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Last July 4th and 5th, a massive denial-of-service attack was launched against several government and commercial websites in the United States and South Korea. According to security researchers, the attacks were the work of malware that infected PCs and routed traffic to government and commercial sites during the July 4 weekend in an attempt to take them down with the flood of simultaneous requests hitting them. Among those affected were the U.S. Department of Treasury, the Secret Service, the Federal Trade Commission, and several others. The attacks, which hit South Korean sites a few days later on July the 7th, are widely believed to have been carried out by an updated version of the MyDoom worm which gained infamy when it first hit Windows machines last 2004. The motive for the attack is not yet known. In the meantime, users are advised to scan their machines and update their operating systems to protect against known vulnerabilities. Contact us to learn more about protecting your business from a similar attack. Related articles: Mysterious cyber-attacker hits at federal websites, crisis averted? Cyber Attack Targets Government Websites Who’s behind cyber assaults?

New research from security firm Secunia reveals that the average PC user has over a dozen insecure applications on his or her computer. They found that the typical user installs over 80 applications on his or her desktop, and around 15% are vulnerable to attack due to failure to patch the applications in a timely manner. Vendors normally release updates or patches to fix known vulnerabilities in their applications. This is an acute problem for software which connects to the Internet, especially if it hosts sensitive or private data. Only 2% of users make it a point regularly update their applications. For businesses, the problem could be greater with the need to manage multiple PCs. Protect your network today by letting us implement software patch management tools to manage and automate this process for you. Related articles: Keep your software up to date with Secunia Personal Software Inspector Patch management no longer just an IT problem Another year of handwringing on cybersecurity