Santa’s Budget

…should include some funding for better IT security .

As if Santa Claus hasn’t got enough to do this week, it turns out he’s fighting off some very, very nasty elves.

The consumer advocacy group stopbadware.org said it was approached this week by an Incline Village, Nev., man who has legally changed his name to Santa Claus, who asked them to help figure out why his Web site was being flagged by Google Inc.‘s Web site filters.

It turned out that Santa’s Web site, Santaslink.net had been hacked.

On Friday, the Web site was still downloading malicious software, according to Roger Thompson, chief technology officer at Exploit Prevention Labs Inc. It exploits a bug in Internet Explorer that Microsoft Corp. patched last August, meaning that people running older versions of the browser could be at risk, Thompson said via instant message.

“The site is hacked,” he said. “If you are not patched, it uses an exploit to silently install a huge amount of adware and spyware.”

The security breach was not expected to delay gift deliveries.

Happy Holidays All!