show, people they knew back in kindergarten who may have grown up to be axe murderers (you never know…), etc. Come on people – we’ve all done that. And we’re generally okay with them seeing our bizarre thoughts, but do we really want them all calling us?! I think not!

Nonetheless, they are out there, available. If you want to get an idea as to the scope of this, try this:

• Log into your FaceBook account.
• On the top right of the screen, click Account, and then Edit Friends.
• On the left side of the screen, click Phonebook.

Take a look at all your friends, and their phone numbers!

Now if you don’t want your numbers to be displayed like that, here’s what you gotta do:

• Click Account, and then Privacy Settings
• Select Custom, and then click Customize Settings link, on the lower left of the chart.
• Scroll down to the Contact Information section, and then set the appropriate items to Only Me.

In England, this past week, Rory Cellan-Jones, reporter with the BBC, reported about a “scientist”, Dr. Mark Gasson, who implanted himself with a computer virus. Apparently, this was supposed to be an “ooh, aah” sort of thing. Revolutionary and whatnot. It wasn’t, but more on that later.

The response to the article was apparently (and I believe correctly) largely derisive, to the point where yesterday, Mr. Cellan-Jones published a follow-up article. In it, he admits that he “should have adopted a more sceptical tone” in his original piece, but then attempts to justify it anyway. He also contacted Dr. Gasson for a reply to some of the criticism. Dr. Gasson responded that he wanted to bring attention to the need to consider security in medical technology devices.

Now, I agree that security absolutely must be considered as we begin to move towards electronic devices being used as body parts. It would be terrible if, for example, unsecured wireless technology was used to connect the brain to an artificial arm, and someone hacked it and made it beat its owner to death. But Dr. Gasson’s experiment isn’t anything like that.

What Dr. Gasson did was take some “virus code”, put it on an RFID chip, and implant it under his skin. The code was designed to redirect a web browser to a malware site. Dr. Gasson is not a web browser, at least not in the technical sense. And the chip doesn’t have the mechanics necessary to make him do anything. It was no more impressive than if he stuck it in his pocket. This “experiment” is sort of analogous to sticking dirt up your nose to see if it will give you a dirty mind. At best, this was more a political point than a science experiment. At worst, it was simple publicity seeking.

It’s February 2010; a couple of days after what President Obama referred to as Snowmageddon. At least if your office is in this region, right now, you’ve probably been thinking about Remote Access to your computer systems. If you have it, you’ve been very glad of it. If you don’t, you may have been wishing you did. And you wouldn’t be alone: According to a CNNMoney article, LogMeIn’s remote access service usage surged nearly 40% during the recent storms.

Bad weather is but one of the reasons many businesses need some form of remote access, or even remote office solution. It can be a critical component of your overall Disaster Preparedness Plan. If your computers don’t shut down because of some environmental disaster, why does your business have to?

Remote access to your systems can also enable you and your staff to be a bit more time-flexible, or provide for remote technical support. (Yes, I use it all the time.) It can enable sales staff to access critical data while on the road, even from a SmartPhone.

Sounds great! What do we need to do? Well, slow down a moment. Like most things, you do need to put in a little bit of forethought and planning for this. So here are some things to think about:

• How many people are going to need to use it? Concurrently?
• Do we need application access, or just data access?
• How important is remote printing?
• Do we need remote access even during the workday, without affecting others’ work?
• How concerned are we about security?

These, and other factors can determine which is the most appropriate / cost-effective way of providing remote access services. These are some of the major categories used:

Remote Control
This type of solution has been around for a very long time. Typical examples of this type of solution include GoToMyPC and LogMeIn. A small client application is installed on the user’s PC(s), which connects out to the provider’s Internet servers. On the remote side, the user logs into the provider’s website, and makes a connection to the provider’s website. To make the actual remote-access connection, these two separate sessions are connected through the provider’s site. Both connections typically use strong encryption, making this type of remote access pretty secure.

As the name describes, this type of connection literally has the remote user taking over control of the host PC. This means that, typically, someone at the office could actually be watching whatever the remote user does, and the remote user will have no way of knowing it. If the user is accessing confidential data, this could be a concern.

