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!.

Here is some more information on Security

Your Router: Here is my previous article on securing your router

Your Website: Here is my previous article on securing your website

Your Computer: Here is my previous article on removing viruses

My quote:

Some believe that the Third World War will be fought with guns, missiles and nukes I believe it will be through cyberspace.

References:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126333757451026659.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/business/global/02hacker.html

http://www.thecowl.com/world/american-companies-hacked-by-chinese-schools-1.1173974

Of all the years I have been on this planet have never seen Microsoft get so desperate or feel the need to compete at a great level. Now that it is becoming more and more prevalent that they are no longer the big kid on the block anymore they are going on all out attacks now against Google and Apple. This is all because of their steadily declining market share.

Market Share lossage and to who

1. Internet browser(Internet Explorer) – lossage to Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari
2. Operating system (Windows) – lossage to Apple Mac OS X and Linux
3. Search Engine (live.com) – lossage to Google and Yahoo

Not even mentioning other competitors such as Adobe (Multimedia) Flash vs Microsoft Silverlight and Sony (Game Consoles) Ps3 vs Microsoft XBOX 360 vs Nintendo Wii, Microsoft is really feeling the effects of spreading themselves thinner and thinner and producing products of lesser and lesser quality. Even some of the competitors who they are going against have a focus and produce so very nice products. Now they are spending more money creating attack ads against Apple and Google. People see it as strategy but I see it as a act of desperation before the giant falls. If you want a good website for identifying market share go here to see the information for yourself.

What can Microsoft do?

Being that they still have the upper hand in most of their markets they need to create reliable products that cannot be compromised so easily. Firstly with windows it is known for viruses and its price. There are other products out there that are free and becoming easier to use for example linux. Or have little to no viruses and good quality, people go to apple mac os x. So if they can increase the quality of their product, include a higher level of security and speed and present it well I think we can see a nice increase in their market share. To even further back it up ask people who played around with Windows 7. They are impressed with the usability and speed which has increased alot of people’s curiosity and confidence. Now if they can launch a full-spectrum campaign on increasing quality of their products and decrease prices on licenses I guarantee we will see change in market share but only going up.

When I first heard about the Google Phone, I was a little skeptical about it and saw it as no competition to the Iphone. But after reading and studying the operating system I’m a little impressed. If you check out the news you will see Verizon is even turning to the Android. That is a very big surprise mainly because Verizon keeps it software pretty proprietary.  This also shows indication of desperation or recognizing how superior the Iphone made other phone companies or how superior Google is becoming.

Features

• Documentation for it is beautiful
• Every program is ran independently of each other under a special virtual machine
• Everything application has to be written in Java, lol. (I know I’m going to hear it)
• It uses the Linux Kernel (The backbone of linux which makes it compatible with a large number of hardware) which is a big plus.

This operating system which was first platform on the G1 is actually going to expand into a bigger operating system for the Desktop. So the operating system, Android is actually the new face for the Google Desktop Operating System.

Check it out!

• What is Android?
• Developer section
• Android Blog
• Programs for your G1