# MA-060.112003: MyCERT Alert - Festive Season and Long Holiday Security Alert

**Date:** 18 Nov 2003  
**Source:** https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-060.112003  
**Advisory ID:** MA-060.112003

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With the coming of festive season and long holiday break, MyCERT would like to alert all System Administrators, IT personnel and Internet users to make sure that their systems and networks are properly secured before they leave for their long holidays.
From our experience, we had cases/reports in previous years where servers and websites been compromised and defaced during festive seasons. We hope such incidents will not occur again.
Attached below are some useful guidelines and measures that you may follow to ensure that your systems and networks are properly secured, preventing them from being compromised:
1. Make sure all your systems are installed with latest service packs and patches. If you're running older versions of operating systems or softwares, make sure you have upgraded them to the latest versions as older versions may have some vulnerabilities that can be manipulated by intruders.
2. You may refer to your respective vendors for the latest patches, service packs and upgrades.
3. If you're running services, make sure you close unneeded services/ports except http service and other required services should be filtered and patched accordingly.
4. Make sure anti-virus softwares that are running on your hosts are updated with latest signature files and are enabled to scan all files.
You may refer to the AV sites at:
[https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/articles-content?menu=4b05e0fb-afa1-408f-90ca-ea0edf4aca8b&id=b83f4c4d-f1e2-4a9d-ab55-6389ae1f6efc](https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/articles-content?menu=4b05e0fb-afa1-408f-90ca-ea0edf4aca8b&id=b83f4c4d-f1e2-4a9d-ab55-6389ae1f6efc
)
5. Please check that your systems and networks are configured properly in order to avoid any unnecessary incidents caused by misconfigurations.
6. Make sure loggings of your systems and servers are properly enabled.
7. Organizations are recommended to install network based or host based IDS to alert scannings and other malicious attempts to their hosts.
List of several Intruder Detection Systems
http://www.mycert.org.my/resource/ids.htm
List of several types of sniffers
http://www.mycert.org.my/resource/sniffer.htm
8. It is recommended for home users to install personal firewalls in order to alert the owner of any unauthorized scanning to their machine, and to block any penetration into their system.
More information on home user PC security is available at:
[https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/articles-content?menu=4b05e0fb-afa1-408f-90ca-ea0edf4aca8b&id=9c62b2d3-61e5-4600-b316-851b86e43814](https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/articles-content?menu=4b05e0fb-afa1-408f-90ca-ea0edf4aca8b&id=9c62b2d3-61e5-4600-b316-851b86e43814
)
Please take note that MyCERT will be on duty and standby 24x7 and you may contact us if an incident occurs.
You may report to us via pager or email at:
Email address: <[[email protected]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#3855415b5d4a4c7855415b5d4a4c16574a5f165541)>
Pager numbers: 18630, 18631, 18632 or refer at:
https://www.mycert.org.my/IR/pager/IRpager.html
Do visit MyCERT's website regularly for current updates, latest alerts and advisories at:
[https://www.mycert.org.my](https://www.mycert.org.my/)