Also, because the user is actually taking over the entire computer, the computer cannot be used by anyone else at the same time. If the access is needed during the regular business day, it has to be on a computer that no one else uses.

Terminal Services
This type of solution has many of the same benefits as the Remote Control solutions. The user gets a virtual desktop and runs applications at the remote site. When using a Terminal Server, you can have multiple users on the same machine simultaneously, each with their own virtual desktop. Since users are not actually taking over the remote machine, passersby at the office cannot watch a session taking place. And since a Terminal Server is generally a dedicated machine, it doesn’t affect other users ability to work.

There are some things to be aware of, though. For example, remote printing can be tricky – especially if you’re trying to print to a printer on a remote network. Also, security can be a concern. The encryption used by RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) is not as strong as some other solutions – at least not by default. And, of course, there is the cost of the Terminal Server itself. A Terminal Server is a Server, requiring a Microsoft Server operating system, and typically, server hardware.

Virtual Private Networks (VPN)
VPN is a term I’ve often heard misused to mean all sorts of remote access services. So let me explain what it is: A VPN uses encryption to form a “tunnel” through an untrusted network (i.e. the Internet). So if you have two offices, you can use a VPN to connect them through the Internet, enabling machines to communicate securely between the two sites. You can also create a VPN from a computer to the network, allowing that computer to communicate as if it were directly connected to the network.

Typically, the encryption used is strong. But people often complain that performance is slower than they expected. The issues are usually due to applications that are not particularly well-suited for this type of connection.

The important thing is that you know your options, and understand both the costs and the benefits each can provide for your business.

Yes, I really did use the term, “Paradigm Shift.” This actually is going to be my newsletter topic this month. But not in the buzzword-y sense.

Let’s start with some definitions:

Paradigm: An example serving as a model or pattern (from a Greek word I can’t even hope to pronounce, meaning to show side-by-side)

Shift: To put something aside and replace it with another

Paradigm Shift: A change from one model or pattern of thought (or action) to another.

We all live in many different paradigms, and we switch between them all the time. For example:

• In my home paradigm, I dispense fatherly advice and bad jokes, to my kids. I (usually) help around the house. I fix (and sometimes break) things.
• In my work paradigm, I call and/or take calls from customers, and help them with their computer problems. I deal with the finances. I work on Sales and Marketing.
• In my religious paradigm, I go to synagogue, pray and generally do my best to keep the laws and traditions of my belief-system.

When we need to quickly figure out how to respond to something, we look to the paradigm we’re using at the time. If a client has a problem, and needs my help, my response shouldn’t be to pray or dispense fatherly advice. Knowing which paradigm I’m in, at a given moment, gives me the context to understand how to respond, pretty much intuitively.

Which Paradigm?

But it’s not always so easy to determine which paradigm you should be in. Sometimes, we can make mistakes. Consider this scenario:

You’re walking to the door of your office building. It’s a secure key-card access door. Someone else is walking up behind you. Do you hold the door for him? On the one hand, there is clearly concern about security here. On the other hand, closing the door in the guy’s face might be rude.

The problem here is that no one’s clarified the appropriate paradigm. If Security was an underlying rule of thumb, it would be obvious, and closing the door in his face wouldn’t be considered rude at all – in fact it would be expected. If you don’t believe it, ask anyone who’s ever worked on a military base, or in a secure government facility. (I’ve worked in both.)

Every business owner I’ve spoken to, says that they want their business to be “secure”. Then, many of them insist that everyone in the office use the same user name and password, or no password at all, for network access. In fact, according to a recent InfoWorld article, a similarly recent Symantec survey says that small businesses tend to “shun” basic security measures. Once again, the problem is usually an unclear paradigm.

Security Policy

This is where a Security Policy can be really useful, even for a small business. It communicates the organization’s security foundations; what’s important to the company, from a security perspective. Basically, it’s the documented security paradigm for the company. And it doesn’t need to be really complicated either. In fact, simpler is better. Should you enforce stronger password policies? Well, if the policy says, “Everyone should be able to get to anything they want, without restriction,” then the answer is immediately clear. It’s also clear if the policy says, “Users should be able to reach only the information required for them to do their job.” These statements also answer questions, like, “Should everyone have Administrative privileges?” and “Should we lock the doors at night?” and “Should the janitor be able to get into QuickBooks?” – Alright, so they probably need a little work… but perhaps not too much. Remember, the intent here is to have a guide, not a detailed manual covering every possible situation.

