Triple M: greatest threat internet users face today

The virtual world is constantly under attack, with a host of viruses penetrating into users’ personal files and documents, leaving them helpless and terribly troubled.

“Some of the internet threats that are most widespread and which pose the greatest threat to internet users are malware, spyware, trojan, phishing e-mails, e-mail spam and computer viruses.

“All these have the potential to cause significant data loss and damage to the victim,” explained Stephan Berner, managing director help AG Middle East.

According to him, the greatest threats that internet users face today can be categorised into three - “Modern Malicious Malware (MMM) and Data Loss, Denial of Service attacks and identity thefts”.

Among these, the first threat “occurs when cyber criminals accesses confidential information on the infected computer through the microphone, web cam or files, and then leaks it to hackers”.

The second is “where key services are taken out of operation by the attackers. These services could include e-banking systems, government services and other critical infrastructure”.

“We have seen a number of these attacks particularly targeting banks in the Middle East. Targeted at enterprises, these attacks have tremendous financial implications.

“Just think about how the society operates if credit cards and ATMs were out of service for just some hours or a day,” stressed Berner.

Apart from these, home internet users also need to be cautious about losing their identity online.

“This means hackers steal the users’ online identity through compromised passwords. The latest is about how reportedly 6.5 million passwords of LinkedIn, a social media platform, were leaked online.

“The affected users are at greater risk as many of them use the same password for other services like Facebook, e-mail, and e-banking,” he elaborated.|

There’s also another type termed as DDOS (Distributed Denial Of Service) attack, which focuses on “bringing down the production service of a network.

This might be internet banking, government services or any website targeted with.

While a virus, trojan or worm can cause damage to a database a DDOS attack uses many different computers on a network that it has previously infected as zombies causing an increase in the amount of phony traffic on the network.

In a bid to reduce the impact of such hackers, Berner listed top tips to avoid data theft.

1. Watch out for phishing and spam e-mails that seek personal or sensitive information

Hackers constantly fine-tune their techniques and will target you with mails that seem relevant to you. Do not open any attachment or click any link unless you have verified that it is indeed from a trusted source.

2. Update your PC and/or laptop operating system, and keep your security software on the latest release

It should be noted that it’s not only the operating system but all the applications that need to be updated. A high percentage of all malware infections on PCs are related to five applications – Java, Flash, PDF, MS Office Suite and Internet Explorer.

3. Never use pirated software

Software developers regularly provide patches and updates to fix known vulnerabilities. As pirated software cannot be updated, they open up the door to the possibility of malware.

4 Beware of cross-browser-request-forgery

This means that your authenticated session for an e-banking service could be hijacked by another website that’s open in another browser window. To overcome this, close other browser windows when you log into your sensitive applications. A simple precautionary measure would be to ensure that no other tabs or browser windows are open at the same time.

5. Always use a trusted PC for doing banking transactions

Unknown machines, such as at internet cafés, could be infected by all kinds of applications that monitor the sites you visit, what keys you enter, etc. To be safe, simply wait and use e-banking only when you are at your own PC. Or even better, use an un-rooted or non-jailbroken tablet as malware on these type of platforms are few and still relatively unsophisticated.

6. Be cautious while using wi-fi at hotels

Many establishments such as cafés, restaurants and hotels often offer free wireless internet. In order to simplify access to such networks, there is no encryption of the data-traffic and this means far less security. Always consider if it is absolutely vital to log on to identity sensitive applications from these networks.

7. Always restart when attempting sensitive work

Most users tend to hibernate or sleep PCs, which means that disk and memory sensitive areas are stored and re-applied when the machine is started again. This is, of course convenient, but recent types of malware are only present in the memory and do not require any files to be written. This means that when a machine is booted the malware is also removed. So, before you do sensitive work on your PC it could be a good idea to boot it.