Business Advice

Almost Half Of Top Ranking Websites Are Vulnerable

February 20, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Menlo Security just released their third annual “State of the Web” report and it’s not pretty. The headline finding is that 42% of the top 100,000 sites as ranked by Alexa are more dangerous than you think.

The report defines a risky site as one that meets one of three criteria:

The site, or one of its associated background sites (from which news articles or video is pulled), is running software with a known security vulnerability

The site has been used to launch attacks or distribute malware

The site has suffered a security breach in the past twelve months

This first point is key, and often overlooked by security professionals. Any time your website is pulling content from another source, it creates an opening that a hacker could potentially exploit. Worse, most security professionals lack the tools to properly monitor those connections.

As bad as that sounds, there’s an even worse detail lurking in the pages of the report, and that concerns emails.

Hackers are increasingly moving away from setting up their own domains. Instead, they’re preferring to create a subdomain of a compromised, legitimate domain, which makes it harder to spot. Amir Ben-Efraim, the CEO of Menlo Security, had this to say about the issue:

“It is far easier to set up a subdomain on a legitimate hosting service than use other alternatives – such as trying to hack a popular, well-defended site or to set up a brand-new domain and use it until it is blocked by web security firms. Legitimate domains are often whitelisted by companies and other organizations out of a false sense of security, giving cover to phishing sites.

Also, hosting services typically allow customers to set up multiple subdomains. For example, researchers found 15 phishing sites hosted on the world’s 10 most popular domains.”

The bottom line is: The web and even the most popular sites on it, aren’t nearly as safe as you think.

Joseph Martin

President & CEO
I hope you enjoyed this article. My mission is to take your stress away from dealing with IT problems. Call (252) 565-1235 or send me a message at our contact us page if you have a question, comment or want help.

Do Not Use These Chrome Extensions

January 28, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Do you use any of the following Chrome browser extensions?

Change HTTP Request Header

Nyoogle – (a custom logo for Google)

Stickies – (a Post-It note for Chrome)

Lite Bookmarks

If so, you’re not alone. These four extensions have a combined user base of more than half a million.

Recently, security researchers from ICEBRG (a US cyber-security company) have discovered malicious codes embedded in copies of these on the official Chrome Web Store. The code allows hackers to manipulate the users’ browser via JavaScript.

So far, the hackers have only contented themselves with relatively tame activities like loading and displaying ads, clicking on ads, and loading malicious web pages in the background. However, the potential exists to do much more than this.

Since ICEBRG informed Google, the company has removed three of the four plugins from the Web Store. As of this moment, only Nyoogle remains, though the expectation is that it will be removed in short order as well.

While all four extensions utilize the same basic techniques, and do many of the same things, it is not clear if all four were created by the same group, although this seems likely.

Since the extensions have now been (mostly) removed, the rate of infection will slow. Of course, if you’ve already downloaded and installed one of these four, then you are going to continue to be impacted.

The extensions are easy to uninstall, and if you’re using one of them, that is the recommended course of action.

In recent months, Google has taken steps to make their auditing process more robust to prevent malicious extensions and apps from finding their way onto the web properties they manage. As this latest incident proves, no matter how careful a company is, sooner or later something is going to slip through.

Joseph Martin

What is the Cost of IT Support for Small Business?

January 13, 2018 by Joseph Martin Leave a Comment

One of the greatest challenges among small business owners today is making the decision about IT support and maintenance of the information system; whether to hire an in-house IT tech or to outsource IT support for their business. With the relatively recent availability of Managed Services for small business, the list of choices – and decisions – has grown once again.

The Greenville IT support experts at Carolina IT Group are constantly searching for ways to make the decision making process simpler and easier for you, the small business owner. To help you with that, today we will take a look at the IT support choices currently available, as well as some of the costs involved. (Although we have tried to give you some idea of the costs involved, please remember that these are merely estimates based on averages, and that the actual cost of IT support services can vary greatly, based on the needs of each business.)

