May 20, 2013
News 12 at 6 o'clock / Monday, Jan. 21, 2013
MARTINEZ, Ga. (WRDW) -- If you've been holding onto your old computer because you're worried about polluting the environment or risking your personal information, the wait is over.
A quick scan around the back parking lot of Computer Exchange and you might think you went back into time. Old desktops, laptops and TVs are piled on a conveyor belt.
"What you are looking at is a typical morning of recycled," said Charles Kelly with Computer Exchange.
Mitch Ragand dropped off an old laptop and desktop.
"Here they are recycling them versus putting them in the trash where they go in the landfill," the customer said.
He's brought at least 10 computers here to be recycled over the years.
A few years ago, Kelly partnered with Georgia Tech to come up with a safe way to help folks in the CSRA recycle their computers.
"So we get tons of this at all three of our locations and when I say tons, I mean literally tons," Kelly said.
"In the past, this would go in the landfill," Kelly said.
He says it's not only dangerous to the environment but could also be a danger to you.
Many people store personal information such as Social Security numbers on their computers. Technicians at Computer Exchange either destroy hard drives with a drill or give it back to the customer before recycling the computer.
Computer Exchange is paid by the recycling company for your old computers. However, the company breaks even once they factor in storage and hauling fees.
The cost for recycling an old computer is free for customers.
You can recycling your old electronics at any of the following locations during opening hours:
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Kaspersky Lab warns users about the emergence online of a new version of the Gpcode ransomware program.
The program spreads via malicious websites and P2P networks.
Kaspersky Lab products detect the program as Trojan-Ransom.Win32.Gpcode.ax.
You can read more on our blog.
Kaspersky Lab is monitoring a new email worm which is currently spreading. Emails spreading the worm say “Here you have” in the subject line.
We detect the worm as Email-Worm.Win32.VBMania.
While the servers hosting related downloads have been taken down, we are keeping customers updated and protected against any new variants.
Net-Worm.Win32.Kido exploits a critical vulnerability (MS08-067) in Microsoft Windows to spread via local networks and removable storage media.
The worm disables system restore, blocks access to security websites, and downloads additional malware to infected machines.
Users are strongly recommended to ensure their antivirus databases are up to date. A patch for the vulnerability is available from Microsoft.
Detailed descriptions of Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.bt, Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.dv and Net-Worm.Win32.Kido.fx are available in the Virus Encyclopaedia. A dedicated removal tool is available here.
The new Gpcode variant encrypts files with extensions DOC, TXT, PDF, XLS, JPG, PNG, CPP, H etc. on hard drives using an RSA algorithm with a 1024-bit key.
After encrypting files, the virus leaves a text file in the folder next to the encrypted files with following message:
Currently, we detect the new variant, but we are unable to crack the 1024-bit key. Our analysts are continuing to work on both the key and the virus to resolve this issue.
Kaspersky Lab recommends that all Internet users enable maximum protection from malicious code and network attacks on their computers, refrain from executing suspicious programs received from untrustworthy sources and back up any important information on their computers.
Detection of Virus.Win32.Gpcode.ak was added to Kaspersky Anti-Virus signature databases yesterday, on June 4th, at 15:39 GMT. Please make sure to update if you haven’t already.
If you have fallen victim to Gpcode.ak, try to contact us using another computer connected to the Internet. DO NOT RESTART or POWER DOWN the potentially infected machine. Contact us by email stopgpcode@kaspersky.com and tell us the exact date and time of infection, as well everything you did on the computer in the 5 minutes before the machine was infected: which programs you have executed, which websites you have visited, etc. We'll try and help you recover any data that has been encrypted.
For more information about the malicious program, please read our weblog.
A few hours before this point, there was a noticeable increase in mail traffic of an earlier modification of Warezov - Warezov.do which featured in the October 2006 Top 20.
If you are using Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0 or Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0 with Proactive Protection turned on, new variants will be detected without the need to update your antivirus databases.
A full description of Email-Worm.Win32.Warezov.nf is now available in the Virus Encyclopaedia.
