The Symantec Internet Security Threat Report (ISTR) 2013 reveals how the threat landscape is evolving, compiling information from more than 69 million attack sensors in 157 countries around the world. This year’s report shows more targeted attacks, an increasing focus on smaller businesses, and the continued development of new threats.

Targeted attacks, hacktivism, and data breaches

Targeted attacks saw a 42 percent increase in 2012, bringing the average number up to 116 per day, with a corresponding increase in data theft and incidents of industrial espionage. Attackers appear to be changing their targets as well. Small businesses make up a larger percentage of those targeted for attack than in 2011—a threefold increase—with 31 percent of all targeted attacks directed at companies with fewer than 250 employees. Attackers are evidently finding valuable data to steal from such small companies and fewer defenses in place to stop them....

Hello, welcome to this month's blog on the Microsoft patch release. This month the vendor is releasing nine bulletins covering a total of 14 vulnerabilities. Four of this month's issues are rated ’Critical’.

As always, customers are advised to follow these security best practices:

• Install vendor patches as soon as they are available.
• Run all software with the least privileges required while still maintaining functionality.
• Avoid handling files from unknown or questionable sources.
• Never visit sites of unknown or questionable integrity.
• Block external access at the network perimeter to all key systems unless specific access is required.

Microsoft's summary of the April releases can be found here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-Apr

The following is a breakdown of the issues...

During recent weeks, I have seen different scams on Facebook attempt to convince users to install Google Chrome extensions. I have noticed some conversations taking place around the scams; people not sure how to get rid of the scammer photos or how to prevent the scams from spreading further. Some users have unfortunately  gone as far as creating new Facebook profiles for themselves. This is not necessary.

If you have been tricked by one of these scams, here is how you can clean up your browser and Facebook timeline:
 

Remove bad browser extensions

If you have installed the Chrome extension for Facebook Black, Profile Spy ("See Your Profile Viewers"), or Free PS4, you will need to uninstall it from your...

One-click fraud refers to a scam that attempts to lure users interested in adult-related video to a site that attempts to trick them into registering for a paid service. For many years, it has been common to see this type of fraud on computers. As smartphone usage has increased, so has the number of these types of scams on smartphone devices. People typically come across these scam sites by searching for things that they are interested in or by clicking on links contained in spam messages. We also witnessed the advent of one-click fraud Android apps just over a year ago and those apps can now be found on Google Play.