Self-managed IT Support:

According to PayScale.com, the national median income for an in-house IT tech is currently running at a bit over $40,000 per year, with the upper end of that range reaching nearly $60,000 annually. For more experienced technicians, the median pay rate is above $46,000 annually, with the upper range much closer to $65,000 yearly. These pay ranges include salary, bonuses, and profit sharing for in-house employees, but do not include benefits, such as health insurance.

If we choose a salary of $45,000 for the purpose of this comparison, we must then add benefits, sick pay, vacation time, and your annual payroll tax. These will total approximately $13,000 a year. Purchasing an IT Management System application could easily set you back by $1000, plus training in the new application, which would likely cost about $2500 per user. The total for one-time expenses will range from $3500 to $10,000, depending on the number of user desktops involved. Total cost of salary and benefits for your new IT specialist would be about $58,000 per year, though it could be more.

Outsourcing your IT Support:

For many small business owners, outsourcing their IT support needs may seem extravagant due to the hourly rate that such companies charge. However, this type of support can be extremely cost-effective because of the expertise being purchased, the experience the techs who visit are able to offer, and the backup provided by the team that supports them. Further, as a small business owner, you should easily be able to budget for the monthly expense, based on the system evaluation and recommendations of the company you employ as your IT support team.

A responsible IT support company will always begin with an objective assessment of your information system, along with recommendations for the work they will perform to meet your needs. In other words, they will not “pad” the bill, but will only perform the tasks you request of them. This can greatly reduce the cost of IT support for your small business, rather than hiring an in-house tech and paying an annual salary, as discussed above.

Beyond this, a reputable IT support company will guarantee the expertise of the tech they send you. The tech will also possess a great deal more experience than an employee, as they deal with a variety of systems every day. In most cases, there will be little they have not seen, which will allow them to handle your specific needs more efficiently. Further, they will most likely assign a particular technician to your account, someone who will visit you regularly, allowing them to become intimately familiar with your information system and the needs of your business, and with whom you will build a relationship of trust over time.

Best of all, your service will always be hands-on, with a live human being in place to answer your questions.

The cost of this type of support can vary greatly, depending upon the age and number of servers and desktops being used in your organization. However, you will usually be able to save money by purchasing blocks of time in advance and only using the hours purchased on as as-needed basis. For the average small business, you should probably budget for something between $1000 and $2500 per month, a vast savings over hiring an in-house IT tech.

Managed Services IT Support:

With remote monitoring of your small business information system now available 24/7, 365, this option has become one of the more cost-effective and appealing choices among small business owners in today’s marketplace. For a flat rate monthly fee, business owners and IT managers can now purchase pro-active monitoring and maintenance of servers, desktops, and remote machines being used by their company. In addition to this, a business may also subscribe to this type of service in a graduated, piecemeal fashion; perhaps beginning with managed antivirus protection, then gradually adding email monitoring for spam and continuity, email archiving, desktop monitoring, mobile device monitoring, online data backup services, and more.

By using such a service, your small business will find it very easy to budget for them. Because of the flat rate subscription fee you will pay each month, there will be no budget-busting surprises. As each of the managed services you’re using begins to save you money, by reducing system downtime and increasing productivity, you’ll be able to add another layer of protection, without having to invest in expensive an all-in-one package.

The most important benefit of a managed services program is that it is fully automated and never rests. The system is working on your behalf 24/7, 365, monitoring and maintaining your information system even while you sleep. You will also receive notification of impending problems, allowing you to intervene before your system goes down.

Once again, the cost of a managed services package for your small business will have a number of determining factors. Beginning with the age of your equipment and software, as well as the number of machines and users, to the selection of the various management and maintenance services to which you subscribe, these will determine the monthly cost of your choices. A la carte services may begin for as little as $2-$15 per month per machine, and range upward from there. For the average small business, your monthly cost may range from $500 to $2000 per month for ‘round-the-clock protection of your information system, data, and workstations. You should consult with an IT support provider for more information on a managed services package features and costs.

IT Support Service Packages

For most of our Greenville small business clients, a combination of outsourcing their IT support to us, along with one of our proactive managed services packages has been the ultimate solution to their IT needs. This type of cost-effective combination of support services has provided them expert IT support when needed on-site, as well as the 24 hour protection of their information system that they need for their peace of mind. “It’s good to sleep again at night!” they tell us.

