GuruNews, Volume 9 Number 14, 4-9-09

Thu Apr 9 21:21:07 EDT 2009

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Vol. 9, No. 14                           

4-9-09

1 Spring in Cyberspace    

2 Dressing for the weather

3 MS security report, grid hack, FCC probe, Facebook growth

4 Springtime stargazing              

5 Conficker kicks

6 Free Avast

Spring is here and with it comes bizarre weather.  Like what we've seen so far with 80° days followed by 30° days.  Wind and calm, rain and snow and sunshine, cloudy and clear and foggy; pick a condition and wait a day or two and you'll get it.

The Internet is an invaluable tool for tracking the weather, sometimes more so than local TV and radio, although those sources remain the go to places to get local warnings.

Of course the local media outlets all have websites with forecasts and radar images, nothing quite matches the live video and audio you get from the TV and radio when things are breaking locally.

If you just want to keep an eye on things in general, though, they can't match that information to your sudden need to know what's up.  You'll have to go online for that.

Unfortunately many people use WeatherBug based applications for this, but you're asking for trouble if you do.  Some WB based applications bundle in spyware like MySearch or MyWay and most of them are ad supported, which invites pop-ups and driveby malware installs on your computer.

You're much better off to hit a few safe websites to sate your weather curiosity and kill the Bug.

To get an idea of current conditions I use http://www.wunder.com/.  Just pick your state and you'll get current conditions in your area, including temp, humidity, barometric pressure and wind speed.  Scroll a little further down and click US Severe Weather Advisories for a national color-coded map of weather watches and warnings.  Click your county (it's that detailed) for details.

If I want to see a live map I can always hit a local TV station's site but I prefer http://www.local12.com/content/weather/pd12/default.aspx.  Based in Cincinnati, it shows a large chunk of the tri-state area for the big picture and allows you to zoom in on your particular area.  Just move your cursor over your general vicinity and click and you'll get an up close view of developing weather conditions updated every few minutes.

The zoom view opens in a new window so you may have to adjust any pop-up blockers but this allows you to toggle between local and regional views for a bigger picture.

I want to mention again that the local TV and radio stations are the best place to turn for severe weather information during a crisis but for developing situations you may only find Jeopardy or sports talk shows.

In those cases, turn to the Internet.

Kevin Mefford, Editor

pcguru at microdome.net

Terry Wise

www.ratland.com

Tech News of the Week

In its sixth Security Intelligence Report, released Wednesday and
covering the second half of 2008, Microsoft says "scareware" is on the
rise:

http://tinyurl.com/dl3k3d

Cyberspies from China, Russia and other countries have hacked into the
U.S. electrical grid and installed malicious software that could be
used to stop power or disrupt the system, according to The Wall Street
Journal:

http://www.crn.com/security/216403568

The FCC has released three major data collection probes on the state
and future of national broadband, video competition, and minority
media ownership:

http://tinyurl.com/c6dmaa

In less than eight months, Facebook has doubled its user base by
signing up 100 million people from around the world, officially
hitting 200 million on Wednesday:

http://tinyurl.com/cecbqu

Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus at gmail.com 
www.mattstodayinhistory.com 

Download of the Week

Clear warm spring nights might find you outside gazing up at the sky.  Whether you're a long-time, hard-core astronomy buff, or are just a part-time stargazer, you'll find something in this astronomy program for you. Stellarium displays whatever celestial objects you want, including stars, planets, nebula, and constellations. Click any object to get details about it. Overall, this is a visually attractive program.  It's free here: 

http://www.stellarium.org/ 

Carlita Lupino

Cards57 at gmail.com

Threat of the Week

Conficker kinda flopped on April 1st, nut yet another variant cropped up on April 8th, this time spreading through peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.  Conficker.E appears to search out and update vulnerable computers infected with Conficker.A to bring them up to date.

Security researchers from Symantec and Trend Micro have found similarities between Conficker.E and past worms Storm and Waledac, suggesting all three may have originated with the same gang of miscreants.

Like past infections, this one doesn't seem to do much other than update infected machines and then go to sleep, but researchers at Kaspersky have said it seems some "sections" or "nodes" of the botnet may be installing the malware SpywareProtect 2009, which is a breed of malicious infection Microsoft calls "scareware".

SpywareProtect warns you that your are infected with multiple viruses and offers to clean them. for a price.  Of course the warnings and any "cleaning" is completely bogus.

2009 is unfortunately shaping up to be an interesting year for malware, making it more important than ever to make sure you know what you're clicking on and to do all your updates.

Kevin Mefford

pcguru at microdome.net

Email Question of the Week

Q:  I am running a Dell machine with Win XP. I downloaded and installed
Avast anti-virus two months ago. Now I get a message saying the sixty
days are expired and wanting me to subscribe to the paid version. I
plan to switch to PC Tools anti-virus and spyware products. Problem is
I can't uninstall Avast. It doesn't have an install option under
Program Files, and so I tried to remove it from "Add/remove" under
Control Panel. I get a message that there is a problem and it can't
uninstall it. I know that I can delete the folder and files from
Program Files, and any references from the registry. Would there be
any other places where I would need to delete from? If there is a
better procedure to un-install it, please give me step-by-step
instructions for doing so. I appreciate any help you can give me.

A:  You shouldn't have to pay for Avast, but after the first 60 days it
does require a free activation code that you can get from here:
http://avast.com/eng/home-registration.php

If you still wish to uninstall it, you can use Avast's uninstall tool
here: http://avast.com/eng/avast-uninstall-utility.html

Both processes are fairly straight forward from the links I gave you.

Hope this helps, and please e-mail back if you have any other questions

Daniel A. Williams
daniel at thepcgurus.com

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