Krebs on Security

Comcast, the nation’s largest residential Internet service provider, announced last week that it is expanding an initiative to contact customers whose PCs appear to be infected with a malicious bot program.

The Philadelphia-based cable Internet company is expanding nationwide a pilot program that began in Denver last year, which automatically informs affected customers with an e-mail urging them to visit the company’s security page. The system also sends the customer’s browser a so-called “service notice,” a semi-transparent banner that overlays a portion of whatever page is being displayed in the user’s Web browser.

Customers can then either move or close the alert, or click Go to Anti-Virus Center, for recommended next-steps, which for Windows customers includes:

• Downloading any missing Microsoft security updates.
• Making sure the customer has some kind of up-to-date anti-virus software running.
• Downloading and running Microsoft’s malicious software removal tool.
• Downloading and installing Secunia‘s free Personal Software Inspector tool, a program that periodically scans the user’s computer for missing security updates for commonly used third party applications, such as Adobe Reader, Flash, and Java, and QuickTime.

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