Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Computer Virus Targeting Healthcare Facilities!

"Be alert to a computer virus targeting healthcare facilities. According to Sophos, this virus is a variant of CXmal/BadLnk-A.
  • The virus is spreading through emails being sent in small batches to facilities, which helps it bypass SPAM filters. 
  • The link contains an invoice in a Microsoft Word document and upon opening, prompts the user with the message, "this file contains active content. Would you like to enable?” 
  • Enabling the content is what activates the virus and allows it to propagate through the system. Please keep in mind that the exact wording may vary. If you receive any suspicious emails, or emails asking you to click on links with which you are unfamiliar, please do not open the link and follow your organizations’ protocol for reporting this situation.
Please be sure to share this with your users and remind them to be diligent when opening and/or responding to emails.
FHere are a few quick reminders for your organization. The IT Staff at the Heart of the Rockies Medical Center in Salida put together a concise and helpful list, and we wanted to share it with you in hopes it increases your awareness and security.
  • Never open emails from unknown or unexpected sender.
  • If the email is legitimate, they will reach back out to you. 
  • Take a quick glance for obvious clues like misspellings in the senders address, subject or body of the email. Short or desperate language meant to encourage a quick/reactionary opening of attachment is often present.
  • Never "run active content" in an attached… even if the email appears to come from a known sender. This is almost always a sign of malicious code embedded in the attachment.
  • Keep your work email account limited to work business. There is no reason to be doing personal email on your work account… it only opens us up to future attacks. 
  • Get a gmail account for personal use… it's free. Most organizations will not allow you access to your personal email so you’ll have to perform those functions from home."

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