We Are At War!
Photo Source: Clipart.com (No Enlargement) We are in a war. No I am not talking about the fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan. The war we are fighting is much more subtle. At first it seems like a joke, something that is laughable. As time goes on, we begin to realize that it is serious, very serious. I am talking about the cyber war that we are all fighting, even if we don't realize it. If we look carefully, we begin to realize that it is all around us, just waiting to eke its way into any of our machines that are connected to the Internet and even into those that are not. Anything that uses software and is connected to an outside connection is especially vulnerable. As more and more devices come out that have computer components, they also become vulnerable. Right now companies are talking about refrigerators that are connected to the Internet and will be able to order items when they get low. How would you like to go out, only to find that your refrigerator had defrosted while you were gone and there was a message on the screen that said something like, “Got You!”. No I wouldn't like it either.
Binary Code, The Language Of The Computer Make no mistake, there are basically two kinds of computer hackers, those that do it for fun and those that do it to make money. I have not even mentioned those thousands and even hundreds of thousands of hackers that are working for governments around the world. Hackers have been around since computers were invented, but when computers got into the home, hacking reached its golden age. Websites began to appear that helped hackers ply their trade and advise them on how to be more effective. Look at computer viruses for example. In the beginning they were spread by being put into software on a disk so that as the disk was passed around, the virus would infect every computer it came into contact with. There was really no anti-virus software around to speak of. As things progressed and years went by, people began to connect to the Internet and viruses began to be transmitted that way. They were usually put into software to be downloaded, but they soon became more sophisticated and could travel from one website to another. Along with viruses, spyware soon became a problem. Spyware would sneak on to your computer and act in different ways, depending on what it was designed to do. Some spyware was harmless, it would put up an advertisement every so often. While being harmless it was still a nuisance and an invasion of privacy. More malicious spyware would go into stealth mode and watch your every keystroke, gaining information from you, such as your bank account number, passwords and such. Anti-virus programs began to appear as did anti-spyware. In the beginning the anti-virus programs were really a drag on your computer. You have to remember that when it came out computers were much slower, single core machines. This type of software polls your computer. That means it keeps checking for viruses and this can really slow down one of those old machines. We were now forced to pick between slow machines, staying off of the Internet, or almost surely getting a virus and having to probably reformat and reinstall our operating systems.
Internals Of A Home computer The anti-spyware programs now had to run at the same time as the anti-virus programs, taking up even more of our computing speed. Another problem arose. No one anti-virus program could catch every virus and neither could any anti-spyware program catch every piece of spyware. To make matters even worse, websites appeared that tested all the anti-virus and anti-spyware software as soon as it was released, for weaknesses and passed these data along to the virus and spyware creators, allowing them to remain one step ahead of the programs. This was probably good for these types of companies, because you would always need to get the latest software protection and thus this meant more business for them. A Trojan horse is a program that seems to be of one type, but is really something that can hurt you. Hackers got to the point where they could now infect your computer with a virus or Trojan horse and turn it into a Zombie computer without you knowing. A Zombie computer is one that is under the control of someone on a different computer. It can use your computer to do things like send out viruses, emails, and even flood sites, causing them to fail. These kinds of attacks are called denial of service attacks. If you notice a lot of disk action coming from your computer, it is possible that it is performing other tasks that are directed by someone else. It could even be reading your email addresses and sending out bogus emails to all your contacts. This has to be looked at as a criminal operation. There probably are millions of computers right now that are Zombie computers and their owners do not know it. Many people might leave their computers on at night and while they are asleep, the computers could be doing some dirty deed for someone else and leaving a trail that points right back to the computer being used. There are ways you can check out what your computer did during the day and software that keeps track of that. Without getting into administrative functions, you can get a software program that watches your computer. This of course will slow things down slightly more.
Email Email can be very dangerous. This is so much email out there that promises you that you won a lottery, or that some soldier in Iraq need help, or even tells you that some long lost relative has died and left you money. This usually leads to a processing fee of some kind. I have started to get emails that claim to be from the Internal Revenue Service. One thing for sure, the real Internal Revenue Service emails use a lot better spelling I am sure. NEVER answer any email that claims to be from any agency. Instead, you can always contact the agency directly, if you are worried, and see if they wanted to contact you. Even worse than these scams are emails that request you to click on a link. NEVER, NEVER click on a link in an email. That is one of the surest ways of becoming infected. You will see a lot of emails that state that they are from your bank and they want you to supply your information again for some reason. Do NOT EVER do this. No legitimate institution will ever ask you for personal information by email. On the very slight off chance that one does, you could always call them and give it that way, but tell them that you don't give personal information over the Internet by clicking on a link, or by email and they should know better. It is easy to forget that we are at war and some companies are using techniques that are similar to virus creators. Norton Anti-Virus is being downloaded with a lot of different software. Many times it is downloaded without the person realizing that they did it, because they didn't notice a check box or such. Once on, it can not be taken off by the usual methods because there is not only no uninstaller, but if you delete the program, it comes back because it is spread throughout your computer. You now have to go to the Norton Website and try and find the special uninstaller program. This happened to me and I had to run the uninstaller twice to get rid of the damn thing. All in all it was a tremendous waste of time and should be illegal. I will never buy a Norton product because of this behavior. Complaints are all over the Internet about this, yet this behavior still persists. We are at war and we are being forced to take all sorts of precautions that waste our time and slow down our computers. On top of that, our machines are being used to commit crimes without our knowledge. Fraudulent email accounts that seem to be ours are being used to send out all sorts of messages, that people think we are sending. It is not only a war, but a very dirty war and it seems that it can only get worse unless all the countries of the world ban together and pass and ENFORCE, laws to help prevent most of this. |
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