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Monday, April 11, 2011

Security Issues

The morning was productive, and since my first appointment wasn't until mid-afternoon I planned to fit in a training ride (my 1st race is in 2-1/2 wks.).  Sidebar: Ride was great; got a huge hit from climbing the big hill and wished I had time to repeat it.

Upon returning I fixed a sandwich (roast beef & horseradish cheddar on whole wheat bread w/Beaver Deli mustard, and an orange off the tree) and attempted to download my Garmin data.  Avast! antivirus called out "Threat detected" and I got to work, investigating what was up.

Every bookmark I hit resulted in the same verbal warning.  I closed out Chrome and tried IE, with the same result.  I closed IE and hit a Twitter link via Tweetdeck...same result.

I closed all the browsers and ran a scan.  I showered & when I came back I found no fewer than 1460 files infected, and a Trojan Horse to boot.  My jaw dropped...I have practiced safe surfing and run anti-virus programs since I first had Internet.  I was blown away.

So the antivirus program suggested I shut down/restart/run a full scan.  So I did.  I made my appointments, ran some errands, came home to find that the infected files could be cleaned up but the best I could do with the TH was to isolate it.

I'm seriously unhappy about this.  I've practiced safe surfing as though the Internet has AIDS, and yet here I am, infected.  No wonky emails have been sent, no accounts hacked, yet a TH is ready for action.

This might not be so noteworthy except that 2 months after the Health Net breach I received notice that my Health Net info was on one of the stolen hard drives (TWO MONTHS?!?!?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!), and then last week discovered that Epsilon (I think) had its security breached, and email addresses were compromised.  What's next?

Anyway, that's my rant...and probably a fact of the Internet.  If you surf, you take your chances. And no matter how hard you try, your security can be breached.

Moving forward, once I rid my sweet laptop of this threat, I'll increase security and see if that lets me sleep any better.

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