While we’ve been enjoying a great kiwi summer, it seems the virus writers and hackers have been busy.\u00a0 They’ve unleashed new variant’s of the ransomware viruses, but this time the old trick of looking for poor English isn’t working – the language looks more credible.\u00a0 Examples we saw yesterday include the traffic infringement notice below, links to files allegedly on dropbox, and alleged unpaid invoices\u00a0(from unknown suppliers).<\/p>\n
There are still some clues that you might notice.\u00a0\u00a0 The ‘from’ address looks a bit strange – the one below came from an Argentinian email address.\u00a0 And if you hover your mouse over the hyperlink, you can see the\u00a0real link that it goes to – in this case a Russian server (.ru)\u00a0 Oh, and how would a traffic photo be able to link your car to an email address assuming in this case it’s a rental car and not your regular license plate?\u00a0 Or indeed, an unsubscribe notice on a traffic ticket?<\/p>\n
[header2 text=”Still, it is compelling enough to excite your curiosity – and that’s all they need.” align=”left” color=”#00cfef” margintop=””]<\/p>\n
So, why doesn’t the antivirus software stop it?\u00a0 Simple -these viruses change literally all the time.\u00a0 And although we work extremely hard to keep our client’s virus software absolutely up to date, there will always be a period between a virus being released and the signatures being made available to us, and then we still have to push them out to client’s machines.\u00a0\u00a0 The antivirus software we use does have the ability to track virus-like activity, but we have to be careful with how much we use this as it has the effect of slowing computers down – and no\u00a0one wants that – so we have to get the balance right.\u00a0\u00a0 Likewise, we can also lock down PC security but again, that often has detrimental impacts on various software tools that people need to use to get their work done – again a need to get the balance right.<\/p>\n
So, while we do our best to keep machines safe, the practical reality is that no one can stop every virus, we can only ever reduce the risk, and a huge amount of work goes into that.\u00a0 Ultimately, computer users still need to be careful when they receive unexpected emails, both from unknown, but also sometimes known email addresses.\u00a0 If you’re not sure – always check!\u00a0 We’re always happy to help<\/strong>!<\/p>\n
![\"Randsomware\"](\"http:\/\/kinetics.co.nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Randsomware.jpg\")