Online attacks

Recent report shows that online threats are becoming more advanced, while threats on the mobile platform and in virtual worlds are also increasing.


Online threat

if you’re online, bots such as Trojans or worms can be installed on your computer through a loophole in your software that you haven’t patched, through shareware you’ve downloaded, or through an e-mail attachment. These bots can be used to take remote control of your machine for various potentially harmful actions—displaying ads, monitoring your browsing behavior, launching a denial-of-service attack, hosting a phishing site, or capturing your keystrokes (these bots are called keyloggers) to record information such as usernames, passwords, and credit-card details.

Spam threat

Clicking any link sent to you in a spam message is known to lead you to malicious websites or phishing websites. However, if you have an email account with content filtering—something that’s almost default these days—chances are you can ignore spam completely.

Gaming threat

Virtual worlds and multiplayer online games are emerging areas for threats. Theft of passwords and game resources is becoming widespread in the gaming world.

Mobile threat

Vishing, akin to phishing, but executed through phone calls to your mobile number, has made an appearance, and is likely to grow. As more applications find their way to the mobile platform, malicious hackers are sure to follow, to find out how to exploit security loopholes.

The followings are the steps for reducing online attacks

Install patches regularly for the software on your computer. Failure to install patches released by the software manufacturer results in your computer being vulnerable to malicious hacker attacks.

Update your antivirus software regularly and scan your system at regular intervals.

Install good anti-spyware software and use it to scan your computer.

Avoid downloading shareware or other interactive programs from unknown sites.

Be careful of who you speak to online and on your mobile phone. You should not reveal sensitive personal information to any caller, as a reply to an email message, or enter such information by clicking a link in an email sent to you. All these could be part of phishing or vishing attacks.