Phishing E-mails from secure google docs.

         A few days back I received an email from a friend requiring me to access a document that was sent via Google Docs. I almost got fooled into giving out my password. Phishing is a means that tricks you into entering sensitive data, usually passwords and bank account information, by emulating a familiar website. These scams can take a variety of forms, though they’re often introduced through email, text messages or social media sites. The beauty of this trick is that the mail came from a trusted friend whose account has probably been compromised. This is indicative of the fact that phishing scams in general are on the rise. By being aware of how these scams operate, and how to detect them, you’re well on your way to protecting yourself from hackers. 

Follow the steps below to help avoid falling victim:

• Double check your URL address. Most of the time, a phishing URL will have some reference to the entity it’s pretending to be, but with some form of variation. For example: www.google.com will take you to Google; www.googl.e3921.com (as an example) will take you to a crash page—but it could also take you to a phishing scam website. That being said, do be aware that the scam described above uses a legitimate Google URL and could trick even the most thorough of skeptics.

• Don’t send banking or login information via email or text. Professional services will never ask you to send sensitive information over email or text messages. They just don’t. At the bare minimum, they’ll ask you to sign into your account on their website (remember to check the URL) in order to address any sensitive information. If you’ve received an email asking for transmittal of financial or login details via email, you’d be wise to delete it.

• Watch the links. Be wary of clinking on links sent to you over email, text message or social media sites. Most are harmless, but the ones sent to you by someone you don’t know, or a business that you didn’t sign up for, could send you to a malware-infested site. McAfee® SiteAdvisor®, which comes with McAfee LiveSafe™ service, provides color-coded ratings on the safety of your browser’s search results and external links found in your Facebook and LinkedIn news feed when viewing from your PC or Mac. It will also provide a warning message after you click, but before taking you to the site, if the link appears harmful.

• Install comprehensive security software. As always, practice caution, and protect yourself online with comprehensive security services like McAfee LiveSafe. It will help block spam and dangerous email, as well as guard against malware and viruses on your PCs, Macs, smartphones and tablets.
• Change your passwords regularly. As a precaution, you may want to regularly change Gmail password on a regular interval.

 Although, total security is an illusion, we may be able to bring to the barest minimum, the damage caused by these bad boys of the internet. Have a lovely week.

Removing Ads by ViewPassword Adware - A Simple How To

For those of us who love installing plugins and add-ons on our browsers we may just be exposing ourselves to malware and adware. One of such stubborn adware is the ViewPassword Adware. The presence of this adware readily poses a virus threat. Also, what it does is to slow down your system considerably, and you will continue to receive unstoppable popup ads from ViewPassword especially when you are connected to the internet.  

Some of the ways to know if your computer is infected with the ViewPassword adware virus are:

1) Your PC becomes extremely slow and programs stop working sometimes.
2) It creates lots of unwanted add-ons and extensions on your browser.
3) Browser crashes sometimes.

4) Pop-ups ads flood your computer screen.

The prevalence of excessive ads pop-ups is indicative of the ViewPassword adware in your computer, this could also be because there is a potentially unwanted program installed on your computer. Usually, ViewPassword enters system in a bundle with other applications. It subtly enters your computer to promote ads so as to make profits from ads.

ViewPassword generates lots and lots of dangerous ads which will make your computer vulnerable, security wise. Furthermore, cyber criminals can utilize ViewPassword to spread Trojans by implanting Trojans in the ads by ViewPassword. Therefore, clicking on popups from ViewPassword is very dangerous. This article will show you how to easily remove the adware from your computer system.

Sample Ads by ViewPassword

 

ViewPassword is also acts as a tracking cookie. What it does is to cookie help PC users in remembering or tracking what information have they entered in the sites. As such, cyber criminals take advantages of cookies to steal your personal information. ViewPassword takes advantage of this and is responsible for collecting the privacy data such as IP address, email address, name, telephone and even financial data (online bank account and password), and then sends your private information to bad hackers.

