October 12th, 2009
People may resent viruses, trojans, and worms, but if you really look into them, computer virus, trojans, and worms are as a matter of fact a masterpiece. Not only that they prove that we really are susceptible to tragedy as human being, noting that not only a deadliest virus was able to devastate internet network with hundreds of millions of dollars damage, and also that as a a population of the earth, we are getting closer and closer connected to each other on the internet, shown by how quickly a virus can spread.
January 2007, the Storm worm started to spread. By October, it has reached and infected 50 million computers, according to scientists. Have you ever heard of the worm MyDoom? In only one day, January 2004, it was estimated to have infected hundreds of thousands of computers!
If you contrast the damage it can cause with the code size and sophistication of a worm or virus, those numbers are amazing. Computer virus softwares are very 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. This kind of virus spreads through a file attached to emails, and copies itself by sending the same email attachment to every contacts it can find in the contacts list of the compromised computer. Very bad ones can launch only when being previewed in the email client program.
- Worms. A worm software duplicates itself through networks by taking advantage of security holes, bores its way into every computers and replicates itself until the whole network is infected.
- Viruses. A virus spreads and lives by parasiting to a useful usually big software. It infects other programs by injecting copies of itself onto them.
- Trojans. Named according to a classic story about the same approach, a trojan makes its way into its victim’s computer by fooling that it is a useful program. Once it’s got there, not only will it serve as it act act as if it does, if any, but it will also do harms or damages to the infected computer and data.
Tags: Computer Virus, email virus, malicious software, mydoom, storm worm, trojan, trojan horse, Virus, worm
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October 12th, 2009
1. Can I pass information only to someone without it leaking to anybody else? Yes you can. You can make use of data encryption by sharing key only to legitimate end users. Suppose a third party tapping the communication gets hold of the data, he will still could not make any sense out of it since it’s meaningless unless it is decrypted.
2. What does hash mean? Is it the key? A hash value is a string of characters that represent encrypted data. In short, it is the protected data.
3. What does SSL stand for, what does it mean? SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. SSL falls in the category of public key encryption.
4. How does a firewall work? A firewall monitors and filters out unwanted data packets from an Internet connection.
5. What does a proxy server do? Proxy servers stands between computers accessing the internet and the web servers. They send requests from users to web servers, and retrieve web pages to send to the computers. 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. How does botnet work? It is an army of bots – zombie computers. A bot or zombie computer is a computer that has transformed into bots or automatic machines that are under the control of a malicious operator somewhere.
7. What does DDos do, how does it work? DDos stands for 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 major incident of DDoS attack, global internet traffic is disturbed.
8. How does a computer virus work, what does it do? Usually, a computer virus is a malicious code that resides within a big software. Although not all viruses harm computer, there are ones that are noted to have caused calamities.
9. Phishing? What is it? 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. Cracker, what is it? And Black Hat? What in the h*ll is that? 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.
Tags: black hat, botnet, Computer Virus, cracker, ddos, encryption, firewall, hacker, hash, password, phishing, proxy, ssl, zombie computer
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October 12th, 2009
To get better understanding on how to avoid information theft in maintaining computer security, it is best that we understand more about cookies. This awareness can be partial and of less excitement but we can gain a huge understanding on how they operate and use it for our protection against security threats.
1. What cookies do are storing bits of informations on your computer and its last states. For example, if you’ve visited a site before, meaningyou are a return user, and this is made possible by using cookies. Besides that, it can also save specific informations such as region codes used for routine local weather reports from a site.
2. Internet cookies are produced by a web server to be stored in a computer storage when the user first visits a site. Later in the interaction between the user and the webpage, more cookies may be saved or altered.
3. Cookies are placed in name-value pairs such as “StreeAddress” with “3214, 7th Street” for street address a user last entered in a web page query.
4. Internet cookies can not collect existing information from a computer. The user may be asked to fill in a query about his / her personal data, but a cookie can’t get it alone although it was in the computer drive.
5. Although a web cookie could store various other data, it can’t obtain saved in other cookies.
6. You are allowed to delete all cookies on the computer by going into the Temporary Internet Files folder.
7. Internet cookies are also used for marketing. “Targeting” is highly focused marketing to internet users based on information (like past purchased goods) found in their cookies.
8. Cookies are also used to track users whereever they are in the internet not just in one site. This technology was introduced by DoubleClick company.
9. In 2003, White House Office of Management and Budget forbade the use of persistent cookies, which are cookies that stay active, even after a user has exited out of his or her Web browser. This kind of cookies are easily abused to become spyware and viruses.
10. The small, 1×1 pixel cookies called web bugs attached in banner ads are small 1×1 pixel cookies hidden in banner ads that store cookies onto a machine when a user clicks a banner ad.
