Yesterday, I attended a security webinar presented by Lenovo and Intel with special guest speaker Vinny Troia. Vinny is a Computer Forensic Specialist and Certified Ethical Hacker, well-known throughout the computer IT world.

Lenovo and Intel presented new ways they are improving hardware to make our computing safer. When it comes to software and user safety, for the most part, the hour and a half I spent in this webinar confirmed things I’ve been telling you for eons: use secure passwords, keep your computer up-to-date, keep your anti-virus up-to-date, etc.

However, Vinny did demonstrate a phishing method that makes an old rule
passé. (If you haven’t read by post on phishing, today would be a good time. You’ll find it HERE.) For many years, I explained that if you received an email with an attachment and you weren’t sure if it was safe to open, you could save it to your computer and scan it with your anti-virus. This is no longer the case. Vinny showed us how an Excel spreadsheet can be infected with software which will compromise the computer (and perhaps an entire network) if the recipient opens the spreadsheet. Because of the way the code is written and then constantly changed, anti-virus scanning shows the file “clean” even though it isn’t.

So, the new rule: don’t open any attachments unless you are certain they are from a reliable source and you are able to confirm that the source actually sent it to you. If you receive any questionable emails with attachments, forget the idea of saving the file and scanning it – just delete it.