Protection and hacking methods

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

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

DoS attacks (denial of service):

DoS attacks occur when too much traffic is directed to your company’s website at one time. The web server essentially ‘gags’ on the amount of traffic trying to squeeze into its network hardware. Attack scripts can be easily downloaded and you don’t need to be an experienced engineer to launch an attack. Annoyed customers looking for some kind of revenge or disruption, competitors disrupting your site, or these days, like in the recent big hospital attacks, the trend is to hold your website hostage until some ransom is paid or some satisfaction 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 a warning about Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) threats that abuse the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) interface. PLXsert SNMP DDoS attack campaigns target various industries, including consumer products, gaming, hosting, non-profits, and software as a service, primarily in the US (49.9%) and China (18.0%). .49%). The attackers used an online tool published by the ‘Team Poison’ hacker group. This latest wave of attacks targets devices running SNMP which, by default, are open to the public Internet 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 for other connections. When a computer or a 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 the timer expires, and then the cycle repeats millions of times. The 3-way handshake is never established and all other connections are rejected 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 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 nanny, 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 panel that opened. Is ‘Allow remote assistance connections to this computer’ checked? Click the Advanced button and you’ll see how far this goes and how easy it is for your computer to allow others to connect to it. In fact, it can allow others to take complete control of your system.

This was designed for a helpdesk in a large corporation to connect quickly and easily without much authentication hassle. The average home, school, and SOHO system is obviously not on a corporate help desk, so shutting 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, USAF, DoHS, or even the NSA. Check the current settings on your computer, then update if necessary. I bet you’ll find that this setting is turned on, allowing remote control to outsiders.

Microsoft Inventory of Programs:

In Windows 7, Microsoft quietly introduced a feature they call ‘Program Inventory’. A direct quote from Microsoft states: “The PDU takes an 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 admits it somewhere buried in the bowels of the operating system.

But they didn’t tell you before implementing it. You’d be surprised what they’re doing with Windows 8 and especially the new free upgrade to Windows 10. How on earth 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, rather than continue to have operating systems with hundreds of open doors, windows, and stepladders in private areas waiting to be exploited.

Windows 10 is particularly vulnerable and there are plenty of settings you should consider disabling to further protect yourself, so be sure to learn more about them; there are plenty of video guides to do 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 their computer, and they are doing so.

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