Cyber Security Awareness Tip of the Day: October 6

The tip today is from rich46 at Freedomlist.

October 6 Tip of the Day

"The only tip that I can think of is very basic. Whenever I get a pop up, I do not delete it by clicking on the X in the upper right hand corner. I feel that it might be dangerous to do so, I always use ALT Control Delete."

Although rich46 defines his tip as very basic, it may be one of the best tips being shared during Cyber Security Awareness month. Let me explain why.

As we learned in Rogue Antivirus - A Closer Look at Win32/Antivirusxp, rogues have been around for some time. These fake security programs can be downloaded by social engineering; that is, tricking people through false advertising to download directly from their or their affiliates websites or by tricking users to click the spam emails, or by drive-by.

What makes the tip provided by rich46 important is, as illustrated by Jesper Johansson in Anatomy of a Malware Scam, clicking "Cancel" results in the trojan going directly to a download for a fake anti-malware program!

Another way to access the Task Manager is with the keyboard combination

Ctrl + Shift + Esc

Then, from the Applications tab, highlight/select the popup task and click "End Task". Follow up with full system antivirus and antimlaware scans.

See Bill Pytlovany's "How to Stop AntiVirus 2009" for a real-life example.

Remember - "A day without laughter is a day wasted."
May the wind sing to you and the sun rise in your heart...