You need to protect yourself!

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Michael Washington / February 26, 2010 / 2 Comments

Lately there has been a large influx of attacks in the cyber world. I don’t know if you heard but there has been attacks on the 32 of some of the biggest companies in America including, Google, Adobe, General Electric, and many others. Google even went as far as pulling out of China, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126333757451026659.html, which has the single biggest population out of all countries. Google has been making the biggest fuss out of all the companies it seems. I’m guessing they stole something that was very precious or highly secretive. It was said that the attack was very highly sophisticated and has not been seen to this degree before on commercial companies but only in the defense industry. People in the government of the United States and defense having been opening admitting that the US is not ready for an all out cyber attack.

Ways to Protect yourself

So I guess your wondering now how does it effect me. Well chances are if a big company such as Google can be comprised by the same can happen to you. But I believe you have a better chance at defending yourself than Google. Why? you may say well because the companies are bigger entity which renders bigger holes than an individual which have lesser holes to close but requires education to close them. In order defend yourself against hackers and people trying to compromise your information you need to know the mindset of hackers.

Weaknesses! When hackers are trying to get hack someone the first thing they will try to do is find known weakness in your software. For example if I found out that someone that I’m trying to compromise is using the browser internet explorer 6 I will look through list of known vulnerabilities and execute attacks on the browser to get what I want. Sometimes it that simple! So they gather information on you and exploit your weakness.
Attack the biggest market share! If I was hacking I would want send out an attack could affect the largest population of users. For example if I know that windows has the biggest market share of users in the operating system world, I would attack them because I know would get the greatest return in information.
Brute force and Dictionary Attacks! When attacking peoples accounts they use programs to first guess the typical names people use for passwords and usernames. You will be surprise at how easy this works. If this doesn’t happen to work the next step is to brute force your password. This involves trying a combination of letter combination’s to guess your password. How would you defend against this? Have password that are at least 8 to 15 letters long with caps, numbers and special characters. It won’t stop them but it will be difficult for them to crack it and may make them move to an easier target.
Wealth of Information! With social networks and almost finding anything you want on Google, you could really get a nice synopsis on a person and what they are about. By doing finding your information on social networks this could give someone an good idea of how to go about attacking you. So adjust your facebook privacy settings!
Social Engineering! This is probably one of the most effective way of hacking people is through social engineering.Why always go about things the hard way when you could just ask. Always question people asking for your information before they ask you something question their credentials. One of the most famous hackers wrote a book called the art of deception which talks about to get information that you want out of people by talking, being friendly and asking the right questions.
No protection! Here is my previous article on viruses
Lack of Education! Self-explanatory! Read and stay updated on new attacks and technology!.