Why not be more detailed? Because that’s often why businesses don’t write policies. It’s why we never even get started: The task becomes too huge to contemplate. So don’t let it. Just try covering some topics like:

• Passwords
• Access privileges
• Internet access
• Anti-virus
• File-sharing networks (i.e. BitTorrent and Gnutella)
• Software piracy

You can always add to it later.

There’s more to be said, and I may even say some more of it in another letter, or on our blog. In the meantime, think about your company’s security position, and whether it fits your vision for the company.

One of the things I always caution my customers about is clicking links in email messages. Just because a link says it’s going to http://www.foxnews.com, doesn’t really mean that it is. (Yes, it’s safe to click on the link – would I send you somewhere bad?)

One of the easy ways to check where a link is actually going, is usually in your browser or mailer window. If you read your email in a browser window, there’s usually a link identifier somewhere in the window (in IE and Firefox, it’s down at the bottom-left of your browser window) which will tell you where the link is actually going. In your mailer, there’s usually a similar function. In Outlook, for example, you need to hover over the link for a second or so, and the actual link address will pop up over it. If it isn’t a site that looks right, you probably don’t want to click on it.

Why does it matter?

Why? Because the link could redirect you wherever they want to. It could be a malware site (see this link for a demonstration of how that might work), that actually does something to your computer, like install a trojan. Or it could be a phishing site, trying to fool you into revealing something about yourself, or your web accounts. These are typically sites that look like the real site, and convince you to enter your username and password, which they can then use to access your accounts later.

How can you tell?

How do you tell if a site looks right? Well, that can actually be tough, because the bad guys… well, they don’t want you to know. So it might look something like this: , which just looks like it has so much random junk in it, that you may not be able to tell where it’s from. Or it might say something like , or , all of which could look very serious when looked at casually.

But a closer look reveals an important clue, if you know what you’re looking for: The most important parts of the website address, most of the time, are the last two dotted sections. Let’s look at the URLs. The ends of the dotted sections are:

• sezkmvob.cn
• ur.pl
• prevention.br

Now I don’t know what the first one is purporting to be (I pulled it off a spam message I got, and modified it so it doesn’t really go anywhere I know of), but I do know that the server location is CN – China. The other two are intentionally fraudulent. They’re using the name of a bank somewhere in their URL, in order to make you believe that they’re from that bank. But looking at the domains from which they actually come, show us that one is from a domain in PL – Poland, and the other is from a domain in BR – Brazil. It’s pretty unlikely that either of these are from the banks!

So a little bit of care in watching what you click, before you click on it, can save you from a world of hurt.

That said, there is an additional wrinkle involved, which I’ll save for another post. In the meantime, be safe!

This morning, I received an email message from a service called Tagged.com. In fact, I received about 8 email messages from them, telling me that there were pictures they wanted to share, and that I’d been “tagged”.

Now, the email service that I use has some pretty decent spam filtering, so I was a bit intrigued as to how it got through, since it didn’t really seem on the up-and-up. So I loaded up Firefox in a Sandboxie sandbox (and if you don’t know what that is, let me know – you should!), and checked out the site.

Tagged.com promotes itself as a social networking service, with all the usual blah-blah. It then explained that I needed to sign up in order to see the content it had promised. I clicked on the sign up link, and looked at the form. I was looking for the Terms of Service checkbox that almost everything has, and lo and behold, it was there on the bottom of the page.

I make it my practice to at least skim through the TOS on just about everything I sign up for these days. It’s fascinating what you discover, and frankly, it’s something more people should be doing. Here’s what I found interesting in Tagged.com’s TOS:

E) Notice Regarding Commercial Email

MEMBERS CONSENT TO RECEIVE COMMERCIAL E-MAIL MESSAGES FROM TAGGED, AND ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT THEIR EMAIL ADDRESSES AND OTHER PERSONAL INFORMATION MAY BE USED BY TAGGED FOR THE PURPOSE OF INITIATING COMMERCIAL E-MAIL MESSAGES.

