A three bullet summary of your current e-mail threats

Proofpoint Threat Operations and Research recently published their quarterly threat report for July - September 2016, which includes key findings such as: 

  • Volume of malicious emails rose to their highest levels ever
    New campaigns bearing varied attachment types broke volume records set in Q2, peaking at hundreds of millions of messages per day. JavaScript attachments continued to lead these very large email campaigns, growing 69% this quarter.
  • Ransomware variants grew tenfold
    In particular, 97% of messages with malicious document attachments featured the popular ransomware strain Locky, while CryptXXX was the dominant ransomware delivered by exploit kit (EK).

Download the full report. Please let us know if you have any questions related to this report or how Alvaka Networks can protect your people and data from attacks.

A three bullet summary of your current e-mail threats2016-10-24T13:44:00-07:00

Beware of this new domain name and SEO registration scam

Orange County, CA - I want to thank Alvaka network engineer Alex Estevez for bringing the e-mail below to my attention. One of his clients got this bogus message from GoDaddy. The scams on the internet know no ends for creativity and treachery.

This message looks so authentic and it can be so easy to go ahead and pay for a scam renewal and give up your domain login credentials too. Once you give up those credentials the thief(s) can potentially sell your domain name. For many businesses that would be devastating even if it only lasted a short time while the theft gets corrected. On top of the charge on your card they could potentially sell your credit card information as well.

Alex said, “What made me suspicious was the fact that the email came from a company called “Intranetregistrarnetwork.com” which just sounded bogus to me.“ That site is now shutdown, but count on another one to pop-up soon.

Here is what the e-mail looked like. As you can see it looks quite legitimate. It does not contain the spelling errors and poor grammar associated with so many e-mail scams....

Beware of this new domain name and SEO registration scam2024-04-21T19:41:30-07:00

What is it like to upgrade to Windows 10?

I finally got around to upgrading my Lenovo notebook from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. I can tell you in short it was a relatively fast and easy upgrade. My Lenovo is fairly quick and I have all solid state drive storage so that probably helped make things go fast.

Here is how my upgrade went:

  • I did the pre-download option of Windows 10 so all the files were already on my system when I started the upgrade.
  • Once launched the Lenovo ran for about five minutes with a green screen of...
What is it like to upgrade to Windows 10?2019-05-14T07:29:29-07:00

Be Ransomware Aware

Educate your users - Don’t let them be tricked into downloading malware

 Everyone should follow this advice:

  1. Be very cautious when opening an attachment or clicking a link in an email, instant message, or post on social networks (like Facebook)—even if you know the sender. If you are suspicious, call to ask the sender if they sent it.  If not, delete it.
  2. The attack can look like it is from an official sources like banks, UPS, FedEx, USPS, eFax, etc. This has been the most common attack method to date.
  3. If an e-mail gets blocked and quarantined by your spam filter...
Be Ransomware Aware2016-02-29T22:28:51-08:00

New Virulent, Wide-Spread and Expensive Ransomware Outbreak Coming to You Soon

Orange County, CA - We have seen a surge in ransomware attacks in the past week.  While only two Alvaka clients have gotten hit, they are a tale of different system administration acumen. 

1.  A multi-state firm got hit with the latest breed of ransomware on Friday.  Where an otherwise non-event for the most part went wrong was that a key user insisted on having elevated administrative rights for their IT infrastructure.  Instead of using a regular user account, with very limited user rights for day-to-day activities, this more powerful account, when struck by the ransomware, infected all the important file shares of the firm, including the branch location file stores.  Fortunately they had good backups, but because of poor folder naming conventions and structures it took the guys in our Alvaka Networks’ Network Operations Center about 28 hours straight to get all the user permissions back in order for client to get back to work.  The lack of least-permissions as used by this client goes in direct opposition to what we recommend at Alvaka.  Least-permissions is the practice of using accounts that grant the user to only the locations on the network for which they have a business need to access.

2.  In another example, that struck today, a $200m manufacturer/distributor got hit by the same ransomware.  This time it was a Jr executive.  He saw some problems with his system, but did not report the problem not knowing what it was and went home.  The problem was detected after he left, but the outcome was very different than the prior scenario.  Why?  Because this user only...

New Virulent, Wide-Spread and Expensive Ransomware Outbreak Coming to You Soon2024-03-14T00:20:41-07:00

Where’s the Beef?

Irvine - I want to let everyone know that we are embarking on some new messaging at Alvaka Networks.  Our new home page (www.alvaka.net) features some new messaging and calls-to-action centered on statements that are common amongst our new clientele followed-up with the phrase “What do I do now?”

This new marketing effort has its genesis in our new marketing consultant, John Pietro.  You won’t recognize Pietro’s name, but you will recognize his work.  He is most famous for his Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” campaign.  His work is not limited to that one campaign, but is likely his most famous and arguably the most famous, memorable and successful campaign in fast food history.  How is coaching will serve us in the tech services business remains to be seen, but I like where he is taking us....

Where’s the Beef?2016-02-10T01:03:52-08:00

You’re the Non-technical Boss with Responsibility for the Network…

How do you know your most important functions of your network are working?  How do you manage technical people whose work you don’t fully understand?  This week I have seven simple questions to ask and I provide you some tips on what answers you should expect.

Backup and Disaster Recovery is one of the most important functions in Information Technology management to assure the future viability of your firm.  But backup and DR is a function you don’t really know is working until you really need it and that is not the time to find out it is not working as planned.  My recommendation is that you bring this topic up in your next meeting with your IT team.  Here are the questions I suggest you ask:

1.       How is our backup system running?  (Let your IT person talk.  Be patient and don’t interrupt.  Let them tell you all they can.)

2.       Are we getting any error messages from the backups? (Error messages are not....

You’re the Non-technical Boss with Responsibility for the Network…2015-10-07T22:13:17-07:00

April 8, 2014 Marks Exchange Server 2003 End-of-life

...Please not that online content may remain available as long as Exchange 2003 remains in the self-help online support phase, but I am not sure how long that will last.  Microsoft writes, “Companies running Exchange 2003 after April 8, 2014 will be responsible for their own for support. More importantly, because Microsoft will no longer provide security updates, companies that choose to continue running Exchange 2003 accept the risk associated with....

April 8, 2014 Marks Exchange Server 2003 End-of-life2014-03-11T19:12:48-07:00

What is Recovery Point Objective?

If your system breaks, how much information are you willing to lose when your system is recovered?  If you only back up once per day your RPO is essentially eight hours.  If at the end of the day you finish work and your system crashes and all data is lost, you have then lost the full eight hours of work.  If data is lost half way through the day, your effective Recovery Point at that point is four hours, but don’t confuse that with your objective which is set at eight hours. 

 RPO can and should be calculated differently for different systems you use.  Your Exchange Mail Server and SQL Servers should probably have an RPO of 15 minutes to one hour.  DNS servers and a static website can do fine with a 24 hour RPO since they rarely change. 

What is Recovery Point Objective?2018-05-07T08:47:43-07:00