That Danny! » security

The unexpected benefit of VaultPress

Danny — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:24:58 +0000

When the folks at Automattic, the home of popular blogging platform WordPress came up with VaultPress, I was doubly pleased. First of all it addressed a real need to have constant off-server backups of WP sites and someone to call on when things went badly wrong with our installations. Secondly, I was [...]

What to do if your Hotmail account got hacked – the recent spate of attacks on Hotmail accounts

Danny — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:21:24 +0000

If your friends and contacts have received an email or IM message from your Hotmail account with wording along the lines of “I would like to introduce a good company who trades mainly in electronic products… etc” – it is highly likely that your Hotmail account has been compromised.

IF YOU ARE THE POOR [...]

WordPress blog security top tips – Some things you MUST do!

Danny — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 09:44:33 +0000

WordPress is an excellent blogging platform, but as it is so popular it’s also a constant target for those wanting to find and exploit its vulnerabilities. You should note that as with other web platforms, keeping WordPress secure is a constant job of updating and keeping up with the latest news and exploits.

Below are [...]

Firefox Users – Read this Now to Protect Your Passwords!

Danny — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:19:10 +0000

Following my piece about Google Chrome making password information visible to users (Oh Sh*t – Google Chrome Doesn’t Really do THAT?!) – I got several messages from people who were more worried about my observation that Firefox does the same.

The problem was that anyone using your PC could view a [...]

What do I do if I have a Virus? (Virus Removal and Virus Protection)

Danny — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:32:34 +0000

What do I do if I have a Virus? (Virus Removal and Protection)

This article covers what to do if you have a virus, or suspect you have a virus on your computer.

THE CAUSE
You are usually vulnerable to a virus under the following conditions:

1. You have virus protection on your [...]

Yahoo virus / malware report – what to do if you get this (June 08)

Danny — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:34:01 +0000

Yahoo virus / malware report is a false positive (Avast)

Yahoo virus and malware reports from around the globe were found to be a false positive, captured by anti-virus program “Avast!”.

Concerned users were reporting the following message when they accessed yahoo.com:

“A virus was found!”
Malware name: VBS:malware-gen
Malware type: [...]

Photobucket Hacked – Latest Updates

Danny — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:52:07 +0000

MOST CURRENT – 20 June 08 14.15 GMT:
Things seem to have stabilised as the corrected dns settings filtered out across the web. There are still a small number of users accessing the instructions on what to do to get onto Photobucket, of which some would be due to local caches.
So I [...]

Photobucket hacked – and how not to handle your customers when you get hacked!

Danny — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:33:07 +0000

Above: Photobucket down – site as seen by some users yesterday.

Photobucket was hacked yesterday, using what seems like a dns hack*
*see “what is a DNS hack?” at the bottom of this post.

Because the Photobucket outage was dns based, it meant that some people could still access the site, whilst [...]