The IT Nerd

Source: McAfee

Shawn Mendes has displaced Justin Bieber as the most dangerous celebrity for Canadians to search for online. For the eleventh year in a row, McAfee researched famous individuals to reveal the riskiest celebrity to search for online. While the list has historically included a mix of musicians, actors and TV hosts, this year’s research identified musicians exclusively as the “most dangerous” in both Canadian and global results. The research reveals which celebrities generate the riskiest search results that could potentially expose their fans to malicious websites.

Canada’s Most Dangerous Celebrities are all musicians, with Shawn Mendes leading the pack at No. 1 in his debut on the list. Singer and songwriter Mendes sparked his career by posting song covers on Vine in 2013. Since then he’s released two albums that both debuted on at number one at U.S. Billboard 200. Several musicians returned after earlier appearances, including Justin Bieber (No. 2), Avril Lavigne (No. 3), and Drake (No. 6). Rounding out the list are Celine Dion (No. 4), Carly Rae Jepsen (No. 5), and Alessia Cara (No. 7).

In the U.S., Avril Lavigne topped the list. She’s sold more than 40 million albums worldwide, and is the second best-selling female artist in Canada of all time. Today, Lavigne adds “first female musician to take the No. 1 spot on the McAfee Most Dangerous Celebrities study” to her achievements. Lavigne was ranked number two in 2013 finishing behind Lily Collins on the list. Bruno Mars (No. 2) made his debut this year in second place followed closely behind by Carly Rae Jepsen (No. 3). Musicians Zayn Malik (No. 4), Celine Dion (No. 5), Calvin Harris (No. 6), Justin Bieber (No. 7), Diddy (No. 8), Katy Perry (No. 9) and Beyoncé (No. 10) round out the rest of the U.S. top 10 list.

Cybercriminals continue to use the fascination of consumers with celebrity culture to drive unsuspecting users to potentially malicious websites that can be used to install malware, steal personal information and even passwords.

Searching for “Avril Lavigne free mp3” Results in a 22% Chance of Landing on a Malicious Website

The global music market grew nearly 6% in 2016, so it’s clear that music continues to be a big part of the daily lives of consumers, and as a result, no surprise that the top 10 celebrities are from the music industry. As artists go on tour, and release new albums and songs, the appetite for more content from these singer-songwriters continues to grow.

The top Canadian celebrities from this year’s study with the highest risk percentage are:

The top 10 celebrities from this year’s U.S. study with the highest risk percentage are:

How to Search Safely

• Be careful what you click. Are you looking for a sneak-peak at new material from Shawn Mendes? It’s better to wait for an official release than to visit a third-party website that could contain malware.
• Searching for free MP3s? Watch out! Searching for “free MP3” returned the highest number of risky websites, so it’s important for consumers to be vigilant and ensure they are searching safely.
• Browse with security protection like McAfee WebAdvisor. This McAfee tool can help keep you safe by identifying malicious websites and warning the user before they click. Download this free tool here: https://mcafee.com/mcafeewebadvisor.
• Use cross-device protection. As our daily activities become more ingrained in our digital lives it’s important to keep everything protected. A comprehensive security solution, like McAfee Total Protection, can help ensure that your devices are protected against malware, phishing attacks and device-specific protection in the event of loss or theft.

For More Information:

• To learn more about the study, check out:
  • Blog post from Gary Davis: https://securingtomorrow.mcafee.com/consumer/most-dangerous-celebrities-2017/
  • Twitter: Follow @McAfee_Home for online safety tips, and use the hashtag #RiskyCeleb to discuss the Most Dangerous Celebrities of 2017
  • English and French infographics, and tip cards for Facebook and Twitter

• Better Anti-Malware Protection: McAfee continues to invest in its next generation anti-malware engine, delivering improved protection while maximizing on device performance, based on recent AV-Test and AV Comparatives evaluations, both on the PC and mobile*. The engine’s detection abilities, including protection against zero-day malware, continues to improve as the engine connects more endpoints and the cloud based machine learning defends against attacks.
• Redesigned User Interface: This year’s lineup features a fully redesigned interface that is consistent on both Windows and Mac-based computers and provides users with security reports aimed at educating and informing about the latest threats and personalized recommendations on how to optimize their protection. Additionally, the download time is shorter due to a reduction in software size.
• Android Enhancements:
  • Enhanced Wi-Fi Security: Allows users to connect with confidence on Wi-Fi networks by indicating those which are safe and those that should be avoided
  • Ransomware Removal: McAfee Mobile Security will kill the process of a ransom app in the background as soon as it is detected, then it alerts the user to remove the app

• McAfee Secure Home Platform: Helps protect connected devices, including Internet of Things devices and appliances, on a user’s home network from a variety of threats that can occur at the point of connection into the home. Delivers flexible security features such as device blocking and parental controls that can be managed from an easy-to-use mobile app with real time notifications. More information here.
• McAfee Safe Family: Helps parents protect their kids from exposure to inappropriate digital content by providing app and web usage monitoring capabilities, time controls on devices and apps, location monitoring and more. More information here.
• McAfee Safe Connect: Allows users to securely connect to the internet through bank-grade encryption, helping protect them against attempts to capture sensitive information. More information here.