If this information has been helpful, and you would like to know more about how Managed Services and IT support service packages from Carolina IT Group could benefit you and your business, the IT experts at Carolina IT Group are here to help you with all of your Greenville IT support needs. Please do not hesitate to contact us with your IT service request for help with your operating system, apps, servers, VoIP system or any other IT issues you may have.

Joseph Martin

Corporate Attacks On The Rise Through Vulnerable Printers

January 10, 2018 by Joseph Martin

Few things are more ubiquitous in an office environment than printers. Of course, these days, most printers are much more than simply that. They can also scan, copy and even send emails. As such, they’ve become an increasingly attractive option to hack, according to the latest data released by Barracuda Networks.

The reason is simple. Most printers aren’t as well protected as PCs and other devices on your network. They’re the weak point in your company’s defensive armor.

The upsurge in this type of attack seems to be focused on Cannon, HP and Epson printers, and works like this:

A printer is compromised and used to send spoofed scanned attachments, usually bearing an innocuous subject line such as “Scanned From HP,” “Scanned from Epson” or “Scanned from Cannon.”

Most employees don’t think twice about opening such attachments because they appear to be from a legitimate source inside the company, which is, of course, exactly what the hackers are counting on.

While any sort of payload can be delivered in this manner, the most common strain found installs a backdoor on the target PC, allowing the hackers to:

Monitor behavior and log keystrokes

Change computer settings

Copy files

Access other connected systems

And more.

In a clear indication that the malware could be used to launch a ransomware style attack, it also gives the hackers the ability to replace the PC’s wallpaper with any file they choose.

Employees should be more mindful of this type of attack and always double check to make sure the sender is valid. Also, it’s important to hover over the links embedded in such emails in order to be sure they’re valid before clicking on them.

If you haven’t been on the receiving end of an attack like this yet, count yourself lucky and stay vigilant.

Joseph Martin

2017 List Of Most Used Passwords Released

January 9, 2018 by Joseph Martin

SplashData has released their latest annual report on the most commonly used passwords. Unfortunately, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

By now, everyone knows that the number of hacking attempts and high-profile data breaches is on the rise. Everyone has heard, on more than one occasion, how important it is to not use the same password across multiple web properties, to enable two-factor authentication if and where it is offered and to use passwords that contain a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols in order to make them more difficult to crack.

Although these are things that everyone knows, the wisdom embedded in the advice above often goes unheeded. According to the data collected by aggregating passwords leaked in data breaches over the past year, the most commonly used password for 2017 is “123456,” followed closely by the ubiquitous “password.” These are unchanged from last year.

The rest of the top 25 list contains a mix of the old and the new, including:

12345678

Qwerty

12345

123456789

Letmein

1234567

Football

Iloveyou

Admin

Welcome

Monkey

Abel123

Starwars

123123

Dragon

Passw0rd

Master

Hello

Freedom

Whatever

Qazwsx

And Trustno1

If you make use of any of these passwords, we urge you to change them immediately. As important as data security is and as much as is at stake, you’re putting yourself, your friends and your co-workers at grave risk by using such easily cracked passwords.

SplashData’s CEO Morgan Slain had this to say on the topic:

“Unfortunately, while the newest episode may be a fantastic addition to the Star Wars franchise, ‘starwars’ is a dangerous password to use. Hackers are using common terms from pop culture and sports to break into accounts online because they know how many people are using those easy-to-remember words.”

Joseph Martin

USB Drives Could Be Huge Factor In Data Loss, Theft

December 30, 2017 by Joseph Martin

Most people agree that the use of USB drives increases efficiency and boosts productivity, which goes a long way toward explaining their popularity, but these handy little drives can also be problematic.

According to a recently published survey by Apricorn, 87 percent of employees surveyed report that they have lost or had a USB drive stolen and failed to notify their employer. Worse, 80 percent of employees surveyed reported using non-encrypted USB drives that they’ve often acquired for free at trade shows or conferences.

