Safe Internet Blog

People may resent viruses, trojans, and worms, but believe it or not, computer virus, worms, and trojans are really a masterpiece. Not only that they prove that we really are prone to tragedy as mere human, taking into account that a most lethal virus not only was able to destroy internet network with hundreds of millions of dollars loss, and also that as a social community, we are all becoming connected very closely with each other through the internet, confirmed by how rapidly a virus can spread.

January 2007, the Storm worm started to spread. On October, it has reached and infected 50 million computers, according to scientists. Do you know how many computers and in what time in estimation that a worm named MyDoom infected in January 2004? Hundreds of thousands of computers in one day!

If you compare the damage it can cause with the code size and complexity of a worm or virus, those numbers are unbelievable. Computer virus programs are very uncomplicated and particularly small in size, yet they can cause almost indefinite damage.

What are the kinds of computer malicious software or malwares? Well these are the most common ones:

- Email viruses. Spreading through file attachments on emails, this kind of virus replicates itself by sending the same email attachment to every contacts it can find in the address book of the infected computer. Very bad ones can execute upon being previewed in the email client program.

- Worms. A worm software duplicates itself via networks by taking advantage of security defects, finds its way into any computers and multiplies itself until the whole network is infected.

- Viruses. A virus lives and spreads by parasiting to a real usually big program. It infects other programs by injecting copies of itself onto them.

- Trojans. Named according to an epic story about the same approach, a trojan finds its way into its victim’s computer by fooling that it is a common software. Once it’s got there, not only will it behave as it act act as if it does, if any, but it will also do harms or damages to the infected computer and data.

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1. Is my communication with someone online can’t be seen by others, can I have privacy? Yes you can. You can make use of data encryption by sharing key only to legitimate end users. In case the data do get to other parties, it will not be of any use since it is encrypted thus making it unreadable.

2. What is a hash? Is it the key? A hash value is a string of characters that represent encrypted data. In other words, it is the encrypted data.

3. What does SSL stand for, what does it mean? SSL is an acronym for Secure Socket Layer. SSL is a type of public key encryption.

4. How can a firewall protect my computer? A firewall monitors and filters out unwanted data packets from an Internet connection.

5. What is a proxy server? Proxy servers stands between computers accessing the internet and the web servers. They relay requests from users to web servers and vice versa, without the servers realizing who is behind them. This creates a privacy for the users in that web servers have no idea that the real user interacting with them are behind the proxy server.

6. What is a botnet? It is an network of what we call zombie computers. A bot or zombie computer is a computer that has transformed into automatic machines or bots that are under the control of a malicious operator.

7. What is DDoS what does it stand for? DDoS is Distributed Denial of Service. It is an attack that uses computers over the internet to send millions of requests to a server with the goal of overwhelming and crashing the server. In a large scale DDoS attack, the whole internet traffic is affected.

8. Define computer virus, what does it do? Usually, a computer virus is a malicious code that resides within a big program. Although not all viruses harm computer, there are ones that are recorded to have caused calamities.

9. What is phishing? Phishing is a method intended to fool ignorant people into giving away classified information like bank account numbers, usernames and passwords and credit card information, by faking a legitimate web site.

10. What does Cracker mean? What’s a Black Hat? We call hackers infiltrating secured systems to cause rogue things acquire certain informations as crackers. A black hat hacker is someone who actively attempts to break into systems or use computer viruses to steal information or achieve other purposes.

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I guess you have been in a situation where you are convinced to buy certain goods but regretted later when you’ve got home. I have. I usually categorize that kind of marketing as high pressure psychological selling, because the salesman usually applies high level of psychological pressure on the prospect to finally succeed in selling the goods. Trojans and worms are more and more into these practices of iplementing psychological pressure in order to compromise a victim. Such techniques implements but not limited to the exploitation of human basic psychologies: Curiosity, Greed, and Fear. How do we tell that a trojan or a worm virus is trying to get into our system using a psychological pressure? These are things to beare of to help us tell just prior to their attempts to compromise our system: 1. Is it forcing us to run or download something, for fear of something such as getting our computer infected by a trojan, computer virus or worm? If it is while it’s not at all the active running antivirus software we have installed, we can say that it is definitely a virus, malware, or even a worm. 2. Is it free and giving away a software that's too good to be true even after we cross checked it with other people? At times, it can be just a marketing hype, but it’s a best practice to beware about the urge to download or agreeing on something it is offering. Downloading a program or just opening a page containing java script or flash application would be enough to get our computer compromised by a computer virus, malware, or trojan. 3. Are we aware of the brands (if any)? Is it a rather famous antivirus brand, or just some very popular one, but not an antivirus? At times the viruses take advantage of well known brand names only to trick uncautious people. Do you remember the “XP Antivirus 2008″ virus disguising Antivirus Software Downloads? Its high success rate really was boosted by the “XP” brand, riding on Windows XP’s brand. Lately, a brand new release of the virus is already spreading, one that we know as “XP Antivirus 2009″. 4. Always best to double-check weather the URL or domain name we type is right to make sure it is safe. You have to do this if you wish not to unwantingly enter a phishing site, in which case is a much worse scenario compared to contracting a virus. A rogue site is an latest psychological scam in that it tricked visitors into thinking that it’s the right site they’re searching to visit. Everything they have on the page would in turn then be taken for granted by unsuspecting visitors. 5. If you are not sure about those things mentioned above, consult someone you know who knows better about them. There should be at the very least something certain about it, like a popular brand name of antivirus or computer security software solution, the exact URL or at least domain name of the target site, what should be classified into being too good to be true and what not. The success rate this way of contagion has is surprisingly high, assuming the wide availability of legitimate computer security software and antivirus or Internet Security Software available in the market. Based on this fact, I always tell everyone who asked me about computer security to continuously learn about it, even for just a small bit of knowledge. As only with knowledge even for just a little, can we actually pertain in the safe environment against malicious software.

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