scan

A government plans to scan every Internet-connected device in the country for vulnerabilities. The agency concerned insists it won't compromise privacy. The scan is the work of the United Kingdom's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). It says its ... looking for zero-day vulnerabilities, meaning security holes that hackers are actively exploiting before a fix is available. The NCSC says it will regularly scan all Internet connected devices based in the UK. It doesn't intend to access any data on devices but instead simply make a connection request. The scanning software will then log any ... (view more)

Microsoft is releasing a major security update to Windows 11 that could theoretically block malicious applications completely. It's such a fundamental change in the operating system that it will require a reset and clean installation of Windows. At ... the moment, most of the built-in security on Windows uses two main approaches. One is to scan any files or links the user wants to open or download, then alerts the user if they match any know threats. This is referred to as file and link scanning. The other is to scan files on the hard drive to look for anything suspicious. This is usually done in ... (view more)

Windows 10's built-in security tool Windows Defender has stopped working properly for some users. There's a workaround for those who want added peace of mind. Exactly what's causing the problem isn't yet clear, but some users are finding both manual ... and automatic scans produce messages such as: "Items skipped during scan: The Windows Defender Antivirus scan skipped an item due to exclusion or network scanning settings." In other cases, the error message reports that the entire scan was skipped. The message isn't proving particularly helpful as it's not clear what items are actually being ... (view more)

Google Chrome users have been surprised to discover that the Chrome browser scans their computers in search of malware. It doesn't appear to be a reason to panic, but arguably Google could have been more up front about it. The scans were spotted by ... Kelly Shortidge who works at a cyber security company. She noticed that the chrome.exe executable file (which is visible in Windows Task Manager) was scanning files in her Windows documents folder. On further investigation, she discovered Chrome has been doing this since around October, 2017. The scans are being done through Chrome Cleanup, a tool ... (view more)

Google has been locking users out of their online documents in what appears to be a glitch. The problem has raised questions over how and why Google scans the contents of documents. The problem is with Google Docs, a service that lets users store, ... edit and share documents online, rather than them having to be stored on a specific computer (and shared by physical media such as USB sticks if necessary). Multiple users are reporting that they've been unable to access files, instead seeing a message saying "This item has been flagged as inappropriate and can no longer be shared" or "We're sorry. ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Ramona A. writes: " Dear Dennis, Recently My Windows 7 laptop kept popping up with ' Windows has detected that your computer's performance is slow ' error messages. I disabled the color scheme to fix the issue (as recommended) but ... the popups kept coming every 3 minutes or so. I suspected I was infected with malware, so I downloaded Malwarebytes Antimalware and did a scan. MBAM found over 1,700 'threats' - one of them was a rootkit. I quarantined all the items, then rebooted and things are much better, however - now the 'mbamservice.exe' is constantly causing high CPU load ... (view more)

Duplicate files are the curse of every computer user - even professional computer technicians have them. While duplicate files are not really something that harms your PC, they do take up disk drive space, slow the PC down (especially when thumbnail ... previews are generated in Windows), and make things very disorganized. So, if you have a large drive - or a couple of them - and store lots of files on your PC, one thing I recommend my clients do is to take some time to manage duplicate files in order to free up space. This not only saves backup space, but also the users' sanity, should they ever ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Jason B. writes: " Dear Dennis, Thanks for all your excellent articles! Somehow my PC got infected with the Trojan: Trojan.Agent.Gen - it was detected by Malwarebytes Antimalware after I ran a scan. Malwarebytes said it needed to ... reboot to clean the infection; I did that, but after another scan, the Trojan is still on my system - I can't remove it! The filename and path of the Trojan is located at %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\windows.vbs. I have also tried removing Trojan.Agent.Gen using Microsoft Security Essentials and ADWCleaner, but neither program will remove it and ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Bill S. writes: " Dear Dennis, I just upgraded to Windows 10. Every time I boot my computer, I receive an error message that says 'Windows Command Processor has stopped working'. There are at least 3 of these notifications ... whenever I sign into Windows 10, and they only happen after I login. I have searched high and low to try and figure out why I keep receiving this error message but I'm completely stumped. Can you help? " My response: This is a good question. When I first upgraded to Windows 10, I also received the error message that 'Windows Command Processor has stopped ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Terry C. writes: " Dear Dennis, I am trying to run the command 'sfc /scannow' (system file checker) through the Windows command prompt to repair corrupt Windows files, but every time I try and run 'sfc /scannow', it stops at 42% ... and gives the error message 'Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation.' Therefore, the 'sfc /scannow' does not complete and I can't repair my corrupt Windows files. How can I fix this so I can finish running the scan and fix my files? " Update 20200116 : I'm getting a lot of ... (view more)