The fact that these drives are unencrypted is bad enough, but there’s another, even more, frightening dimension to the problem. Such drives could be pre-loaded with malware, which could easily make it onto your company’s network the moment they’re connected to any office machine.

Apricorn had this to say about the results of the survey:

“With the ever-increasing amount of data breaches and compromises, companies need to carefully monitor what data is being created in their organizations, and what is leaving.

A government, healthcare, finance, and education industries have access to copious amounts of sensitive information and most of these industries are using USBs without advanced permission. Not only are these companies leaving themselves vulnerable, they are placing their customers’ and employees’ data at risk.”

Although the company notes that there is an awareness of the damage that lost or compromised data can cause, not much is being done about preventing that loss, at least where the use of USB drives is concerned. According to the survey, fully half of the respondents indicated that they didn’t need to seek permission to use a USB drive to copy or transport potentially sensitive information.

Does your company have a robust set of policies in place to control the use of USB drives? Are all the USBs used by your employees encrypted and secure? Do you have a policy in place regarding proper reporting procedures should a USB drive go missing? Important questions, all.

Joseph Martin

Files Containing Nearly 1.5 Billion Passwords Leaked On The Internet

December 26, 2017 by Joseph Martin

Researchers from the security firm 4iQ have made a disturbing discovery on the dark web. A massive repository has been discovered that contains a staggering 1.4 billion usernames and passwords in plain text.

The repository is well organized, with each letter of the alphabet having its own directory to facilitate rapid search, and 4iQ has tested a subset of the data it contains and found an alarming percentage of the usernames and passwords to be viable.

It should be noted that this data isn’t from a new, previously unknown breach, but rather, an aggregation of data stolen from 252 previous breaches. The CTO of 4iQ, Julio Casal, had this to say about the discovery:

“None of the passwords are encrypted, and what’s scary is that we’ve tested a subset of these passwords and most of them have been verified to be true. The breach is almost two times larger than the previous largest credential exposure, the Exploit.in combo lists that exposed 797 million records. This new breach adds 385 million new credential pairs, 318 million unique users, and 147 million passwords pertaining to those previous dumps.”

The usernames and passwords come from a wide range of sources including Runescape, Minecraft, RedBox, Badoo, Zoosh, Last.FM, YouPorn, Netflix, MySpace, LinkedIn, Pastebin, Bitcoin and many others.

What’s even worse is that as large as this collection is, it’s really just the tip of the spear. A shocking percentage of users have the bad habit of using the same credentials across multiple web properties, so it’s a statistical certainty that many of the passwords contained in this file will allow hackers access to much more than just the web properties the passwords were stolen from.

If you’re not yet in the habit of changing your passwords on a regular basis, you should begin doing so immediately, and if you’re one of the hundreds of millions of people who use the same password on multiple sites, it’s well past time to break that habit.

Joseph Martin

Uber Paid To Hide Massive Data Breach From Public

December 9, 2017 by Joseph Martin

It has recently come to light that the company was hacked in 2016 in a massive breach that exposed the personal information of more than 57 million Uber users and drivers. A wide range of data was stolen. Where users were concerned, names, email addresses, and phone numbers were compromised.

As bad as that is, the problem was even worse for more than 600,000 of the company’s drivers who had their driver’s license numbers hacked, too.

Standard protocol is that when a breach like this occurs, the company will engage law enforcement officials as appropriate, hire a third-party security firm to help with the forensic investigation and notify their consumers.

Unfortunately, that’s not the path Uber chose to take. Instead, they paid the hackers $100,000 in exchange for keeping quiet about the hack and deleting the stolen data.

The company kept the incident under wraps for more than a year, but eventually, word of the attack leaked out, and the fallout has been catastrophic. Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has asked for the resignation of the company’s Chief Security Officer, Joe Sullivan, and one of his deputies, Craig Clark, both of whom worked to keep the attack quiet.

In a formal statement, Khosrowshahi had this to say:

“None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it. While I cannot erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes. We are changing the way we do business, putting integrity at the core of every decision we make and working hard to earn the trust of our customers.”

