How Hackers Invade Your Computer
Uploaded on 2020-06-26 in TECHNOLOGY--Hackers, FREE TO VIEW
Hackers have been enjoying a boom during the Coronavirus pandemic. Millions of credit card details have been stolen, , along with millions of addresses and ID details, millions of email addresses, dates of birth and social security numbers stolen, all due to poor cyber security. Behind these crimes is the common held belief that the Internet is so large, your own data is irrelevant and no hacker would waste time attacking your computer.
Wrong - hackers are targeting the most vulnerable, insecure unpatched computers that can be hijacked and used as as a platform to launch many other attacks.
The term "hacker" originally denoted a skilled programmer proficient in machine code and computer operating systems. In particular, these individuals could always hack on an unsatisfactory system to solve problems and engage in a little software company espionage by interpreting a competitor's code. Some people even claim that hackers are good guys who simply push the boundaries of knowledge without doing any harm, but that view is seriously wrong..
Computer hackers break into computer systems in order to steal, change or destroy information, often by installing dangerous malware without your knowledge or consent.
Their clever tactics and detailed technical knowledge help them access the information you really don’t want them to have.
Unfortunately, some of these hackers also became experts at accessing password-protected computers, files, and networks and today the term hacker refers to anyone who performs some form of computer sabotage.
Hacker Tools
There now are more than 100,000 known viruses with more appearing virtually daily. The myriad of hackers and their criminal acts can affect any computer user, whether an occasional home user, e-mailer, student, blogger, or a network administrator on site or on the internet.
No matter your level of computer use, you must protect your computer, business, or even your identity.
The best way to know how to protect your computer is to understand the hacker's tools and recognise their damage. In the computer world, there are good guys who create networks that help us communicate, work with others and get information and then there are those not-so-good guys and girls who, for a variety of reasons, like to use their computers to worm their way into those networks and cause trouble. Hackers are motivated to by a number of goals:-
- Stealing secrets
- Obtaining passwords.
- Get credit card information.
- Create so much traffic that a website has to shut down using a technique known as known as DDoS.
Protecting yourself against attacks is a multi-step process, which aims to limit and manage the vulnerabilities of your system. You can protect yourself while online by following some simple but important procedure:-
- Make sure you have all the latest patches for your operating system and applications, these patches generally fix exploitable vulnerabilities.
- Continually check the accuracy of personal accounts and deal with any discrepancies right away.
- Use extreme caution when entering chat rooms or posting personal Web pages
- Limit the personal information you post on a personal Web pages.
- Carefully monitor requests by online “friends” or acquaintances for predatory behavior.
- Keep personal and financial information out of online conversations.
- Use extreme caution when agreeing to meet an online “friend” or acquaintance in person
- Make sure your password is complex: it should include letters, numbers, and symbolic characters in a nonsensical manner.
- Consider getting a hardware firewall and limiting the flow of data to and from the Internet to only the few select ports you actually need, such as e-mail and Web traffic.
- Make sure your antivirus software is up-to-date and check frequently to see if there are new virus definitions available.
- Practice safe email and virus/malware protocols
- Don't open messages from unknown senders as they are often phishing emails that contain malware.
- Immediately delete messages you suspect to be spam.
- Make sure that you have the best security software products installed on your PC.
- Use antivirus protection
- Back up your data.
Right now business and all organisations and individuals need cyber security training and we at Cyber Security Intelligence recommend GoCyber training. These on-line training programs are excellent and engaging for all employees and management: please contact Cyber Security Intelligence for a free trial.
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