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For the Technology News category

Oct 28

Thai floods results in rising hard drive prices

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Component manufacturer serves 80 per cent of market

Hard drive prices have already begun to rise as analysts warn of significant shortages following floods in Thailand which have disrupted a number of manufacturers.

Thailand is the world’s second largest exporter of hard drives and both WD and Toshiba have stopped hard drive shipments due to their factories being affected.

We have seen prices more than double in the last 24 hours, as suppliers stock starts to fall and they are unable to replenish these stocks.  No doubt PC suppliers and other component suppliers will jump  on the price increase band wagon!

Oct 04

BT suffers huge broadband failure across much of UK

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Birmingham has seen huge numbers of BT Broadband customers across the UK cut off.

The company said those affected numbered into the hundreds of thousands – about 5% of its total customers.

Business users were particularly badly affected, with many reporting considerable lost revenue as a result.

BT said the service has now been fully restored, advising customers to “turn their hub or modem off and on again”.

The first reports of lost connections began to appear at about 13:00 BST.

By 15:00 many customers on consumer packages reported being able to gain access, but business customers had to endure longer delays.

In a statement, the company said: “We can confirm that, as a result of a power failure at one of our major exchanges, some customers may have experienced loss of broadband service for a brief period this afternoon.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

We have been doing our very best to keep customers informed.”

End Quote BT spokesperson

“All services have now been restored, with the majority of BT’s consumer broadband customers’ service being restored within just one hour.

Jul 01

New PC and laptop security warning for ‘indestructible’ botnet

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More than four million PCs have been enrolled in a botnet security experts say is almost “indestructible”.

The botnet, known as TDL, targets Windows PCs and is difficult to detect and shut down.

Code that hijacks a PC hides in places security software rarely looks and the botnet is controlled using custom-made encryption.

Security researchers said recent botnet shutdowns had made TDL’s controllers harden it against investigation.

The 4.5 million PCs have become victims over the last three months following the appearance of the fourt.h version of the TDL virus.

“The owners of TDL are essentially trying to create an ‘indestructible’ botnet that is protected against attacks, competitors, and anti-virus companies.

A botnet is a network of home computers that have been infected by a virus that allows a hi-tech criminal to use them remotely. Often botnet controllers steal data from victims’ PCs or use the machines to send out spam or carry out other attacks.

The TDL virus spreads via booby-trapped websites and infects a machine by exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities. The virus has been found lurking on sites offering porn and pirated movies as well as those that let people store video and image files.

It is one of the most sophisticated botnets out today

The virus installs itself in a Windows system file known as the master boot record. This file holds the list of instructions to get a computer started and is a good place to hide because it is rarely scanned by standard anti-virus programs.

May 17

New website developed for client to help expand their growing business

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New website developed for client to help expand their growing business – www.premierlubricants.co.uk
Launched in April 2011 www.premierlubricants.co.uk , the brief was to design an easy to use ecommerce site to attract new customers through advanced SEO, that ARC iT have also provided. Premier Fuels and Lubricants have built a reputation for offering advice and technical support to their clients and now have the ability to do this via the new website. Through this website they will continue to supply quality lubricants to customers throughout the UK, fully supported with second-to-none technical advice, quick delivery and competitive prices.

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Apr 07

Windows 8 leaks show Microsoft Mobile and Office influences

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New version of Windows will include ‘ribbon’ navigation and features from Microsoft’s mobile phone operating system.

Microsoft’s strategy of unifying all its various products looks set to continue with Windows 8.  New images of the operating system’s welcome screen use  the Windows Phone 7 lock screen, while new navigation techniques used in Office 2010 are used in Windows Explorer for file management.

The ribbon was introduced in Microsoft’s latest version of Office to replace large numbers of menus. It gives instant access to common features. Extending it to new versions of Windows itself would, for instance, allow quick synchronisation of files between machines and the cloud, as noted by other bloggers.

Microsoft is also known to be working on app store for Windows 8 and a back-up tool, similar to the Time Capsule that Apple offers. . Also included will be a new PDF Reader and an “immersive” mode designed for tablets.

A public beta of Windows 8 is expected by the end of the year; the current leaks show the software at a very early stage of development.

Please keep visiting for updates

Apr 06

Photoshopped image scam used in rogue Facebook app

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Facebook users were put under fire on Monday by a brace of new threats, one of which spreads through a link disseminated through the Facebook Chat application.

An estimated 600,000 people have already clicked onto the link, which falsely promises to show them a funny Photoshopped image of themselves. In reality users install a rogue application which sends messages to their contacts via the social network’s IM feature, thus continuing the infection cycle.

