Internet Threats

Internet Security threats. They are out on the Internet and while using the Internet for everyday tasks there is a good possibility of being attacked without even knowing how the attack occurred.  There are some simple tasks that you can do to avoid these attacks from infiltrating your computer.  There are many types of Internet attacks and it’s important to understand how these attacks work.  Let’s look at some of them.

Spam – Spam is basically flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it.  Most spam is commercial advertising and costs the sender very little to send.  Most of the costs are paid by the recipient or the carriers rather than the sender.

Phishing (pronounced “fishing”) – Phishing is an attempt to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information such as user names, passwords, and credit card details by disguising as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

Trojan horse – A Trojan horse is a software program that disguises itself as an application on an individual’s computer.  It does not function like a virus or a worm but it can be just as harmful.  For example, a Trojan horse may promote that it will attempt to remove viruses from a computer; however, instead of removal it will infect a virus on your computer.

Malware – Malware is basically malicious freeware.  A computer hacker can use malware in order to steal your personal information.

Denial of Service – These are the most serious online threats as remote computers can take over your system in this process.  A denial of service attack is an effort to make one or more computer systems unavailable.  It is typically targeted at web servers, but it can also be used on mail servers, name servers, and any other type of computer system.

Viruses – A virus is a computer program designed to cause harm on a computer.  They can spread in various ways, plus there are many types of viruses.

Types of Viruses

• Macro – Created to infects on some applications or programs that contain macros.
• Memory resident – These types attach themselves inside the computer memory and get activated every time the operating system infecting other opened files.
• Overwrite – Deletes any information in a file they infect, leaving the files partially or completely useless once they are infected.
• Direct Action – These viruses mainly replicate or take action once they are executed.  They are generally found in the hard disk’s root directory, but keep on changing location.
• Directory – Also known as a cluster virus or file system virus. They infect the computer’s directory by changing the path which indicates the file location.  They typically are found on the disk but only affect the directory which indicates the file location.
• Boot – As the name implies. Boot viruses make it nearly impossible to start-up a computer from a disk drive.
• Encrypted – This type of virus uses encrypted code techniques which makes it hard to detect on anti-virus software.  Once the code is decrypted and spread, the anti-virus software can then identify it.
• Stealth – These viruses try to trick the anti-virus software by intercepting its request to the operating system.  They have the ability to hide making it harder to detect.
• Sparse – Sparse viruses have numerous techniques.  For example, it may only infect every 20^th time the file is executed or whose name begins within a certain range of the alphabet.  There are infinite possibilities.

Not Viruses but Still Nuisances

• Logic Bombs – While not considered a virus, logic bombs can be destructive on a computer.  The object is to destroy data on a computer only when certain conditions are met.  Logic Bombs go undetected until they are launched, making the results catastrophic.
• Worms – Again, while a worm is technically not a virus. It acts similar to one.  It has the ability to self-replicate and can lead to negative effectson your computer.  These can be detected and eliminated by anti-virus software.

Most anti-virus software offer software that is bundled so that includes additional software that can protect your computer from these threats.  They also include live updates that you can download and install making the software stay current and also making your computer less vulnerable.

I hope you found this information helpful.  Please feel free to forward it on to others.  If you would like to learn more about this topic or would like to request a topic, please contact me. If you missed any past newsletters or would like a printed copy, visit my website www.mdsystemsolutions.com.

Until next time…Happy Computing!!!