Hey, I have this hilarious video of you dancing. Your face is so red. You should check it out.

If you've received a message like that through Facebook or MySpace, you may have been exposed to the "Koobface" virus. "Koobface" comes through an e-mail sent by one of your social networking site friends inviting you to scope out a video.

Once the URL is clicked, "Koobface" prompts you to update your Flash player before the video can be displayed. Therein lies the virus, cloaked in a "flash_player.exe" file. According to the Kaspersky Lab, an antivirus organization working closely with Facebook, "the worms transform victim machines into zombie computers to form botnets."

The McAfee Security Blog explains that when "Koobface" infects your computer, it prompts a downloaded service named Security Accounts Manager (SamSs) to load on start-up. SamSs then proxies all HTTP traffic, stealing results from popular search engines and hijacking them to lesser-known search sites.

A clear eye for fraud will help you avoid this mess. You can usually spot phony e-mails by their titles. Kaspersky found the following: Paris Hilton Tosses Dwarf On The Street; Examiners Caught Downloading Grades From The Internet; You must see it!!! LOL. My friend catched you on hidden cam; Is it really celebrity? Funny Moments. My own "Koobface" attack came in an e-mail entitled, lool, yoour blushingg afce is so funny! Checkk out. Obviously, Paris Hilton never threw dwarves, and in all likelihood, my 26-year-old friend knows how to spell more than two words. These are clear indicators you're being attacked.

Facebook has posted instructions about how to remove the "Koobface" virus: give your computer an antivirus scrub-down and change your Facebook password.

This attack on the world's most popular social networking site and its 120 million users comes just weeks after Facebook won an $873 million lawsuit against several people accused of hacking user accounts and spreading spam.

- from : PC World

A new type of malware designed to harvest web passwords has been detected in-the-wild by BitDefender’s antivirus research labs. This latest e-threat – called Trojan.PWS.ChromeInject.A – is intended to be delivered onto a compromised computer system by other malware for subsequent download into Mozilla Firefox's Plugin folder. Once installed it gets to work every time Firefox is started.

According to BitDefender researchers, the Trojan filters data sent by the victim to a large number of designated banking websites which are used everyday in the UK for online shopping and financial transactions.

Harvested login credentials will be sent to a web address similar to [removed]eex.ru. Both the domain and the hosting server are located in Russia, which points to the origins of this latest e-threat.

“In order to stay safe, home computer users are advised to install effective Internet Security protection and make sure they are updated regularly, to ward off these attempts,” says Viorel Canja, head of BitDefender anti-virus lab.

For further details on the latest malware detected in the wild, please visit BitDefender’s Defense Portal site.

1. All Flash

Flash is great for embedded media and rich internet applications, but it is lousy for designing an entire website. Because a flash movie is self contained within one web-page, it breaks several standard web browsers features. Suppose someone wants to visit the previous page by hitting the back button? Oops, since your website is all Flash, hitting the back button sends visitors away from your website. And if they even bother to navigate back, they won't be on the specific section that they were on before. Now, lets suppose they want to bookmark a specific page on your website or send a page as a link to a friend. Well, once again, because the Flash site is all on one page, bookmarks and links all take the user to the front page of the site instead of the section they are looking for.

2. Intro Movies or Splash pages

In the early days of the web, fancy introductory pages impressed people, but these days the web is all about finding information as quickly as possible. Every time you force a visitor wait or click a link there is a chance they will click the close button instead. Remember, no matter how cool an introductory picture or movie is the first time, repeat visitors are going to get frustrated having to click past it every time they want to use your website.

3. Mystery Navigation

I see a surprising number of website with cool looking images or icons instead of written descriptions for links, and no clear way to tell where any of them go. When it comes to navigation, usability should always come first. No one wants to have to click on every single link on your website just to find the one page they are looking for. Trust me, you can find ways to make your website stand out visually without making it frustrating to use. A visitor should easily be able to tell at a glance where all the links on your website will take them - and if they can't you have a problem.

4. Stock template designs

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and website are often a clients first point of contact with your business. If your website looks generic, outdated, or just plain unprofessional people will take notice. When I see a company that has obviously taken shortcuts on their website, I wonder if they take short cuts with the rest of the work they do.

5. Hard to find Contact Info

You can't close the deal if no one contacts you, so don't give web surfers an excuse to put off giving your company a call. In addition to having an easy to find contact page, put your email and phone number on every page.

TMI's Website is growing again, check out our Managed Services and the related Hosting / Co-Location page.

• Managed Services
• Hosting & Co-location

Our Managed Services include: Server Maintenance & Upgrades, Server Monitoring & Performance Reporting, Application Monitoring & Resource Utilization, Router / Internet Monitoring, Remote Data Backup, Email, and Spam & Virus Protection. Check out our new webpages to learn more

As TMI grows and changes, so does our website. In order to better reflect the diversity of work done at TMI, we've begun expanding and re-writing sections of our website. First, both the Engineering and Web Divisions have been expanded into three separate pages.

For TMI's Engineering and Outsourced IT Division these sections are:

• Engineering Division Overview
• Desktop Management
• TMI's Help Desk

For TMI Web Solutions, these sections are:

• Web Solutions Overview
• Why choose TMI Web Solutions?
• Website Portfolio

In the coming days, we plan to further expand and clarify the different services offered by TMI, and our Managed Services offerings in particular.