Users are taken to a fixed gallery of 45 photoshopped images (such as the image of someone’s features morphed onto a dog’s head), none of which feature the person who followed the link. M86 Security reports that the scam, whose purpose is unknown, is spreading quickly, attracting new victims at the rate of around 90,000 clicks per hour.

Separately, a slew of various rogue applications offer the false promise of letting Facebook members known “how many times their profile has been viewed”. Some of these apps give a breakdown of male and female profile viewers.

Interested parties are asked to complete a survey, the real purpose of the ruse, before getting access to the “locked away” content, which in reality doesn’t exist.

Such survey scams are all too common on Facebook. Previous ruses have falsely offered access to an “unlike” application, for example.

Apr 03

Websites hit in massive web attack

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Websites hit in massive web attack

Hundreds of thousands of websites appear to have been compromised by a massive cyber attack.

The hi-tech criminals used a well-known attack vector that exploits security loopholes on other sites to insert a link to their website.

Those visiting the criminals’ webpage were told that their machines were infected with many different viruses.

Early reports suggested that the attackers were hitting sites using Microsoft SQL Server 2003 and 2005 and it is thought that weaknesses in associated web application software are proving vulnerable.

Ongoing analysis of the attack reveals that the attackers managed to inject code to display links to 21 separate domains. The exact numbers of sites hit by the attack is hard to judge but a Google search for the attackers’ domains shows more than three million weblinks are displaying them.

Security experts say it is the most successful SQL injection attack ever seen.

Apr 01

Have you got StarLogger spyware on your machine?

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A security researcher revealed that he had purchased two new laptops from Samsung, and discovered both of them to be infected with the StarLogger (download) keystroke-recording program. While there’s very little that can be done about keystrokes already recorded, checking your own laptop for such software is actually quite simple–if you’re familiar with mucking about in your system directories and Registry.

Because it’s a keylogger, most often used for spying on employees and children, StarLogger cannot be accessed from your Start menu.

The easiest way to find StarLogger is to look for its Registry key, which is used to load it when Windows is started. To see if this has occurred, open a command prompt and type “Run Regedit”. Then go to the Menu bar, select Edit and then Find. You want to search for “winsl”, without the quotes. If it’s installed, you should see a Registry key that looks like this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\microsoft\windows\currentversion\run\winsl

You can also look for the following files on your hard drive, although keyloggers are designed to hide themselves. Open Windows Explorer, and then hit the Alt key to bring up the Menu bar. Go to Tools, Folder Options, and View. Under Advanced Settings, you’ll see an option for Hidden Files and Folders. Make sure that Show is checked.

If you have StarLogger, its files will be located in your Windows root directory, in a subdirectory labeled “SL”. A list of files you can expect to see is below:

  • iv.ini
  • WinSL.dat
  • WinSL.exe
  • WinSLH.dll
  • ImgView.exe
  • SL-Test.txt
  • unins000.dat
  • unins000.exe
  • StarLogger.url
  • WinSLManager.exe
  • StarLogger.url
  • Uninstall StarLogger.lnk
  • StarLogger.lnk
  • StarLogger on the Web.lnk
  • WinSLManager.exe
  • WinSLH.dll
  • WinSL

You can also check your Task Manager for WinSLManager.exe.

if you think you may have keyloggger contact us today for a quick removal

Mar 31

Spotify ads hit by malware attack

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Earlier in the month we warned of a new virus that was been reported to us. Now a well know website Spotfy has been hit, the BBC new websites is now reporting it

Spotify has apologised to users after an advertisement containing a virus was displayed to some users of the music-streaming service.

The advertisement, which appeared within Spotify’s Windows desktop software, did not need to be clicked on in order to infect a user’s machine.

The exploit would install a bogus ‘Windows Recovery’ anti-virus program.

If any one uses this website or thinks they are infected, please call us to arrange a full virus scan of your machine.

Mar 31

Google Buzz to be audited

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Google Buzz is dessigned to s hare updates, photos, videos, and to start conversations about the things you find interesting.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said that the search giant wrongly used information from Google Mail users last year to create its social network Buzz. 

Buzz’s launch in February 2010 came under heavy criticism from users.

According to Google, the system was designed to bring together members’ personal and private lives.

One widespread complaint was over a feature that allowed it to publicly list other Gmail contacts a user was most frequently in touch with.

While this feature could be turned off, the default setting was to leave it on – potentially revealing a user’s contact with an ex-spouse, employer or similar.

Google will be subjected to independent privacy audits for the next 20 years over charges that it “violated its own privacy promises”.

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