Tinkernut is a great site for how to videos on everything in PC land. They make quality videos with simple language. Anyway, they recently got hacked and decided to share how to make things secure so it doesn’t happen again.

You need to spend time protecting you PC from hackers and other nasties. Believe me, its time well spent. It is always a matter of when, not if you get hacked.

Have a look at this video for some straight forward tips on defending your geek life.

Infected PCs are under the control of cyber criminals

Microsoft has won court approval to shut down a global network of computers which it says is responsible for more than 1.5bn spam messages every day.

A US judge granted the firm’s request to shut down 277 internet domains, which it said were used to “command and control” the so-called Waledac botnet.

A botnet is a network of infected computers under the control of hackers.

The firm said that closing the domains would mean that up to 90,000 PCs would stop receiving orders to send out spam.

A recent analysis by the firm found that between 3-21 December “approximately 651 million spam e-mails attributable to Waledac were directed to Hotmail accounts alone”.

STAYING SAFE ONLINE Use anti-spyware and anti-virus programs On at least a weekly basis update anti-virus and spyware products Install a firewall and make sure it is switched on Make sure updates to your operating system are installed Take time to educate yourself and family about the risks Monitor your computer and stay alert to threats Hi-tech crime: A glossary

It said it was one of the 10 largest botnets in the US.

Machines in a botnet have usually been infected by a computer virus or worm. Typically, users do not know their machine has been hijacked.

Microsoft said that although it had effectively shut down the network, thousands of computers would still be infected with malware and advised people to run anti-virus software.

The court order was part of what was called “Operation b49″.

Along with intelligence organisation Shadowserver, the University of Washington and security firm Symantec, Microsoft managed to get a court in Alexandria, Virginia, to force Verisign, which manages the .com domain, to temporarily switch off the domains.

Microsoft said it was the result of months of investigation and described it as a legal first.

“This action has quickly and effectively cut off traffic to Waledac at the .com or domain registry level, severing the connection between the command and control centres of the botnet and most of its thousands of zombie computers around the world.”

I have borrowed this picture from Tech Crunch. No credit for me.

I knew that i wanted to control my destiny, so I knew I needed revenues, right, f***ing, now. Like I needed revenues now. So I funded the company myself but I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this zwinky toolbar which was like, I dont know, I downloaded it once and couldn’t get rid of it. *laughs* We did anything possible just to just get revenues so that we could grow and be a real business…So control your destiny. So that was a big lesson, controlling your business. So by the time we raised money we were profitable.

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