Protection and hacking methods

Protecting your computer against hacking is different from protecting it against viruses that accidentally or unknowingly invite your computer and then cause damage in one way or another. Anti-hack is all about protecting your computer against outside entities that deliberately try to break into your computer to cause damage and steal from you, or cause damage. Viruses are impersonal and hacking is personal.

Anti-Hack software is now on sale in addition to antivirus software. These products protect you in ways that antivirus software does not. The following are some examples.

DoS (denial of service) attacks:

DoS attacks occur when too much traffic is directed to your business website at one time. The web server is essentially ‘choke’ on the amount of traffic trying to get through your network hardware. Attack scripts are easily downloadable and you don’t need to be an experienced engineer to launch an attack. Angry customers looking for some sort of revenge or disruption, competitors disrupting your site, or these days, as in the recent major hospital attacks, the tendency is to hold your website hostage until some ransom is paid or some claim is met. demand. “Ransomeware” is a relatively new term, but it is gaining a lot of visibility in recent times.

SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) attacks:

Akamai’s Prolexic Security Engineering and Response Team (PLXsert) recently issued an advisory warning of threats from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that abuse the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) interface. PLXsert SNMP DDoS attack campaigns are targeting various industries, including consumer products, gaming, hosting, non-profits, and Software-as-a-Service, primarily in the US (49.9%) and China (18%). .49%). The attackers used an online tool published by the hacker group ‘Team Poison’. This latest wave of attacks targets devices running SNMP that are open to the public Internet by default, unless that feature is manually disabled. Anti-hacking software is now being created that helps prevent SNMP attacks like this by preventing the attacker from forcing network switching to secondary gateways.

SYN/AWK attacks:

This is a bit complex, but basically, a SYN flood attack is similar to a denial of service attack in that a request is made to the web server that binds its resources and makes it unavailable to other connections. When a computer or web browser tries to connect to a website, what is called a 3-way handshake is used to establish the connection between the two computers. In a SYN/AWK flood attack, the computer offers its hand (one-way), the server reaches out to meet it (two-way), but the offered hand is quickly withdrawn. The server waits for the hand to return until it times out, and then the cycle repeats itself millions of times. The 3-way handshake is never established and all other connections are dropped while this is happening.

USB autorun attacks:

By default, Windows runs any executable, program, or script on a USB drive the moment it is inserted into any computer or laptop. This means that anyone* with unauthorized code, such as a virus, keylogger or backdoor program, all of which can be easily downloaded, can walk past any computer in your building, insert the USB drive through just a second or two and take control of your entire business without you even knowing it. Antivirus software knows this and will try to block known vulnerabilities, but what about the unknown ones that were created this morning?

*I want you to think locally here too. Friends can do it, your wife can do it, your children can do it, the babysitter, your priest, etc…

remote connections:

Here is a proof; right-click My Computer and select the Remote tab, or in Windows 8, right-click This Computer and click the ‘Remote Settings’ link on the left side of the System pane that opened. Is ‘Allow remote assistance connections to this computer’ checked? Click the Advanced button and you will see how far this goes and how easy it is for your computer to allow others to connect to it. In fact, you can allow others to take complete control of your system.

This was designed for a help desk at a large corporation to connect quickly and easily without much authentication hassle. The average home, school, and SOHO system is obviously not in a corporate help desk, so locking down these interoperability “features” will help protect your system from outside intrusions. If you ever need to turn them back on, you can explicitly turn them back on. But we don’t think they should be on by default. Neither does NIST, the USAF, DoHS, or even the NSA. Check the current settings on your computer, then update if necessary. I bet you’ll find this setting is turned on, allowing remote control to outsiders.

Microsoft Program Inventory:

In Windows 7, Microsoft quietly introduced a feature they call ‘Program Inventory’. A direct quote from Microsoft states: “The PDU takes inventory of system files and programs and sends information about those files to Microsoft.” It not only constantly sends information about every program installed on your machine, but also information about every file that a program can open. Read that quote again: Microsoft ‘takes an inventory of all the programs and files on your system’ and they admit it somewhere buried in the bowels of the operating system.

But they didn’t tell you before implementing it. You’d be amazed at what they’re doing with Windows 8 and especially with the new free upgrade to Windows 10. How the hell could you have a sustainable business model by giving away your core product unless there was a huge reward for doing it? Your information is probably that reward. Look for this window in your system settings to disable the feature if you want to protect the privacy of your information.

conclusion

While no system can be completely 100% secure in today’s rapidly changing cyber threat landscape, there is absolutely no reason to help intruders. Easy connection and interoperability features and settings need to be turned off by the dozens. The goal is to make it harder for intruders, much harder, instead of continuing to have operating systems with hundreds of doors, windows, and stepladders open in private areas waiting to be exploited.

Windows 10 is particularly vulnerable, and there are many settings you should consider turning off to further protect yourself, so be sure to learn more about it; there are plenty of video guides for doing this available on YouTube today.

In short, there is a definite reason why piracy is increasing globally. People have realized how easy it is now to gain control of your computer, and they’re doing it.