If we could tell the hackers out there to take a break, we seriously would! We mean, come on, the holidays are at our doors and the last thing we’d want to do right now is deal with hacks and attacks. But we know this isn’t a possibility and a recent attack on Adobe in the first week of this month has proved just that.

Unknown hackers had launched “limited, targeted attacks” against high-value Windows users, exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in Adobe’s PDF Reader software. The attacks were observed in the wild against Windows users running Adobe Reader version 9.4.6, according to a warning from Adobe, and we assume an emergency patch for Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x for Windows has already been released because Adobe had planned to ship it “no later than the week of December 12, 2011.” Adobe has rated this issue as a “critical” one that currently haunts Adobe Reader X (10.1.1) and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh, Adobe Reader 9.4.6 and earlier 9.x versions for UNIX, and Adobe Acrobat X (10.1.1) and earlier versions for Windows and Macintosh. And the company has warned that this vulnerability (CVE-2011-2462) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.

Adobe’s newer Reader X software also has the vulnerability but there are anti-exploitation roadblocks in that version. That explains why the company is in no hurry to release Reader X updates.

But then why is Windows on its high priority list? Look at what Adobe security chief, Brad Arkin, has to say about that, “The reason for addressing this issue quickly for Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.4.6 for Windows is simple: This is the version and platform currently being targeted. All real-world attack activity, both in this instance and historically, is limited to Adobe Reader on Windows. We have not received any reports to date of malicious PDFs being used to exploit Adobe Reader or Acrobat for Macintosh or UNIX for this CVE (or any other CVE).” Focusing this release on just Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x for Windows also allows Adobe to ship the update much earlier, thus mitigating threats.

Likewise, Arkin has also made a plea to Adobe users to upgrade to the latest and greatest versions. It goes on as follows:

I’d like to take this moment to encourage any remaining users still running Adobe Reader or Acrobat 9.x (or worse, older unsupported versions) to PLEASE upgrade to Adobe Reader or Acrobat X. We put a tremendous amount of work into securing Adobe Reader and Acrobat X, and, to date, there has not been a single piece of malware identified that is effective against a version X install. Help us help you by running the latest version of the software!

So are you up for the upgrade?  Get it here!

Don’t you feel that sometimes, the simplest of tasks are the hardest to do? We do too! And if you have similar feelings when it comes to adjusting the line spacing between texts and paragraphs (for Microsoft Word 2010), here are some tips to help you.

Change the line spacing

If you want to change the line spacing for an entire document, it’s simple. Just apply a Quick Style set that uses the spacing that you want and you’re done. To do that, you’ll have to go through the following steps:

• Go to the Home tab and in the Styles group, click Change Styles.
• Point to Style Set, and point to the various style sets. Use the line preview with the help of which you can notice how the line spacing changes from one style set to the next.
• On spotting the spacing you like, click the name of the style set.

However, if you want to change the line spacing for a portion of the document, you should select the paragraphs and change their line spacing settings. Here’s how you can do that:

• First, select the paragraphs for which you want to change the line spacing and on the Home tab, go to the Paragraph group and click Line Spacing.
• Either click the number of line spaces that you want or click Line Spacing Options, and then select the options that you want under Spacing.

If you’re confused about which line spacing options to choose, this list might be of help:

• Single  - This option accommodates the largest font in that line, plus a small amount of extra space. The amount of extra space varies depending on the font that is used.
• 1.5 lines -   This option is one-and-one-half times that of single line spacing.
• Double -   This option is twice that of single line spacing.
• At least -  This option sets the minimum line spacing that is needed to fit the largest font or graphic on the line.
• Exactly – This option sets fixed line spacing which is expressed in points. If the text is in a 10-point font, for example, you can specify 12 points as the line spacing.
• Multiple -  This option sets line spacing that can be expressed in numbers greater than 1. Setting line spacing to 1.15, for example, will increase the space by 15 percent, and setting line spacing to 3 increases the space by 300 percent (also called triple spacing).

NOTE   Word increases the spacing for a line that contains a large text character, graphic, or formula. If you want to space all lines evenly within a paragraph, use exact spacing and specify an amount of space that is large enough to fit the largest character or graphic in the line. Items that appear cut off can be dealt with by increasing the amount of spacing.