Tags: cookie, cookies, doubleclik, internet, internet cookies, targeting, trijan, Virus, web bug, worm
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October 12th, 2009
We have read complaints on other blogs about the PCI standards, claiming they are a burden for merchants and software developers. But when considering the documented link between credit card fraud—which PCI DSS was developed to fight against—and terrorism, perhaps complaints about security standards will fall silent.
Kimberly Kiefer Peretti, Senior Counsel in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Secti on of the USA Department of Justice, recently wrote an excellent white paper, “Data Breaches: What the Underground World of ‘Carding’ Reveals.” In this paper, she gives a concise overview of large scale data breaches by skilled hackers—who is doing it and how, as well as the implications of these breaches.
One of Peretti’s most salient points comes in her discussion of how carding—activities surrounding the theft and fraudulent use of credit and debit card account numbers—is linked to other criminal behavior, including terrorism and drug trafficking. She writes:
“In fact, it seems that the terrorists can be fully aware of the carding underground. Imam Samudra who is a convicted terrorist in Indonesia, specifically referred to credit card fraud and carding as a means to fund terrorist activities in his 280-page autobiography.Samudra was convicted since he sought to fund the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, in part through online credit card fraud.
In a second case connecting terrorism and credit card fraud, three British men were convicted of inciting terrorist murder via the Internet under the United Kingdom’s Terrorism Act of 2000.In this case, Younes Tsouli, Waseem Mughal, and Tariq Al- Daour allegedly ran a network of extremist websites and through al-Qaeda statements communication forums and videos of beheadings and suicide bombings in Iraq and other jihadi propaganda were disseminated.The second phase of the case, the three men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud banks and credit card companies.With regard to these charges, Al-Daour and his confederates allegedly used stolen credit card numbers obtained through phishing scams and Trojan horses to make more than ,5 million iHackern fraudulent charges. In particular, Al-Daour and his co-conspirators used the numbers at hundreds of online stores to purchase equipment and other items, including prepaid cell phones and airline tickets, to aid jihadi groups in the field. In addition, Tsouli and Mughal allegedly used stolen credit card numbers to set up and host jihadi websites. Significantly, the investigation revealed that these individuals were members of one or more carding organizations, including the now defunct Shadowcrew criminal organization.”
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards, PCI DSS, were created by the major credit card companies to prevent these types of data breaches to merchants and payment processors. Although they are not a fool-proof plan against hackers, if a business follows PCI DSS carefully and implements it as part of a holistic security risk management plan, their customer information is less likely to be compromised.And, in turn, a business is joining the squelching of the funding of terrorist organizations. How empowering!
Tags: PCI, PCI compliance, PCI compliant, PCI DSS, PCI DSS compliance
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October 12th, 2009
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. Malwares and computer viruses are widely implementing these psychological tension practices in their ways of spreading and contagion. Such techniques implements but not limited to the exploitation of human basic psychologies: Curiosity, Greed, and Fear. How can we tell when a virus or a malware is psychologically pressing us and attempts to get into our system? Following are some precautions to help us tell just prior to their attempts to compromise our system: 1. Is it pressing us to download and run some program, in the fear of getting the computer worse due to some infection of trojan or computer virus? 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~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. This must be done if you want to avoid deliberately entering into a phishing site, which is way worse than simply contracting 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 uncertain of those that I have mentioned, talk to a friend that knows more about this matter. 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.
Tags: Antivirus Software, Antivirus Software Downloads, computer security, Computer Virus, Fake Antivirus, phishing, rogue site, Security, Virus
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October 12th, 2009
Suppose you are about to use the internet to reserve tickets and want to check out when and who are on the match at a local stadium. When you get in the site, you have to first fill in a test. It is an easy one. In fact, it’s all about how simple it is. Since you are a human, the whole thing should be clean and straightforward. It will be totally different case for a computer, the simple query would be hardly possible to do.
This test is what we usually know as CAPTCHA. The acronym actually stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test. It is there to prevent computer-automated user from getting through. Another term for that is a kind of HIP or Human Interaction Proof. By now sure you have ondergone lots of CAPTCHA tests on various web forms. CAPTCHAs that are widely used nowadays is a sequence of letters but in image form undetectable by machines, and very distorted, undetectable by character recognition software. As a human, you only have to type the right letters in the sequence into a field. If what you typed match exactly the ones in the distorted image, you pass the test, and considered a human.
So you might be wondering why does this all have to be there, to test if it is a human or computer? The main problem is because there are many people out there who are trying to trick the online system. Exploits of weaknesses in online systems are constantly made and perfected by black hats. Although they are probably only a minority of all users on the internet, what they do affects the majority of traffics and web sites. For example, a free dating service might be unstoppably bombarded with an automated account requests from a program. The requests of new accounts could be in a scenario of data farming that’s meant to harm millions of people. With CAPTCHA tests to sort out computer programs, those ventures can be reduced by many.
Tags: automated, black hat, captcha, computer security, exploitations, exploits, hacker, internet security, Security
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