A significant chunk of my weekend was spent helping a home client deal with a serious data breach. It’s not clear if they got phished, fell for clickbait that took them to a compromised site or fell prey to some other ploy, but they somehow ran a bit of malicious code that deviously (meaning using methods that go unnoticed by mainstream anti-malware software) dropped the portable version of a popular remote access program on the computer and then set a scheduled task to run it after a period of inactivity, allowing the criminals to look through the files on the computer at will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This morning, I received an e-mail from PCMag.com that, serendipitously, included an article about how to spot malicious web pages. As much as I enjoy writing about the technological ups and downs that I encounter as an IT consultant, Neil J. Rubenking’s career as an author of technical articles dates back to before my own career began, and he said it better than I ever could. Consider this article a must-read! https:\/\/www.pcmag.com\/how-to\/how-to-avoid-phishing-scams<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A significant chunk of my weekend was spent helping a home client deal with a serious data breach. It’s not clear if they got phished, fell for clickbait that took them to a compromised site or fell prey to some other ploy, but they somehow ran a bit of malicious code that deviously (meaning using … <\/p>\n