What to do with old computers, printers, etc? If you're like me, you have a number of computers and peripherals sitting in your garage. Finally a company has caught onto the opportunity to make a profit while helping the environment.

Staples is starting a program to recycle old computer equipment. It's relatively inexpensive ($10/item) and it's an expansion of their existing recycling program for cell phones. Here's the press release.

Just before you jump in your car and head over to your local Staples with your old laptop circa 1998, just remember a couple of things. First, check to see if your local Staples offers this service because it's not rolled out nationwide. Secong, remember to boot up the machine and wipe your hard drive. If you don't do that, you just might expose proprietary or personal information, that you'd prefer to keep private.

Posted by andreyee in Odds and Ends | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Exploit Prevention Lab blog reports on how hackers are using Google sponsored links to infect machines with a variant of the MDAC exploit. Here's how it works -

Popular Google searches like "Better Business Bureau" will turn up a rogue link leading to a malicious site. In the case of "Better Business Bureau" search, the query actually turned up the rogue link as the #1 sponsored site. However, before taking you to the BBB site, it actually sends you to smarttrack.org which sounds innocuous enough...except that it's not.

Smarttrack.org uses a variant of the MDAC exploit to install a backdoor and a post-logger on your system. The postlogger targets the websites of top banks around the world with a phishing attack to entice online banking customers to unintentionally reveal vital information. What makes this both a clever and insidious use of Google links is that most browsers do not provide a preview address with Google sponsored links (the way they do with most other links).

And one other thing - Google suspended the accounts of the malicious sponsored links. Thought I should mention that. If you want to read the latest on this, here is a report with Google's response to this.

Posted by andreyee in Alerts/Warnings | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)