With a robust offering and customer-centric approach, McAfee continues to deliver on its commitment to helping consumers connect with confidence. For pricing, availability and more information on the consumer product lineup, visit www.mcafee.com/consumer.

A new McAfee survey of Canadian students found one-in-four respondents cheat using mobile devices, and girls more often reported being cyberbullied than boys. High school students between the ages of 14 and 18 participated in the online questionnaire between June 28 and July 5.

Here’s some highlights:

Internet connected devices at school

• 82% of the students spend at least one hour per day using an internet connected device during school hours for school-specific work
  • One out of five of the students (22%) do so for even 5 hours or more
• 73% of the students think that their school takes the necessary steps to ensure the school-owned devices they use are protected from cyber threats
  • 6% think their school doesn’t take the necessary steps, and 22% don’t know

Cybersecurity education/guidelines from school

• 78% of the students have been provided with cybersecurity education/guidelines from school before they were allowed to access school-owned connected devices
  • 34% get regularly education/guidelines throughout the year
  • 32% received instructions only once before they started using connected devices
  • 12% state that their teacher tried to talk about staying safe online but that the student knew more about cyber security that the teacher
• 22% didn’t get any cybersecurity education/guidelines before allowed access to access school-owned connected devices

Cybersecurity education/guidelines from parents

• Slightly more than one third of the parents (36%) regularly talk with their (14-18 year old) children about how to stay safe
  • 13% of the 16-18 year old children have never talked with their parents about how to stay safe online

Cyberbullying

• 18% of the 14-18 year old children stated to have been cyberbullied
• Females get cyberbullied more often (21%) than in males (14%)
• Facebook (58%), Instagram (37%) and Snapchat (28%) are mostly used for cyberbullying
• 40% of the children 14-18 have experienced or seen cyberbullying before 9^th grade
• Most children (69%) would feel comfortable talking to a teacher, coach or school administrator if they had been cyberbullied
  • 16-18 year old females are least comfortable talking to someone of school (66%)
• More than half of the student (52%) feel that teachers and school openly discuss cyber bullying and are trying to prevent it
  • 26% feel that school openly discuss it but are not trying to prevent it
  • 10% feel that school neither discusses nor tries to prevent it
  • 12% think that school wouldn’t know how to prevent it
• More than one third of the students (35%) feel that cyber bullies aren’t being reprimanded or disciplined enough
  • Especially the girls feel that cyber bullies don’t get in much trouble at all (39% of the females feel that way versus 30% of the males)

Access to social media sites

• 23% of the students successfully tried to get around the cyber restrictions put in place by school to get access to banned content
• More than half (63%) of the students were able to access any (30%), or some (33%) social media sites on school-owned connected devices
• Most visited social media websites, using school-owned connected devices in the classroom, are YouTube (63%), Facebook or Facebook Messenger (56%) and Instagram (40%)
  • Followed by Twitter (31%) and Snapchat (27%)

Cheat with connected devices

• One out of four (25%) students admit to have used a connected device in the classroom to cheat on an exam, quiz, project, or other assignment
  • Most did so with a personal-owned device (16%), others with a school-owned device (5%).
  • Some did with both (4%).
• 44% claim to have seen or heard of another student using a connected device in the classroom to cheat on an exam, quiz, project or other assignment

About this study

• In June – July 2017 McAfee LLC. conducted a study about going back to school.
• In multiple countries almost 4,000 high school students (9^th till 12^th grade) within the age of 14 – 18 years participated in the study.
• This study reflects the answers of 500 people in CANADA.

McAfee’s Gary Davis has also written a blog highlighting top takeaways from the global results.

Source: McAfee

Check out the blog post from Gary Davis, chief consumer security evangelist on this topic.

• Only 43 per cent of survey respondents went on vacation in the last year with the intent to unplug.
• 52 per cent indicated they spend at least an hour a day on vacation using their connected devices.
• Despite their willingness to unplug, 52 per cent of individuals in their 20s reported they experienced anxiety because of unplugging compared to 37 per cent of people in their 40s.
• 58 per cent of respondents know how to check if a Wi-Fi network is secured and safe to use; despite this knowledge less than half (49 per cent) take the time to ensure their connection is secured.

For more information on tips for vacationers to stay secure while on the road, check out the blog post here from Gary Davis, chief consumer security evangelist.

McAfee Inc. today released its McAfee Labs Threats Report: April 2017, which details the challenges facing threat intelligence sharing efforts, probes the architecture and inner workings of Mirai botnets, assesses reported attacks across industries, and reveals growth trends in malware, ransomware, mobile malware and other threats in Q4 2016.

• Volume. A massive signal-to-noise problem continues to plague defenders trying to triage, process, and act on the highest-priority security incidents.
• Validation. Attackers may file false threat reports to mislead or overwhelm threat intelligence systems, and data from legitimate sources can be tampered with if poorly handled.