Change the spacing before or after paragraphs

Changing the spacing between paragraphs for an entire document requires you to apply a Quick Style set that uses the spacing that you want. It has been explained in detail in the following steps:

• Go to the Home tab and in the Styles group, click Change Styles.
• Point to Style Set, and point to the various style sets. Using the live preview, notice how the line spacing changes from one style set to the next.
• When you see spacing that you like, click the name of the style set.

Once you have applied a style set, you can customize the spacing by using the new paragraph spacing options. On clicking one of these options, the line and spacing settings of the style set are overridden. Here’s how you can use the paragraph spacing options to change the spacing:

• On the Home tab, in the Styles group, click Change Styles.
• Point to Paragraph Spacing, and then click the option that you want.

If you want to change the spacing before and after selected paragraphs, select the paragraph before or after which you want to change the spacing. On the Page Layout tab, in the Paragraph group, under Spacing, click the arrow next to Before or After and enter the amount of space that you want. Keep in mind that paragraphs are followed by a blank line, and headings have extra space above them by default.

So the next time you’re having trouble adjusting the line spacing between texts and paragraphs, do follow the steps given above. After all, tasks that are troublesome become easy with a little bit of help, don’t you think?

Need IT Support?  Give your IT support a call today, we are here to help you with all your business IT needs.

As if Small- and Medium-sized Business owners don’t have enough to worry about, an increase of “hacktivism” has been predicted for 2012 by Kroll, an Information Technology (IT) consulting company. Cybercrimes are nothing new, but cyber criminals have more ways to infiltrate a small-business owner’s private company data. Just because a company is small – meaning it has 500 employees or fewer and less than $5 million in annual revenue – that doesn’t automatically remove it from a cyber thief’s list of possible targets. Everyone is at risk, according to Kroll, especially small and medium businesses.

Innovations like the cloud and geolocation technology are two-faced Januses that open doors of convenience for businesses on one side, while simultaneously opening portals of enormous potential for thieves on the other. It doesn’t help that more and more businesses provide their employees with company laptops and/or smart phones that sometimes don’t have the kind of firewall and anti-spyware protection that they should. And if a lost or stolen laptop or smart phone isn’t password protected, the data within is at a thief’s disposal.

Besides predicting an increase in cyber-based mayhem for 2012, Kroll also predicts that two federal geolocation tracking bills that were introduced in 2011 will never become laws. The Location Privacy Protection Act, which was introduced by Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), seeks to close current federal law “loopholes” that, according to Franken, allow device manufacturers, app developers and telephone companies that offer wireless Internet service to freely share their consumer location information with third parties. The Location Privacy Protection Act pertains to non-governmental entities, but the GPS Act, which was introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), covers both governmental and non-governmental entities, including law enforcement. Under the GPS Act, a person must give prior consent before a company could share location information, and law enforcement would have to obtain a warrant before a company could disclose such information about one of its customers.

The two aforementioned bills were introduced long before developer Trevor Eckhart posted a YouTube video detailing the dangers of the Carrier IQ app, which Sprint says it has disabled, that logs every keystroke a user makes and every URL he visits – even secure ones – and sends the information back to the carrier’s database. T-Mobile still has the Carrier IQ app on its HTC Amaze 4G, Samsung Galaxy S II, Exhibit II 4G, LG myTouch, LG myTouch Q, LG DoublePlay and the Blackberry 9900, 9810 and 9360 devices. The potential dangers of such an app exist not only for individual users, but for the carriers as well.

Despite Facebook’s privacy missteps, social engineering attacks, Kroll says, involve thieves using “clever tactics to coerce end users into disclosing sensitive information, downloading malware or both.” To prevent this type of cyberattack, as well as all the others, companies will have to become more vigilant when it comes to keeping track of their employees’ Internet activities and increase firewall and anti-spyware protection on company-issued devices.

Small- and medium-sized business owners have a lot to look forward to in 2012, but they have a lot to prepare for, too, according to IT consultant Kroll. As companies move more of their business operations to the Internet and the cloud, they give cyber criminals more opportunities to steal or corrupt important company data.