 PC Advice
|
|
|
 |
Security |
Today's Internet is filled with potential hazards, pitfalls, and dishonest individuals. Every day it seems another security incident hits the papers or a new threat is announced by virus protection companies. This can lead novices to avoid using the medium's vast resources altogether, mainly due to fear and a lack of knowledge regarding the nature of these threats. What's a virus? How do hackers work? How do I know if mail messages are really from my bank?
Knowledge is power
The best way to avoid threats, whether on the Internet or elsewhere, is to know what they are and how they work. To start, I'll offer some brief descriptions of the more common threats you're likely to encounter. Each will be covered in more depth in subsequent articles.
The five most common threats to be found on the 'Net include:
- Viruses. These are pieces of software that, like their biological counterparts, attempt to create copies of themselves. In computing terms, copying usually involves spreading from one machine to another via network connections, electronic mail messages, or other methods. Viruses may or may not cause damage to your PC.
- Spam. Also known as Unsolicited Commercial Email or UCE, spam simply involves dishonest individuals or companies that send millions of duplicate messages to unsuspecting users. Most ISPs prohibit such activities, so many spammers make use of illegal means, such as hacked systems owned by others or stolen accounts.
- Spyware. Another software based threat, spyware involves programs installed without your knowledge or consent that monitor the activities on your machine. These activities may include what you type on the keyboard (e.g. a "keylogger"), the Web sites you visit, or even the data on your hard disk. The data gathered by this method is then transmitted over an active network connection to some interested party.
- Phishing. This type of attack has become popular in the last few years, and is more a social engineering approach than a technological one. It involves forged mail messages, often purporting to be from a bank or other financial institution, that use various methods to entice users into clicking on an embedded link that takes them to the phisher's Web site. Such attacks can be used to validate mail addresses (if you click on the link, it means someone received the message) or to deceive the recipient into revealing personal information.
- Pharming. A relatively new type of attack, this is somewhat related to phishing since it involves the creation of Web sites that are nearly perfect copies of other, legitimate sites. Most often, these involve banks, brokerages, or other financial institutions. The objective of the game is to trick or redirect others to these bogus Web sites in order to steal their login and password data. The owners of the pharming site then use this data to log into the real bank's site and drain the account of the hapless victim.
- Hacking. This is a general purpose term that describes most of the activities I've already talked about (people who write spyware often do so in order to "hack into" other peoples' machines). In a more basic sense, those who attempt to gain illicit access to systems using network, password, OS, or other weaknesses are engaged in hacking. To complicate things further though, programmers often refer to obscure and tricky coding methods as "hacks," and the term may also be used to describe legitimate activity. Not all hackers are evil; motive and objective determine whether this is the case.
Now you know, in a basic sense, what all these terms mean. Other threats exist, but they're less common and more esoteric in nature so I'll leave them for later discussion.
|
|
|
Free Scan
|
Remove and block malicious items from your computer thereby boosting the speed of your PC Instantly!
|
|