I read this as meaning, “You’re giving us permission to use your email address to spam other people.” And my guess is that’s exactly what happened. I don’t think that the person who sent me the email actually intended to “invite” me, per se. I think they just sent me out an email, from her personal address. Perhaps she used their handy “upload your contacts” feature, or something like that.

And all this from a site that promotes itself as being for teen use… giving out personal email addresses – sheesh…

In any case, this means that this spam wasn’t due so much to infection, as it was part of the service she signed up for. And since I did turn out to know her, she sailed through my spam filters.

I’m not a lawyer. I don’t even play one on TV. But the bad guys will continue to use laws against the generally law-abiding. Know what you are agreeing to. You could regret it otherwise.

Patches? We don’t need no steenking patches!

This seems to be the attitude of many business people, regarding their computer systems. But keeping your machines updated is a critical part of their regular maintenance. Kind of like dusting them out, or washing the keyboards in the dishwasher. (Don’t actually try that one, although I do know of people who have done it!)

Why don’t they keep their computers current? For some, it’s the fear that something will suddenly go wrong with their computers, and their business software will just stop working. For others, it’s just the bother of having to go around to all those computers, and do the updates, especially since things seem to be working as they are. Many people are convinced that their machines are set to automatically update, and therefore must be current… and by the way, what does that little yellow shield in the tray mean, anyway? And let’s face it… some of us are just lazy, especially when it comes to dealing with things we really don’t understand anyway.

But small business owners can’t afford to be lazy, when it comes to our security. For most of us, our entire businesses are on our computers. When they’re down, we’re down; we’re not making money, or we’re severely hampered in our ability to do so.

How important are they?
Remember the Conficker worm that caused everyone to panic, back in March and April? It spreads, mostly, through a security flaw that Microsoft patched in an update made available back in October 2008! Well, according to industry pros, including Symantec, there are still some 50,000 new machines infected every day! Many, if not most, still don’t have the patch installed that would have prevented it.

What should we know?
Well, for one thing, that little yellow shield often means that your machine is not up-to-date, no matter what the auto-update settings are. Many people have their machines set to download, but not install updates automatically. And there are many updates and patches that want user-interaction, and just won’t do the automatic update without it. Often, these are required in order for other updates to be installed – if you don’t install them, you don’t even know about the others.

Security vulnerabilities cost money
In fact, they cost a lot of money. A Computer Economics article, from 2007, showed damages of more than $13 billion almost every year since 1999, and that data’s already aging. Malware costs companies in equipment, in professional services – like the computer technician who has to come in to fix the problem, or the attorney who has to defend you and your company from claims that you did not make adequate efforts to protect customer data – and in time… lots and lots of time. Time that the computers are out of service; time that the users may be sitting around idly.

Keeping your machines updated can prevent many outbreaks, by locking down the vulnerabilities before malware is commonly available to exploit them. Keeping them updated can save you money!

What about the concern that some of your business software will develop problems, after an update? Well, if you’re running old software, this actually could be an issue. In some cases, it’s actually necessary to roll back a security update on a particular machine, until another solution becomes available. Perhaps there’s a patch provided by the software manufacturer to address the problem. Maybe you need to consider an upgrade or even a replacement to your current software. A consultation with your technology advisors can help you to make the appropriate business decision.

Deployment difficulties
Software update deployment can be a real pain, especially for a small business with a lot of computers. It can take hours to get around to each desktop, downloading and installing updates. Again, your technology advisors can be very helpful here. Updates, and even new software packages, can often be scheduled and deployed to hundreds of machines, automatically.

This can help the lazy among us too. You don’t have to remember to install updates and patches, because you’ve got someone else doing that for you, automatically.

You need to know
Like everything else in your business, information is key. How do you know if your computers are all up-to-date with their security patches? How do you make sure they get deployed without causing you a lot of time, trouble, and headache?

By contacting companies like Working Nets, of course! (Hey – it’s our blog. You can’t expect us to completely avoid the occasional shameless plug!) Give us a call to learn how our new Managed Services Program can help you make sure that your systems are up-to-date, and much more!