Avast and iYogi Support
The antivirus program Avast announced yesterday they would be suspending their relationship with iYogi Support operated in India.
The company’s relationship is ending due to reports, and subsequent investigations, that iYoga was operating as a false support organization. Instead, they were attempting to charge Avast clients their own support package for a minimum charge of $169.99.
Fortunately, Avast clients began reporting these scams shortly after they began. Brian Krebs, of KrebsOnSecurity, performed his own inventigation after these reports began which led to Avast CEO Vincent Steckler to announce the suspension of Avast’s relationship with the third party support.
Source:KrebsOnSecurtiy – Aghast at Avast’s iYogi Support
Recent Windows Vulnerability
This past week an Italian security researcher discovered an issue with Windows Remote Desktop Protocol. The vulnerability found would allow someone to send a specially designed packet to take control of an unwilling persons computer. Microsoft quickly produced an update to close this opening; adding they don’t see any indication that it has being used yet. They do however predict that within the next 30 days, hackers will have written code to exploit this opening or possibly find others.
So what can you do? Make sure to run Windows Update. You won’t get the patch to close this vulnerability without it. Also, by default, the Remote Desktop Protocol is turned off on all Windows Operating Systems. If you would like to double check, it is a simple process:
- Click the Start menu at the bottom left corner of your screen
- Right-click on “Computer” (or “My Computer” for XP systems)
- Click properties at the bottom of the list
- For XP: Click the Remote tab at the top of the new window
- For Vista/Win7: Click Remote Settings on the left side of the window
- Make sure the “Allow Remote Assistance connections…” is Unchecked
The majority of end users will have Remote Desktop disabled. This vulnerability is more important to companies that use Remote Desktop to access computers from home or on the road. As it stands right now, as long as Remote Desktop is disabled, there is no need to worry about this issue.
Source:Ars Technica – Critical Windows bugs could make worm meat of millions of high-value machines