As is common in the aftermath of events like these, Uber is offering its impacted customers a free year’s worth of credit monitoring services and will likely force password changes for its app users. More than a year too late, but it’s something.

File this away under how not to handle a data breach.

Joseph Martin

Facebook Has A Major Problem With Fake Accounts

November 18, 2017 by Joseph Martin

Facebook has been in hot water with evidence mounting that hordes of fake accounts were used to spread misinformation about the recent presidential election.

In addition to sparking congressional hearings, it also prompted Facebook and the other major social media companies to do a deep dive into their own active accounts and get a better sense of just how large and pervasive the problem was.

According to Facebook’s most recent quarterly earnings report, the problem turned out to be a fair bit larger than was first imagined. The company changed their methodology for tracking and identifying fake accounts, which has led to the grim discovery that some 13 percent of the company’s accounts are duplicates, a figure that doesn’t take into account the more than 60 million outright bogus accounts.

According to Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, from in the earnings report: “We’re serious about preventing abuse on our platforms. We’re investing so much in security that it will impact our profitability. Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits.”

The problem is going to wind up costing Facebook in a number of ways. First and most obvious, of course, is the unwanted attention caused by the congressional hearings themselves, and the loss of trust it creates on the platform.

More immediately, there’s also the factor addressed directly by Zuckerberg in his statement. The company is spending a ton of money on improving security and rooting out and shutting down duplicate and fake accounts. As he indicated, it’s having an impact on their profitability.

It’s also impacting the company’s ability to generate ad revenue, which, of course, is based on the number of actual users the company can claim are viewing ads. With more than a quarter of a billion duplicate and fake accounts in the system, the network is simply less attractive to advertisers.

There are no simple solutions here, but kudos to Facebook for making significant investments to rein the problem in.

Joseph Martin

New Ransomware “BadRabbit” Starting To See Infections In The US

November 15, 2017 by Joseph Martin

You may not have heard of the new strain of ransomware known as BadRabbit. If you haven’t, it’s because the overwhelming percentage of BadRabbit attacks have been occurring in Russia, which accounts for 71 percent of all known infections at present. Unfortunately, there have been a few infections reported in the United States, which may be a harbinger of things to come.

The new threat is functionally similar to NotPetya, which not only encrypts the files on a target system but also then encrypts the file system, which gives the victim a lovely ransom lock screen before the OS can even boot up.

Fortunately, there are simple things you can do to help protect yourself from this latest threat.

Event Log Monitoring

Windows Defender is capable of recognizing the threat, provided you’re using detections update 1.255.29.0 or higher. If you haven’t updated to this version, do so immediately.

Once that is done, be aware that BadRabbit will schedule tasks using the names “Viserion,” “Rhaegal” and “Drogon.” If you see any of these, it’s a clear sign of an infection in process on your network. Administrators can attach scheduled tasks to events bearing these names, running specified commands should one of these be detected. For example: initiating a “shutdown -a” command.

Obviously, this stuff can be quite complicated. We would highly recommend you reach out to us to not only scan your network but to also evaluate your entire network for potential threats or vulnerabilities. Ransomware is a real threat that is literally shutting down businesses, and this is on a global scale. If you aren’t being proactive against hackers, you can easily find yourself locked out of your own network.

BadRabbit is just the latest in hackers’ arsenal of ransomware and threats on your network. If you are as concerned as we are, give us a quick call.

Joseph Martin

Almost Half Of Top Ranking Websites Are Vulnerable

Do Not Use These Chrome Extensions

What is the Cost of IT Support for Small Business?

Self-managed IT Support:

Outsourcing your IT Support:

Managed Services IT Support:

IT Support Service Packages

Corporate Attacks On The Rise Through Vulnerable Printers

2017 List Of Most Used Passwords Released

USB Drives Could Be Huge Factor In Data Loss, Theft

Files Containing Nearly 1.5 Billion Passwords Leaked On The Internet

Uber Paid To Hide Massive Data Breach From Public

New Ransomware “BadRabbit” Starting To See Infections In The US

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