More BadTrans

Wow, Badtrans just seems to be everywhere doesn’t it? We’re still seeing quite a few copies of it flowing into the generic mailbox we have setup at work. One of my co-workers got it at home over the weekend too. She was asking me first thing this morning about the possibility of it spreading to her work computer since she commonly emails things back and forth. I’m not too worried, with Outlook setup to prompt, and users educated to cancel any automatic downloads they are prompted for, not to mention the latest AV definitions, we should be ok.

By the way, she has Norton running on her home computer, but hadn’t gotten the latest AV definitions, so it didn’t catch this at all. That brings up an interesting point. How do we get home users to update regularly without having some sort of automatic updater running on their system? I personally don’t like things connecting to the internet in the background, so I wouldn’t suggest to other people to go that route with AV updates, but how do you get them to remember to get the updates?

And don’t just say, “don’t use Outlook”, because for many home users, and corporate users, learning to install and use a different program is too intimidating. Besides, I use Outlook 2000 and OE 6 and have never had a virus because I keep them patched, and educate myself on viral behavior, so I know them when they come in, and how to handle them.

Is it a technical issue or an education issue?

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