By Jeremy Wagstaff (this is my weekly Loose Wire Service column for newspaper syndication) We’ve reached one of those moments that I like: When we’ll look back at the time before and wonder how we were so naive about everything. In this case, we’ll think about when we thought computer viruses were just things that… Read More »
How not to handle a PR debacle, Part 767: Avast, the free antivirus I’ve been using, and recommending, for while, has lost my confidence by a double whammy: mis-identifying pretty much every executable on my computer as a Trojan, and then not telling me about it. Apparently an update to the software will misidentify a… Read More »
Here’s more evidence of how vulnerable armed forces are to software attacks, intended or not. The French navy’s fighter jets “were unable to download their flight plans after databases were infected by a Microsoft virus they had already been warned about several months beforehand,” according to the Telegraph: However, the French navy admitted that during… Read More »
If there’s one place you hope you won’t get infected by a computer virus, it’s an airport. It’s not just that the virus may fiddle with your departure times; it’s the wider possibility that the virus may have infected more sensitive parts of the airport: ticketing, say, or—heaven forbid—flight control. Kuala Lumpur International Airport—Malaysia’s main… Read More »
Facebook may have just won a theoretical warchest from a spammer, but it’s not put its house in order when it comes to scams. Indeed, I suspect they’re getting worse. Now you can get infected without even having to visit your Facebook account. What happens is that, if you have set your profile to receive… Read More »