Watch out for Haitian Disaster Malware Attacks

The US-CERT warned yesterday of potential PC threats via fraudulent search engine results returning malicious links to phishing and malware websites. It’s hard not to follow this unfortunate event as the drama continues to unfold, so make sure your antivirus is up to date as you follow news links and browse content through social network sites.

If you and your community are using ours (Immunet Protect), you’re covered, since we’re cloud-based there isn’t a delay in pushing updated definitions to your PC (it’s always up-to-date).

Beyond a good antivirus program, US-CERT is encouraging people to take the following steps to protect themselves:

• Do not follow unsolicited web links or attachments in email messages.
• Review the Federal Trade Commission's Charity Checklist.
• Verify the legitimacy of the email by contacting the organization directly through a trusted contact number. Trusted contact information can be found on the Better Business Bureau National Charity Report Index.
• Refer to the Recognizing and Avoiding Email Scams (pdf) document for more information on avoiding email scams.
• Refer to the Avoiding Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks document for more information on social engineering attacks.

SANS, Security Bloggers Network and the other usual suspects are doing a good job of spreading the word, so hopefully this doesn’t turn into a large outbreak.