ViewPassword can work with almost all browsers including Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

1. First of all remove ViewPassword adware from control panel 
 

Windows 8
Move mouse cursor to the bottom right corner of the screen.
Charms bar>Settings>Control Panel>Uninstall a program
Remove ViewPassword adware and other unknown programs.

Windows XP
Start>Settings>Control Panel>Add or Remove Programs>Programs and Features
Remove ViewPassword and other unknown programs.

Windows 7/Vista
Start>Control Panel>Uninstall a program/Programs and Features
Uninstall ViewPassword and other unknown programs.

 

2. Then remove ViewPassword adware related add-ons from browser  

Go to your browser settings, navigate to add-ons and extensions and uninstall the add-on.

 

(Important Step: After removing ViewPassword related extensions from browser, there are a lot of leftovers of ViewPassword and caches. ViewPassword has a great chance of taking a comeback if these caches stay in your computer. To remove ViewPassword completely from your computer, it is necessary to clean all leftovers and caches related to ViewPassword.)

 

3. Finally, remove ViewPassword adware by installing malwarebytes.

Go to http://downloads.malwarebytes.org/file/mbam/ Download and install malwarebytes. Update the software and let it scan your PC.

That's it folks, hope it helps. Get an antivirus, there are good ones out there albeit free. Just make sure its up to date. Protect your PC, and enjoy your week.

 

 

 

 

TECNO P5 vs TECNO P5+

Every Nigerian who is on a budget will view the emergence of the TECNO brand in the Nigerian telecom mobile market as nothing but a blessing. That said, the Tecno P5 android phone is one of the best, low-budget Tecno phone brands, availing users with everything they would need on a high-end android device.

TECNO P5 Android phone

In order to step up its game in the market, Tecno rolls out an upgraded version of the Tecno P5 phone, something like the 'i' version and called it the Tecno P5 plus. The differences between both devices are not quite visible when inspected physically but are quite impressive when the device is operated, considering their market prices.

Tecno P5+ Android Phone

The few differences are highlighted below;
The Tecno P5+ runs on a better Android  4.4.4 KitKat version, formerly an Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.
The RAM and ROM has been upgraded to 1GB and 8GB respectively, it was 512Mb and 4GB initially.
The bluetooth which was v3.0 has been upgraded to v4.0

As at the time of this blog post, the Tecno P5-plus was sold at a price of 15,000 Naira only.

HOW TO FIX 'SYSTEM WON'T COME ON' - Simple Trouble-shooting Steps

Follow these simple steps to free your laptop system from the 'freeze'.

Symptoms:

So you press the power button on your laptop system and there is no response, the system won't come up. The battery may or may not even charge when plugged in to power. Also, another symptom could be that the system powers up but the screen remains blank.

Trouble Shooting:

Here are some possible reasons for the malfunction and what to tryout to save the day!!!

1. Unplug system from power source.
2. Remove the battery.
3. Hold down the power button for at least 60 seconds.
4. Replace the battery and attempt to power up your system.

If the above doesn't work,

1. You'll have to open up your system; (Ensure that your body is fully discharged due to static electricity). Our target here is the RAM (Random Access memory) compartment. The reason for this is to ascertain that your RAMs are still functional.
2. Ensure that the RAM cards are properly seated in their slots.
3. Remove the RAMs; In case of a single RAM, replace it with a good one to check. If using two RAMs, interchange their slots for good measure.
4. Cover up the compartment and power up the system.

If this doesn’t work please see a qualified laptop technician for help, the motherboard may be fried.