• Quality. If vendors focus just on gathering and sharing more threat data, there is a risk that much of it will be duplicative, wasting valuable time and effort. Sensors must capture richer data to help identify key structural elements of persistent attacks.

• Speed. Intelligence received too late to prevent an attack is still valuable, but only for the cleanup process. Security sensors and systems must share threat intelligence in near real time to match attack speeds.
• Correlation. The failure to identify relevant patterns and key data points in threat data makes it impossible to turn data into intelligence and then into knowledge that can inform and direct security operations teams.

• Triage and prioritization. Simplify event triage and provide a better environment for security practitioners to investigate high-priority threats.
• Connecting the dots. Establish relationships between indicators of compromise so that threat hunters can understand their connections to attack campaigns.
• Better sharing models. Improve ways to share threat intelligence between our own products and with other vendors.

• Malware growth. The number of new malware samples slowed 17 per cent in Q4, while the overall count grew 24 per cent in 2016 to 638 million samples.
• Mobile malware. The number of new mobile malware samples declined 17 per cent in Q4, while total mobile malware grew 99 per cent in 2016.
• Ransomware growth. The number of new ransomware samples dropped 71 per cent in Q4, mostly due to a drop in generic ransomware detections, as well as a decrease in the activity of the Locky and CryptoWall strains. The number of total ransomware samples grew 88 per cent in 2016
• Mac OS malware. Although still small compared to Windows threats, the number of new Mac OS malware samples grew 245 per cent in Q4 due to adware bundling. Total Mac OS malware grew 744 per cent in 2016.

• Spam botnets. Spam email messages from the top 10 botnets dropped 24 per cent in Q4 to 181 million emails. They generated 934 million spam messages in 2016 overall.

• Reported security incidents. McAfee counted 197 publicly-disclosed security incidents in Q4 and 974 publicly-disclosed security incidents in 2016. Security incidents are events that compromise the integrity, confidentiality, or availability of information assets. Some, but not all, of these incidents are breaches. Breaches are incidents that result in the confirmed disclosure (not just potential exposure) of data.

• Public sector cyber-attacks. The public sector experienced the greatest number of incidents by far, but McAfee believes this may be the result of stricter requirements for reporting incidents, as well as an increase in attacks related to the U.S. election process, mostly voter database incidents and defacing of election websites.
• Banking and gaming attacks. A Q3 jump in incidents in the software development sector was due to the rise in attacks on gaming platforms. In the finance sector, the SWIFT attacks on the banking sector led to a Q2 jump in incidents.
• Botnet activity. The KelihosC botnet, a recent purveyor of phony pharmaceuticals and Russianautomotive supplies (such as “winter and summer tires at competitive prices”), increased its overall volume during Q4.

More information on the survey’s findings is available in a blog post from Intel Security’s Chief Consumer Security Evangelist and Vice President, Global Consumer Marketing, Gary Davis.

Intel Security today launched its 2017 consumer security lineup featuring security innovations to better protect the devices people use every day against the latest threats. The centerpiece of the new portfolio is a next-generation anti-malware engine that offers more efficient and effective detection by offloading analysis to the cloud. In addition, McAfee AntiVirus Plus, McAfee Internet Security, McAfee Total Protection and McAfee LiveSafe offer key cross-device enhancements that make it even easier for users to protect their digital lives.

According to the McAfee Labs Threats Report: June 2016, new ransomware has increased 120 per cent since Q1 of 2015 and more than 4.7 billion records have been stolen since 2013, highlighting the need for consumers to keep security top of mind as cybercriminals use increasingly sophisticated attack methods. With most consumers owning more than three connected devices, and the increased volume of threats, it has become critical to implement security measures to protect their data, especially as more devices are cloud-connected.

New Consumer Portfolio Offers Enhanced Protection and Better User Experience

The 2017 McAfee product line provides protection for popular household devices – from PCs to Macs and smartphones to tablets – and is complemented by a new anti-malware engine to provide a more efficient and effective security solution.

Key features and enhancements include:

• Real Protect: The McAfee Next Generation Anti-Malware Engine combines proven detection methods with an innovative malware unmasking system that uses behavioural analytics and machine learning to detect and block malware without the need for human research. This cloud-centric, automated approach is an industry first and enables more effective detection responses to emerging threats.
• Cross-device Innovations: The 2017 lineup includes innovations to our Mac and Android protection capabilities, resulting in a 100 per cent detection result in the latest AV-Comparatives independent test and a perfect score of 13 in the latest AV-Test respectively.
• Multifactor Password Management: True Key by Intel Security offers multifactor authentication for consumers to securely log in to their websites using unique factors like facial recognition and fingerprint. New updates include: master password reset and data import from other password managers. The True Key app is included with McAfee LiveSafe, McAfee Total Protection and McAfee Internet Security.

These improvements enable consumers to interact online in a safer and more secure environment, with the ability to manage their security and add new devices from anywhere and at any time. For pricing, availability and more information on the consumer product lineup, visit https://www.mcafee.com/consumer/en-ca/store/m0/index.html.