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Graham-Cluley

Listed below are comments made by Graham-Cluley between Tuesday, 2nd December 2008 and Tuesday, 7th April 2009.

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Red faces at the Home Office 01:19am on 07 Apr 2009 This isn't the first time that the Home Office appears to have lost control of one of its websites.

As is described at http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2008/09/01/video-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-nhtcu-website/ they allowed the website of the now defunct National Hi-Tech Crime Unit to slip through their fingers too.

Although the Home Office has told Rory that it has removed the link, it can still be found as clickable hotlinks in PDF documents hosted on their website.

It took me less than 30 seconds to find the offending link on the Home Office's website, so it doesn't appear that their clean-up can have been that thorough.
Spotify's security bloomer 10:51am on 06 Mar 2009 I have to agree with the earlier commenter.

The danger is that so many people use precisely the same password for every website that they access.

The hackers only have to grab your email address and password in one place, and then they can raid your eBay, PayPal, Amazon etc accounts as well as break into your Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo email.

Too many websites are being sloppy about the protection of their users' credentials. More has to be done to protect individuals, and it's essential that the public learns the importance of proper password security
Google's 55 minute crisis 2:33pm on 02 Feb 2009 All things considered, I think Google handled this really well.

They responded quickly, fixing the problem and posted an open and full explanation of what had gone wrong.

There wasn't any attempt to sweep the news under the carpet, but just an apology.

In fact, it could be argued that some good will have come from this. Imagine how many people who normally are lackadaisical about their anti-virus protection will actually have been stirred into scanning their computers by this incident?

If it caused people to check their PCs and update their anti-virus defences, then Google's human error could actually have done all of us a little bit of good.
Mac malware - were we wrong? 11:56am on 03 Dec 2008 @Jonamac writes:

"The fact is that there are no Mac viruses in the wild"

Umm.. I'm not sure what definition of "in the wild" you're using, but Mac OS X malware *is* found planted on compromised hacked websites that anyone in the world can visit. Typically it pretends to be a plug-in to allow you watch a raunchy video.

It's not happening anything like as much as Windows malware, but it does happen.

And Mac users are just as likely to fall for the social engineering as Windows users.
Mac malware - were we wrong? 11:38am on 03 Dec 2008 Whoops. So it turns out that Apple has been quietly saying for a while that their users should be running anti-virus software. It seems a lot of people (including me) were caught out by this.

And to the point in Rory's post, yes, I can't hide that my company (Sophos) is one of the umpteen that sells anti-virus software.

But my intention isn't to scare anyone by repeating Apple's advice that Mac users should run anti-virus software.

Note that we don't have a home user edition. We only sell to businesses. So, in our case, it wouldn't be accurate to paint us as trying to scare people into racing down to the high street to get an anti-virus for their Mac. Companies don't make impulse purchases like that.

Mac malware exists (albeit not in the same numbers as Windows), it is using the same techniques to infect Mac users as the Windows malware, and is increasingly financially motivated.

Apple Mac users are not protected with magic crystals which ward off malware, and are just as susceptible to making bad decisions which can lead to their computers becoming compromised.
Can the Mac catch a cold? 4:58pm on 02 Dec 2008 Bad news: Apple malware exists, and isn't just a theoretical threat.

Good news: It's nothing like as common as Windows malware.

Bad news: You don't care about that much if your Mac gets infected by it.

One of the problems that some in the Apple community can't seem to get their head around is many people's belief that Mac OS X is somehow immune from malware, and in some way inherently superior to - say - Vista.

What this belief ignores is that malware isn't actually a technological problem but a human one.

For instance, Apple Mac malware has been planted on websites, posing as a program to allow you to watch a saucy video. Guess what? When you install it, the malware downloads additional malicious components from a third party server.

That’s exactly the same way so many Windows attacks work. You visit a website thinking you’re going to watch a naked video of Paris Hilton, Angelina Jolie or some other hollywood celebrity and it tells you you don’t have the right codec, or the right version of Adobe Flash to watch the movie. And when you upgrade yourself - POW! - you’ve been infected.

Now, if only we could roll out a security patch for our brains that would stop us clicking without thinking then both Windows and Mac users would be much safer.

PS. I was wrong to say beardy zealots. I'm sorry about that. That's obviously the Unix lovers.

Regards
Graham "I have a Mac too" Cluley, Sophos

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