# MA-411.072014: MyCERT Alert - Festive Season and Holiday Alert

**Date:** 21 Jul 2014  
**Source:** https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-411.072014  
**Advisory ID:** MA-411.072014

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**1.0    Introduction**
As the Festive season holiday approaches and many users will go on holiday break, we would like to alert System Administrators and Internet users to ensure sufficient measures had been implemented to secure their systems and networks before leaving for the holidays.
There had been past incidents of Intrusions during festive seasons and long holiday break.  Thus, with the release of the alert, we hope such incidents could be prevented and minimized to a certain extent by having proper preventive measures in place.
System Administrators should take extra precautions against any possibilities of Intrusions, phishing attacks, and malware activities during the festive season, by implementing proper preventive measures against the threats. Data Centres and Web Hosting Companies should also take extra precautions against any software or third party add-ons they're running by applying the latest patches/upgrades to prevent intrusions that may exploit unpatched applications.
Financial Institutions must also be vigilant against any possibilities of phishing and fraudulent activities that target Internet banking. Customers must be advised adequately on avoiding themselves becoming victims of phishing and fraudulent activities by applying safe browsing and safe Internet banking practice. Organizations must ensure contact information of System Administrators is made available in the event of a security incident that occurs at or originate from your site.
On the 20th July 2014, we had also released an Alert 
<https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisory?id=MA-410.072014>
Attached below are some recommendations for System Administrators:
1. Make sure systems, applications and third party add-ons are updated with latest upgrades and security patches.
If you're running older versions of operating systems or software, make sure they are upgraded to the latest versions as older versions may have some vulnerability that can be manipulated by intruders. Aside from that, please make sure that your web based applications and network based appliances are patched accordingly.
You may refer to your respective vendors’ websites for the latest patches, service packs and upgrades. You may also refer to MyCERT's website for information on the latest patches, service packs and upgrades by referring to our latest advisories at:
<https://www.mycert.org.my/portal/advisories?id=431fab9c-d24c-4a27-ba93-e92edafdefa5&year=2014&ctype=&keyword=>
2. Make sure Anti-virus software that are running on hosts and email gateways are updated with the 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
)
3. Make sure that your systems are configured properly in order to avoid incidents such as information disclosure, directory listing caused by system misconfiguration.
4. Make sure loggings of systems and servers are always enabled.
5. Make sure always to do daily back up of all your systems.
6. Organizations are recommended to apply defense in depth strategy in protecting their networks. Firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPS), network and host based intrusion detection systems (IDS) can prevent and log most of the generic attacks.
7. Home Users are advised to:
- Make sure your PCs and browsers are up-to-date with the latest upgrades and security patches
- Install Anti-Virus software on your PCs to scans and blocks any malware to the PC. The Anti-virus should be regularly updated with the latest signature files in order to detect new worms/viruses
- You may refer to the following site for links to download anti-virus software.
[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
)
- Do not simply click on links and attachments that they receive via Social Networking Sites or Emails. Extra precautions must be taken when opening the links and attachments.
- Do not fall victim to online scams. Take precautions against online scams that target Internet users.
- Users are recommended the following tips and guidelines on safe Internet at:
[http://www.cybersafe.my](http://www.cybersafe.my/)
Please take note that our office will be closed on 28th and 29th July 2014 respectively. However, if you need to report critical incidents, you can call Cyber999 via the 24x7 Hand phone Reporting. Non-critical incidents can be reported to Cyber999 through our other reporting channels as below.
For further enquiries, please contact MyCERT through the following channels:
E-mail : [[email protected]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#2a4953484f581313136a4953484f58594f495f58435e53044753) or [[email protected]](/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#f69b8f95938482b69b8f95938482d8998491d89b8f)
Phone: 1-300-88-2999 (monitored during business hours)
Fax: +603 89453442
Mobile: +60 19 2665850 (24x7 call incident reporting)
SMS: CYBER999 REPORT EMAIL COMPLAINT to 15888
Business Hours : Mon - Fri 09:00 -18:00 MYT
Web: [https://www.mycert.org.my](https://www.mycert.org.my/)
Twitter:<http://www.twitter.com/mycert>
**References Postal :
Malaysian Computer Emergency Response Team (MyCERT)
CyberSecurity Malaysia
Level 7, SAPURA@MINES
7, JalanTasik, The Mines Resort City
43300 Seri Kembangan
Selangor DarulEhsan
MALAYSIA**