"Anatomy of a malware scam" is a good malware read

Have a few minutes to spare?

How about checking out how creative malware scam artists are getting: The Register: Anatomy of a malware scam: The evil genius of XP Antivirus 2008.

From the article's conclusion:

This should serve as a dire warning to all: be extremely careful what you trust, and question everything that looks even remotely suspicious. For example, no website can run an anti-malware scan on your computer simply by your visiting the site. Any site that purports to do so is almost certainly run by criminal gangs.

No website should ever offer you to download an anti-malware package as soon as you visit the site. Any site that purports to do so is either run by criminal gangs or by an organization whose business practices are so deceptive that you should never consider doing business with it. A reputable site will present you with product information and then leave the downloading decision up to you, not force it upon you. No software that pushes the purchase decision so heavily in your face is likely to be legitimate.

Part of our responsibility as the go to person for our client's I.T. needs is knowing what the threat landscape looks like.

From there, we can educate them with a simple note every once in a while that provides some dos and don'ts while browsing the Internet.

UPDATE: The above article came via a link that I could not for the life of me find. Go figure ... it popped up when I logged into another machine.

Credit goes to Jesper's Blog: Anatomy of a Hack 2008 ... which is a good read in and of itself. My apologies for originally missing the credit Jesper!

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.