In many ways, the Internet resembles a fast-growing city that sprang
up from a bucolic rural setting. In the span of a few short years,
open fields have been transformed into a densely packed urban
landscape peppered with all sorts of entertainment, resources, and
opportunities. But there are also problems--like skyrocketing crime
rates, shady neighborhoods, and street-savvy scam artists.
The best defense against many of these threats is good judgment. If
you see an e-mail offering an incredible deal or coming from someone
you don't know, delete it. And never open attachments--even from
trusted friends--unless you have a full understanding of the
context. Many e-mail worms generate vaguely intriguing subject lines
to entice users into launching malicious attachments, which are
often disguised as digital photos or documents. Using free
filesharing programs such as Limewire, Kazaa, or Bearshare are a
sure way to infect your computer - they can even leave you
vulnerable to infection by opening ports to the internet so you
don't even have to be using them to become infected.
Here's an idea of what your PC faces every day on the Wild Wild Web.
Adware: Adware secretly tracks and gathers personal
information--including sites you visit--and ships that data to a
remote server for purposes of generating targeted advertisements.
Many free, downloadable programs incorporate adware as a way to
generate revenue.
IP spoofing: Spoofing disguises packets so they appear to be
coming from another source, typically a trusted host. Spoofing is
often used to gain unauthorized access to computers.
Phishing: A fast-growing form of online fraud, phishing
describes sham e-mail broadcasts and Web sites that try to fool
people into disclosing confidential data, such as passwords, credit
card numbers, and social security numbers. A phishing e-mail may
look like it's coming from a trusted vendor--say, your phone
company--but in fact is from an unknown source.
Port scanning: The digital equivalent of jiggling doorknobs,
port scanning reveals open ports on Internet-connected PCs. Once an
open port is found, a hacker can exploit the opening to try to break
into the system or install malicious software.
Program exploits: This describes a wide variety of techniques
designed to take advantage of a flaw or vulnerability in a piece of
software, whether it is Windows XP (news - web sites), a Web
browser, or an e-mail program. A popular exploit is buffer overflow,
where a malicious application purposefully pours too much data into
a buffer--a holding point for application data--in order to expose
system resources to attack.
Spyware: These applications secretly track system activity.
Often bundled with legitimately useful software--such as the Kazaa
Media Desktop client software--spyware can often transmit passwords
or other confidential data to a remote computer.
Trojan horse: This refers to a destructive program disguised
to look like a useful application. For example, there has been a
recent surge in Trojan horse applications posing as anti-spyware
utilities, desktop screensavers and games. Users think they are
downloading a useful utility, when in fact they are exposing their
system to attack.
Virus: A virus is any malicious program or piece of code that
replicates itself and attaches to a hard disk boot sector or
partition, or to an application, document, macro, or other software
medium. Viruses run the gamut from annoying applets that display
innocuous messages to lethal attacks that delete hard disk contents
and upload confidential information to remote servers.
Worm: A worm is a type of virus that replicates itself but
cannot attach itself to other programs. Worms may propagate by
infecting a system and going through its e-mail contact list to
broadcast e-mail with a worm-laden attachment to users on the list.
Worms can also propagate by finding an open network port that allows
entry to your system.
Please keep in mind that every time you download a tool bar,
screensaver, game, or program, and every time you open an attachment
or click on a link in an email, you are increasing the chance of
infecting your machine with one of the previously listed problems. |
