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Microsoft is making it harder for scammers to distribute ransomware and other malware through Office documents. However, the tighter block on visual basic macros running by default may frustrate some users. A macro is a way of reducing a series of ... instructions to a single instruction, while VBA (visual basic language) is a way of handling macros in Microsoft programs. It's often used for frequently performed tasks. To give a hypothetical example, a user could create a macro in a spreadsheet that means pressing a couple of keys together which tells the computer to check two columns for any ... (view more)

A security company has warned that a free tool claiming to remove ransomware is in fact ransomware itself. Sophos has also reported that businesses that pay ransoms end up with double the financial costs of those who don't. The company's Paul ... Ducklin examined a tool called "Decrypter DJVU". It's promoted as a way to undo the damage of a strain of ransomware that encrypts files, adds the extension ".djvu" to the name, and demands a payment to decrypt and restore access. (Source: sophos.com ) The tool asks users to type in a personal ID and a file extension, though it appears it doesn't take ... (view more)

The latest Windows 10 update blunder temporarily left some users without full use of the system's in-built antivirus / antimalware protection. Though enthusiasts quickly spotted a workaround, the problem has now been fixed with a Windows 10 update. ... The initial problem wasn't actually a system update to Windows 10 itself that caused the issue, but rather an antivirus definition update file for Windows Defender. Essentially, a "definition update" contains details of the latest known threats that the tool can immediately deal with. For some users, the problem only arose when running a full scan ... (view more)

Another file deletion bug appears to have hit Windows 10's latest update. It's raised questions about Microsoft's review process. This is a separate issue to the recent bug that deleted user documents . The new problem - which is also related to the ... October Update - affects .ZIP files. ZIP files are used to store multiple files (and sometimes backups) into a single, archived file. Archives usually offer a high compression ratio, which means files inside the archive are shrunk. This makes .ZIP files especially useful for downloading files from websites because it takes less time. Duplicate ... (view more)

A newly unleashed ransomware attack doesn't force victims to pay money to regain access to files. Instead, it demands they play a video game. It's not clear yet what the point of the attack is, though it's most likely the work of a prankster who ... wants to test their skills at creating and distributing ransomware without doing any permanent harm. Ransomware is a form of malware that encrypts files on a computer and normally only unlocks them if the victim pays a fee. In most cases every file on the computer is encrypted, meaning that victims are locked out of their systems and unable to access ... (view more)

Microsoft says it used artificial intelligence to not only spot and identify and attempted malware attack, but to block it more than a thousand times in the next half hour. It says the defense was possible thanks to Windows Defender being used ... locally on the victim's computer, as well analyzing the snippet of code using cloud-based antimalware. The company calls it an example of machine learning. This means computers are able to figure things out for themselves, rather than simply following 'true or false' routines that are part of a program. Similar to antivirus, the most basic level of anti ... (view more)

Businesses around the world are reporting computer problems that appear to be another rapidly-spreading ransomware attack. It appears likely to be exploiting the same Windows flaw as the recent WannaCry attack. Details were still emerging at the ... time of writing, but high profile businesses including drug giant Merck, a British advertising agency and a Danish shipping company are known to have been compromised. Ukraine's government network also appears to have been hit. (Source: nytimes.com ) File Index Compromised As with WannaCry, the malware appears to be designed to lock up and encrypt ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Phoebe A. writes: " Dear Dennis, Today I tried to free up some space on my C drive by moving files over to my external hard drive, but Windows gave me an error message, stating that 'Error during copy: the request could not be ... performed because of an I/O device error'. I've also tried using 'TeraCopy' to copy files over, but it keeps freezing on the same files. Can you help? " My response: If you receive an error that says "the request could not be performed because of an I/O device error" when trying to copy or move a file, that usually (but not always) indicates bad ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Tom T. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently had to reinstall Windows and I'm trying to clean up the root directory of my C drive to keep things tidy. I have a Windows.old.000 folder that I would like to remove, but every time I try ... to delete it, I get a window that says 'You need permission to perform this action' and nothing gets deleted. I've tried ccleaner (crap cleaner) and check marked the 'Delete old windows installation' option (under the Advanced menu), but that doesn't work, either. What do I have to do to remove the Windows.old.000 folder and its contents? " My ... (view more)

Chrome browser users have been warned to watch out for a sneaky malware attack. The trick involves a bogus on-screen message that claims the user needs to download a missing font. The people responsible are using hacked websites on the WordPress ... platform to operate the scam. They've altered the page so that the text appears to have been corrupted and is made up largely of symbols such as black diamonds and question marks. The page then displays an on-screen message that's carefully designed to look like a genuine Chrome error message, complete with the correct logos, shapes and even ... (view more)