guidetowebsecurity.com

“Hackers have succeeded in breaking into the computer systems of two of the U.S.’ most important science labs, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

In what a spokesperson for the Oak Ridge facility described as a “sophisticated cyber attack,” it appears that intruders accessed a database of visitors to the Tennessee lab between 1990 and 2004, which included their social security numbers and dates of birth. Three thousand researchers reportedly visit the lab each year, a who’s who of the science establishment in the U.S.

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If you encounter an unsolicited e-mail that asks you, either directly, or through a web site, for personal financial or identity information, such as Social Security number, passwords, or other identifiers, exercise extreme caution.

If you need to update your information online, use the normal process you’ve used before, or open a new browser window and type in the website address of the legitimate company’s account maintenance page.

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by mheo soriano

FTP Trojans

FTP Trojans opens up an FTP server on your PC and may be used to store and serve illegal programs/ softwares or sensitive data. They may also let attackers connect to your machine by FTP (File Transfer Protocol).

Security software disablers

Security Software Disabler Trojans, are notorious in disabling your computer’s defense mechanisms such as anti-virus, firewall, some components and even prohibit the installations of other programs. Once your defenses are down, you will be more vulnerable to virus attacks.
This type of Trojan usually targets specific end-user software such as personal firewalls and some anti-virus. This is often used in mischievous net activities such as hacking.

by mheo soriano

Proxy trojans

Proxy Trojans transforms your computer into a proxy server wherein it can be made available for the whole world or just the attacker to browse. This kind of Trojan is commonly used in anonymous Telnet, ICQ, IRC, etc., to make transactions for other a number of illegal activities.

The attacker will remain anonymous and will posses to do everything (transactions) from YOUR own computer. These activities also include launching of attacks from your network to other prospect victims.

The worst part is if the attacker’s activities are discovered, (since he is using your network) it would appear that you are the culprit as the trail will lead to you.

To be continued…

by mheo soriano

Destructive trojans

This is one of the most irritating Trojans as it is designed to destroy and delete files stored in your pc. Some can automatically delete system files, gradually slowing down the system and corrupting it as an end result. The attacker can either activate the Trojan manually or program it to function in a specific time and date.
Destructive Trojans works similarly like a virus, but the difference is that it is created to attack your system (virus causes damage as a “side effect” of infecting files) and is least likely to be detected by your anti-virus software.

To be continued…

By mheo Soriano

Trojan Horses appear to be a bigger trouble than other type of Malware such as Viruses because they are designed to be destroy or disrupt your system or to get information from you.

Different types of trojans

Remote access trojans
This Trojan grants the attacker with absolute access and control of your machine. This may be the most publicized Trojan and the most preferred by hackers.

Data-sending trojans
These Trojans are installed into your system to send the hacker private information such as passwords and personal conversations as it has the ability to record keystrokes you punched in the keyboard.

To be continued…

by mheo soriano

What are they?

Trojan Horse is a type of “Malware” or Malicious Softwares which causes harm to a computer system. It got its name from the Trojan Horse in the Greek mythology as it disguises itself as a useful program and not a Malware thus tricking the users of what they really are.

A Trojan Horse is NOT a Virus

But most people think that a Trojan Horse is a type of Virus this has been a common misconception that many people share for years.

Yes both are programs harmful to your computer system, but this is the only similarity the Virus and the Trojan Horse has. Unlike the virus which multiplies it self, the Trojan Horse is not designed to multiply but it is designed to do one of two things: either destroy or modify data or extract confidential information such as passwords, credit card numbers etc.

by mheo soriano

Prevention is better than cure.

The best way of combating computer virus is preventing it from getting into your system.

This also applies in the prevention of malwares that can disable your antivirus once it infiltrates your computer. The most popular tool for virus prevention is a virus scanner, it works to scan a file if it is harmful or not. If it detects a speck of malicious code it neutralizes it and gives you and option to delete the file or clean the file (options vary with the virus scanner).

Another tool which is equally as effective as the virus scanner is ‘common sense’. Never run or open any file sent from the email or from other people unless you are sure that it does not contain virus, it is est to delete it right away. Beware of the hazards of downloading stuff from the internet, chances are, you are downloading a malware.

by mheo soriano

How are Viruses acquired?

Viruses are acquired when an infected file (or the virus itself) is introduced to the system. This commonly occurs when you get an infected removable storage device from other people or and through an e-mail attachment. The virus installs itself in your system and usually remains hidden to prevent detection.

One of the symptoms of having a virus is the sudden drop in the performance of the computer speed. This is due to the virus taking up too much space in your hard disk memory.
Another is the disability of certain functions of your computer, viruses can infect important files of your operating system disabling some of the system’s functions in the process, leaving it open to other malware attacks.

To be continued…

by mheo soriano

A Computer Virus is a kind of “Malware” (or malicious software for short) that continuously attempts to spread itself from one file to another.

Computer viruses works a lot like human viruses as they are programs designed to propagate and create copies in the computers hard disk memory and infect other computers as well. This occurs beyond the users awareness.

The belief that viruses are programs designed to destroy or delete hard disk data is a misconception. Because technically speaking, viruses are only designed to make copies of itself and the damage it causes is most often incidental.
Therefore the damage caused by viruses is somewhat “unintentional” and caused by the continuous increase of infected files in the system.

To be continued…