Are You Fully Protected?

I have recieved a timely warning via Email from Experts Exchange regarding a Sober virus attack.

Every anti-virus and anti-spam company has had the same message for the last week or so: make sure your systems are patched and updated before January 5, 2006. I know this must make me look like a broken record, but the Sober virus is scheduled to send out another round of emails on either the 5th or the 6th, and you don't want to know how bad it could possibly be.

Sober seems to have originated in Germany, and what makes the latest version -- which showed up a little over a month ago -- so nasty is that while it "sleeps" for a while before it actually starts sending out its requests to download the next version, it also has the IP addresses it's sending those requests to encrypted. Since there are millions of computers out there that aren't protected very well, we can all expect a lot of email starting on January 5 (the 12th Day of Christmas, by the way).

Phishing is an increasingly common type of spam that can lead to theft of your personal details such as credit card numbers or online banking passwords.

Phishing attacks work by the scam artist sending "spoofed" emails that appear to come from a legitimate website that you have online dealings with such as a bank, credit card company or ISP - any site which requires users to have a personal identity or account. The email may ask you to reply with your account details in order to "update security" or for some other reason.

As you might expect, phishing attacks are becoming rampant -- I even read about one that looks like you've missed a tax refund and another that is supposed to be from a charitable foundation named for Princess Diana -- so when I read about a company that has developed a system for authenticating email before it gets to your inbox, I thought it was pretty neat. Iconix isn't available for email clients yet, but it is available for the four best known webmail systems.

Learn more about viruses, Trojans, hoaxes, spyware and adware.