Amnet Begins to Sell Different Services

Amnet Telecommunications company in Costa Rica decided to enter the Internet services and corporate data business.  It has been offering these services to 30 clients, including stores, banks and small and medium enterprises for 5 months.

To enter the corporate segment, the company invested $3.5 million in infrastructure.  It is only serving customers in the Greater Metropolitan Area (GAM)at this time.

“We are taking advantage of fiber optic infrastructure in order to offer the corporate sector point to point and multipoint data link services and provide corporate Internet,” said Norman Chaves, the company’s corporate services manager.

The links offered by the company are symmetrical, meaning that they have the same megabyte sending and receiving speed, with up to 20 megabytes per connection.

Amnet was the first private company to receive the green light to operate in the Telecommunications market in Costa Rica after the opening of the state monopoly from the Superintendent of Telecommunications.

Five other firms are also allowed to provide Internet, voice over IP (Internet Protocol) and attend business needs.

Before the opening of the monopoly, Amnet was only focused on digital cable and Internet services via cable modem, through an agreement with RACSA.

Amnet invested $1.5 million in the fiber optic network infrastructure, which enables it to provide services only for business customers in the GAM, said Chaves.  However, $2 million more were added to this investment in order to achieve 65% coverage of the country, coast to coast, in the next ten months.

Optic fiber is a bundle through which data is transmitted at the speed of light.  Through this type of link, many companies transfer information with respect to their financial and administrative operations.  Chaves said corporate services are not new to Amnet in Costa Rica.  The firm has been providing it in the rest of Central America, where it also operates.

“We expect to achieve a submarine interconnection and reach an agreement with ICE because we can provide data and Internet corporate links to the rest of Latin America as soon as we do this,” Said the executive .  The official explained that this interconnection will enable a Costa Rican company to link to some of its offices in Guatemala for example.  We will be waiting to see whether this will actually happen.  In Costa Rica, most things usually take much longer to happen than they should.

Downandup, Downadup, Kido!, or Conficker Worm is running rampant and spreading through USB drives

If you judge by the complaints and questions filling the Internet, Windows security looks like it’s already well on its way for its worst year this decade.  The complaints and questions have come about becuase of a worm attack.  The worm is called Downandup, Downadup, Kido!, or Conficker (all the same thing), and it primarily seems to be being delivered via infected USB drives.  Books could be written about people infecting their computers through USB drives.

Screen Shot

How does it work? By tricking you into running the virus by modifying the way “autorun” works when you plug in a drive. Look closely at the screen-shot above and you’ll see two entries for “Open folder to view files.” The one at the top is a phony entry that actually installs the virus on your machine… but of course it’s the default selection that pops up when you plug in a drive. Once installed, the virus spreads like crazy via a separate flaw in Windows networking system (now patched, so be sure to run Windows Update if you haven’t lately) and can quickly infect a whole office. F-Secure has more analysis on the clever way it tricks you into installing the malware yourself.

How bad has it gotten? Estimates range from 3.5 million infected in the first four days after it bean spreading to 9 million impacted… and getting worse. By now you can figure the numbers could top 15 or 20 million.

From an anti-virus standpoint, fixing Downandup isn’t easy. The worm is particularly problematic because of the tricky way it involves the user in installing the software, bypassing auto-installation safeguards, plus its sophisticated way of avoiding detection, as it morphs its code constantly (using randomized elements) to make traditional, signature-based detection almost impossible.

Your best strategy for avoiding Downandup? Turn off AutoPlay/AutoRun on your computer (with Windows X) TweakUI is the easiest way to do it). If you do see an AutoPlay dialog box like the one above, just close it and eject the disc or thumbdrive; browsing the drive manually for individual files should keep you uninfected, but you’re best off not using the drive at all. And of course, make sure your system is fully patched via Windows Update.

What if you already have Downandup infecting your machine? Try your standard antivirus utility as a fix. If that doesn’t work, F-Secure has a removal tool that should get rid of it. Good luck out there.  Our thanks go to Christopher Null, the working guy, for such great information.

TicosLand.com wants its readers in Costa Rica and all over the world to be aware of this pc infection which is running rampant.  Make sure that you exercise caution when you are using an USB drive.  You never know what you are putting into your computer.