Louisiana CodeWORKS, Inc.

08/14/2024

You've received an email similar to this. Could be Amazon, or a thousand other online merchants. Do you click on the 'Update Information' button? If you blindly do so, here's what will happen.
You'll be presented with a login page that looks amazingly like (in the case...) Amazon's login page. It will accept ANY login credentials you care to give it.

At that point your account has been compromised. You MUST (but you don't realize your problem yet):

a. Immediately change the password on the account.
b. Immediately notify all payment methods on that account of the compromise, and get new cards issued. If using a service such as Paypal, immediately change the password on those accounts.

How do you avoid this??? If you had taken a moment to check the sender's email address (It might only say a company name, click on it to reveal the address) [see the red circled area] you would see the sender is from ".biz.id". That's CERTAINLY not Amazon, is it?

Be careful out there. Those who would do you harm are cunning and continually learning better method to entice you to hurt yourself, and this could DEFINITELY HURT!

04/09/2023

You receive a text on your phone similar to this. What do you do? (web link changed to keep everyone safe...)

======================================
We temporarily placed your Amazon suspended
To restore follow instruction below.

https://www.############xx.com/free/main19/usa?=264323994

Please complete recovery within 2 days otherwise Amazon account permanently suspended.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.
Thank you for your attention.
======================================

Whatever you do, DO NOT click the link and sign in to your 'Amazon' account. This is known as phishing. Mal-actors will send out a few million of these to unsuspecting people in the hopes that less than 1% will fall for it. Once there, they're free to order things on YOUR credit card(s) and any other payment methods available. It's easy enough to send shipments to a commercial mailbox store, then after once doing this, to move onto the next 'mark'.

Be careful with ALL your online transactions!

Send a message to learn more

12/19/2022

03/29/2022

Whose antivirus software do you use? The US FCC warns that Kaspersky Labs, being a Russian entity poses a serious threat to clients in the US. The FCC doesn't make these warnings without reason.

There are only 8 companies on the list, the majority of them are based in China. However, of the 8, Kaspersky would likely be in the best position to compromise users in the US.

A prudent user would do well to remove their software!

As do China Mobile and China Telecom, according to the commission.

03/17/2022

By now, anyone with an online computer has heard of 'ransomware'. When your computer is infected with such a program, your data (documents, photos, databases, etc) are encrypted, with a password that might or might not be provided after you pay an exorbitant amount of money for your data.

The latest implementation that has been discovered is called "LokiLocker". This malware, in addition to encrypting your files will, if the ransom isn't paid in a timely manner, wipe the 'MBR' of your hard disk, making your computer unbootable without intervention by a computer technician who can (maybe) recover it.

Microsoft has this page: https://tinyurl.com/lokilockerMsoft that provides some background information in the links on that page.

Should you need any assistance (especially BEFORE you get ransomware!), I can assist in a number of ways. Options become VERY limited once you get a ransomware infection.

Submit suspected malware or incorrectly detected files for analysis. Submitted files will be added to or removed from antimalware definitions based on the analysis results.

03/13/2022

Do you run a VOIP phone system in your office? If so, you really should have a router with a business class firewall (we use pfSense, the open source version of Netgate's router). Using an open source router makes A LOT of sense, in that every bit of code running on it is wide open for the community of users to spot bugs and/or undesirable behavior and provide solutions, something that's not available in commercially available (non open source) products.

Unless you have offsite voip phones connecting to your VOIP PBX as extensions, your router should BLOCK incoming connections on port 5060 (as a minimum... you can see that I block a wider range). If you DO have remote phones connecting to your PBX, you should at a minimum use VERY obfuscated passwords on your extensions, or for more security use VPN connections between locations (fairly easy to setup).

Your router should also support 'SPI' (Stateful Packet Inspection) so that you have a method of monitoring the actual traffic. You can see that I've specifically blocked '52.60.138.31', it's coming from an Amazon AWS server that the logs showed was attempting to connect to port 5060. There's NO reason ever for an inbound VOIP connection to come from a rented shared server. To allow such traffic is to invite a compromised PBX, in short order you may find all of Nigeria calling folks in order to scam them on your nickel...

So, keep your network secure. Monitor the traffic that's going through it, blocking or creating rules to restrict undesired activity.

Want to know more? Give me a call at 318.415.0204.

We support business clients in the Ark-La-Tex with their IT needs, whether it's campus networking (including fiber optic and wireless), server/application management, or PC updates. Factory automation? Call us!

03/11/2022

For those of you who are sick and tired of slow / non-existent DSL or Cable internet... T-Mobile's network has GREATLY expanded in the past couple of years. I you weren't within a mile or two of an Interstate highway a few years ago, you had no chance of having service. So, check this out, only $50/month. Perfectly acceptable speeds in Minden (though latency might bother hard core gaming use).

The Un‑carrier is first to bring prepaid fixed wireless broadband to millions of customers, further expanding choice and competition in an industry that badly needs it.

09/15/2021

Are you finding your business phone just 'blowing up' with spam calls? Is your monthly phone cost ridiculous?

One of our clients upgraded to our VOIP solution about a year ago. I ran a cost analysis yesterday, and for the month of August, their phone charges were ~$25.00. FAR better than the $350.00+ from a year ago. Same phone number, less spam, MANY more options.

If that sounds good to you, call me (Tom Grant) at 318.415.0204, let's see how much I can save your business!

09/01/2021

Suddenlink needs to get 'ragged' about their support (much of it deserved). However, when their connections are working well, there's no problem... I subscribe to 400 mpbs, getting 5% more.

If support (any carrier, not just Suddenlink) tells you that your connection tests fine, but you're not getting within 90% of your subscribed speed, call me, more than likely your issues can be fixed.

07/14/2021

Yet again, it's time to repeat a warning!

If you receive a phone call purporting to be from Microsoft / McAfee / Symantec-Norton, etc telling you that you have malware on your computer, IT IS A SCAM. If you happen to allow them to get on your computer, they WILL tell you that you have hundreds of infections, and that for the low, low price of (typically $199), they will fix it for you.

Should you allow them access to your computer, it is already too late! I recently had to wipe and reinitialize a computer for a woman, cost her about $100.00, for nothing.

So, a word to the wise... These companies WILL NEVER call you.

04/09/2021

Over 10+ years, how much do you spend on your home or business telephone service?

This photo details our phone expenses over the past 10½ years. We have a total of 5 phone numbers, and every few months I'll put $50 on the account.

Less than $1,100 in 10½ years for us. Traditional phone service could easily run hundreds of dollars per month for 5 lines. Our average cost works out to $8.80/month.

If you're interested in saving money on your home or business phone service, drop me a note or call me at 318.415.0204. You'll be glad you did!

02/19/2021

Who would ever have thought that 30+ years ago I was supporting clients on Unix systems (among others)... Step forward to today, and I'm almost daily working on Linux boxes (discrete and VMs). Pretty much all those things I learned way back when are still applicable today.

This post specifically speaks to the durability/extensibility of Unix/Linux. You may not know it, but the VAST majority of web servers world wide (96.5% in one rating). It's secure, fast and compact. Very rarely needs to be rebooted (even after updates!).

In terms of system scalability, the top 500 of the world's super computers are... you guessed it, Linux based.

Just in case it sounds like Linux is taking over the world, it just might be...

Linux doesn't only run on home computers and web servers. Here are some unusual ways Linux is being used around the world.