Massive, undetectable security flaw found in USB: It's time to get your PS/2 keyboard out of the cupboard.

http://www.appy-geek.com/

Security researchers have found a fundamental flaw that could affect billions of USB devices.
This flaw is so serious that, now that it has been revealed, you probably shouldn't plug a USB device into your computer ever again. There are no known effective defenses against this
variety of USB attack, though in the future (months or years, not days) some limited defenses might be possible. This vulnerability, which allows any USB device to take over your computer, mostly exists due to the USB Implementers Forum (the USB standards body) eschewing security in favor of maximizing the versatility, and thus the massively successful adoption, of USB. The
USB IF itself notes that your only defense against this new attack vector is to only use USB devices that you 100% trust — but even then, as we'll outline below, this won't always protect
you.
This flaw, dubbed BadUSB by Security Research Labs in Berlin, leverages the fact that every USB device has a controller chip. Whether it's your PC, smartphone, external hard drive, or an
audio breakout box, there's a USB controller chip in every device that controls the USB connection to other devices. It turns out, according to SR Labs, that these controllers have
firmware that can be reprogrammed to do a whole host of malicious things — and, perhaps most importantly, this reprogramming is almost impossible to detect.
The USB controller chip is the big chip in the middle (they don't usually have a skull silkscreened onto them though).
This vulnerability mostly stems from the fact that USB, by design, is incredibly versatile. USB can be used to connect just about any kind of peripheral to a host machine — an ability that is
only possible because of USB classes and class drivers. Basically, every USB device under the sun has a class — a classification that defines the device's function. Some common classes are
human-interface devices (HIDs; keyboards, mice), wireless controller (Bluetooth dongles), and mass storage (thumb drives, digital cameras). On the host (your PC, your smartphone) there are class drivers that manage the functions of that particular class of devices. This is why you can plug a USB keyboard into just about any device and it'll work flawlessly.
USB hacking isn't a new thing — but this is the first time that an attack vector hasn't required extra chips and circuit boards, making a whole lot more dangerous.
The problem, according to SR Labs, is that these USB controllers can have their firmware reprogrammed so that they announce themselves as a different class. For example, you could
reprogram a mass storage device so that it masquerades as a network controller, so that all of your network communications (websites, passwords) get redirected to the device. Or, even worse, you could reprogram the firmware of a thumb drive so that it becomes a HID, and can thus issue keyboard and mouse commands to the host machine. These commands might be used to
install malware, or to rewrite the firmware of other attached USB devices. Suddenly you are sitting on a computer worm of Conficker proportions that could take down most of the world's
devices.
While finding a security hole in USB isn't exactly a surprise, the main issue here is that there's no immediate fix. As of today, there could be billions of USB devices out there with firmware that could be reprogrammed by a computer virus — and, according to SR Labs, it's impossible to spot the modified firmware unless you know exactly where to look. (It took months for SR Labs to reverse engineer the controller firmware, and it doesn't sound like they're giving up
their secrets any time soon.) The security researchers also say that malware scanners can't access the firmware of a USB device — so you can forget about that angle, too. SR Labs says it will release more details and proof-of-concept tools at Black Hat 2014 on August 7.

PS/2 mouse and keyboard sockets: Still safe

It would be possible to mitigate against this attack in the future if every device maker signed their firmware, and then your computer checked that signature every time you plugged the
device in — but I suspect, given the scale of the USB device ecosystem, such a change would take months or years to adopt. Another option would be designated USB ports on your
computer — so, you might have a port that only accepts mass storage devices, and is completely incapable of handling other classes of USB device. [Read: How to watch hacking, and cyberwarfare between the USA and China, in real time .]
Ultimately, though, the only real mitigation is ensuring you only use USB devices that you trust.
It's basically like unprotected sex: If you plug your USB memory stick into another computer, you should then assume that your memory stick is forever compromised. The problem with this approach, though, is that your own computer could infect your USB devices without you knowing — and unless you're a very careful surfer , it's very hard to keep your computer completely
malware-free. Which brings us back to the beginning of the story: Maybe it's just best if you don't use USB for a while.
Fortunately my cupboard is full of PS/2 keyboards, parallel printers, and stacks of rewritable
DVDs for exactly this kind of apocalyptic occasion…