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Information Technology News Check Point offers Skype 3.5 blocker
Information Technology News Check Point offers Skype 3.5 blocker | Check Point offers Skype 3.5 blocker |
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| by Stephen Withers | |
| Monday, 24 September 2007 | |
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Skype is an extremely popular IM/voice/videoconferencing product, as evidenced by the howls of protest that followed a recent outage triggered by a large number of participating computers rebooting in a short period following a Microsoft software update. As a result of its popularity, Skype is also being used as a way of disseminating malware. While there have been earlier Skype exploits, earlier this month the company warned users about Ramex.A (aka Skipi.A and Pykspa.D), which spreads by sending a Skype IM to other users asking them to click on a link designed to infect the receiving system. Among other things, the worm modifies the computer's hosts file to prevent security software from updating itself. (Hosts provides a mapping between domains and IP addresses that overrides the normal DNS system.) "With [the latest version of] Check Point, an IT administrator could immediately secure the corporate network against the virus by simply blocking Skype use until the virus storm has passed, or limiting use to versions not affected," Check Point officials claimed. Part of the problem is that Skype is designed to work around firewalls and other security measures. "IM, Skype and P2P applications are exciting new ways to communicate and collaborate, but enterprises must have control over anything with the potential to introduce new threats into the network," said Scott Ferguson, Check Point's regional vice president, Asia. "Check Point is leading the way by ensuring that these management and blocking capabilities extend to the most current versions of consumer software applications, such as Skype v3.5." The downside is that organisations that block Skype and other messaging systems are likely to miss out on the coveted "employer of choice" status among younger workers, who expect to remain connected with friends and colleagues at almost all times.
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