Where is this coming from?

Over the last two #WeekendWisdoms I talked about needing to do updates for vulnerabilities and when it comes to software vulnerabilities zero days are usually the most critical.

You see when security researchers are analysing various software like Microsoft, Apple and Google products, if they discovery a vulnerability in that software, they will report it to the vendor and give them an opportunity to rectify it and fix it before they make it public. They usually give them a period of months, normally it is usually 3 months.

What are Zero Days?

But in the case of zero days what happens is that a vulnerability is exposed on a day when nobody is aware of it until everybody is suddenly aware of it, including the vendor and including criminal gangs.

These cyber criminal gangs will immediately start looking to try and exploit that zero day vulnerability, while the vendors are rushing to try and fix it, to put out an update to fix that vulnerability.

That can take time. It can take days, it could take weeks to fix it. So it’s kind of a race against time for the cyber criminals to try and crack it and exploit it and for the vendors to fix it and update it.

What should you do?

So if you ever hear me talking about “There’s a zero day vulnerability out there that you need to patch!”, you should be looking to try and patch that as quickly as possible.

So that’s it for this week. Lets be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

The post #WeekendWisdom 096 Zero Days appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..

This sounds familiar

Waaaay back in the early days of the #WeekendWisdom series, back at number 3, I talked about updates. I’ll have a link to that video somewhere on the social media post associated with this video.

The events of the last week has brought it back to me that this really is an important topic that we all need to be aware of.

What happened this last week?

Apple, earlier this week, released updates to its iPhones and Mac computers and watches that plugged a vulnerability which was being exploited by a surveillance software maker which literally all they had to do if they wanted to take control of somebody’s iPhone we’ll say, all they need to do is send a message to that phone and just when the phone receives the message, they now have control of it. The user of the phone did not have to do anything. So that’s pretty scary.

Also there was the vulnerability that I talked about in last week’s #WeekendWisdom. Microsoft have issued updates for that this week. So again, it’s really critical that if you have updates waiting on your Windows computer to apply them.

This is the reason why updates are important

You see the problem here is that when the likes of Apple or Microsoft issue updates, criminals go and take those updates, they look at them and they find out what exactly has been fixed in Windows or in the iPhones or whatever. Then they can figure out how they can exploit that, that vulnerability that was there that was fixed. If people don’t do the updates, the criminals can now exploit them, for those people who don’t, because there are quite a lot of people who don’t apply updates.

But it’s really important that you do.

So that’s it for this week. Lets be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

The post #WeekendWisdom 095 Why Updates are Important appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..

Why would you want to do this?

Microsoft are going to retire the Internet Explorer browser in June of 2022. But you might want to consider getting rid of it at bit sooner … like now. You see there is a vulnerability in it that can be exploited by somebody sending you a malicious word document. That all you have to do is open the document. You don’t need to take any other action, like click enable content or any other thing. Opening the document will exploit this vulnerability and cause malicious code to be run on your computer.

Check if you should first

Now before you take any of these steps, please check with your IT support that you really don’t need to use Internet Explorer anymore or that you’re allowed to remove it. So please check first.

How to remove Internet Explorer

This is how you get rid of it.

1. Go down to the bottom left hand corner and click the start button and select settings.
2. Click Apps.
3. Then click Optional features.
4. Find Internet Explorer, click on it and click uninstall.
5. Then when you see this thing and it’s finished, reboot your computer.

Once it comes back up again, you should be safe.

What if you need Internet Explorer?

If you really do need to use Internet Explorer for some legacy application or something like that, there is an Internet Explorer mode in the Microsoft Edge browser. Google that and find out how you can use that mode.

So that’s it for this week. Lets be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

The post #WeekendWisdom 094 How to remove Internet Explorer appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..