Development

Aspedia Australia are committed to the continual improvement of our technology systems as we understand the importance they play in the ongoing success of businesses. As a result, last night (04/05/2015) our systems administrator implemented a new Email Server with a new spam filtering solution that will improve our ability to detect SPAM messages.

We sent our System Administrator Julian De Marchi to the 2015 Linux Conference in Aukland which he has turned into a series of blogs to keep everyone up to date with what is going on in the world of linux.

Part 1:

Microsoft has announced they will be stopping support for their outdated browsers from 2016, only supporting the latest IE release. They will also be helping users transition to the newest update by releasing resources and upgrade guidance.

The federal government is looking at the introduction of a government-wide content-management system. The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) has shown interest in using the open source Drupal Web platform along with delivering the CMS as a cloud service.

Standardising

The Australian Government has introduced new Australian Privacy Principles, and a main topic was adding additional information on the management of personal information which is held by an entity.

Who has Mollom?

All of our client websites that currently have a webform such as a ‘Contact Us’ form and any other type of online form will currently have Mollom turned on.

What does Mollom do

A custom website is more like a building and people usually ask: to construct me a building, how much will it cost? This is a very open-ended question to which there could be a few different responses such as: What kind of building do you want? What are your budgets? What do you need to put in the building? What is the location? What are the construction materials? Do you already have plans?

These are the same main questions you need to answer when creating a website.

What type of building/website do you want?

Recently a record-breaking distributed denial of service attack (DDos) was made on CloudFlare, an online company that operates a global content delivery network. The attack hit their data centres in both the US and Europe. The attack is the largest we have seen and exceeded 400 gigabits per second; this record makes it the largest DDos attack ever recorded.

How the attacks are carried out

Since the Crypto Malware Virus was first detected in early September 2013, the ransomware has become a very profitable and huge success for the group behind it. The unknown group of attackers has performed between 200,000 and 250,000 known system infections worldwide. Not everybody paid the ransomware demand, but of those who did the attackers were able to raise 41,928 bitcoins. Due to the exchange rate and how much each bitcoin is worth (roughly $300 USD), the attackers have now made 40 million dollars! 

Price and Payment

There is a nasty virus called Crypto Malware Virus that is currently doing the rounds. The Virus encrypts all files that it can find and then charges a ransom to decrypt the files.

Why the Virus is so Dangerous

The virus can infect by a simple click by a staff member opening an attachment on a suspicious email. Then without any special permission or breaking network policies, the virus is run successfully. The malware is able to look at every data-related file that person had rights to and encrypts all files.