Stories on spam

Stories on spam.

Sanford Wallace finally had a big corporation come after him — Newscorp. In May of 2008, he was hit with a $230 million dollar fine for spamming MySpace. He should have held out a few more months and then asked the government for a bailout. On a similar note, Seattle Spammer Robert Soloway was convicted on three charges and faces up to 27 years in prison.

Spammers spoofing news organizations is nothing new, and spoofing in general is a technique almost as old as spam itself. However, in August of this year, spammers released a new outbreak of spam that looked exactly like a CNN breaking news report. What set this one apart was how legitimate it looked and the size of the spam outbreak. The payload led users to get their computers infected with malware; the spammers did their homework on this one.

Stories on encryption

Stories of encryption.

A code that scientist thought should take at least thousands of years to unravel 148 days by 21 computers working in unison. The solution to the 278-character, 923-bit code broke a world record in cryptanalysis, and the victorious team of technologists used “next-generation” techniques to achieve this feat.

Morse code is a method of transmitting text information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without any special equipment. In the 1890’s it was used for early radio communication, before it was possible to transmit voice.

Stories of Malware

Stories of malware.

High-risk medical technology has been found to be infected by computer viruses and malware, health and security experts have said they fear that the virus infections could become so severe that a patient may end up getting harmed.

Out-dated computer systems which were not able to be changed were to blame for the vulnerabilities, the experts said. One US hospital is said to be deleting viruses from up to two machines a week.

 A Trojan horse is types of malware, that pretends to be a helpful program but intends to, for example, grant a hacker access to your computer. Trojans may steal information, or do damage to the host computer. Zeus is a Trojan horse that steals banking information, and had infected 2,411 companies and organizations.  

Stories of Viruses

Stories of viruses.

Elk Cloner is one of the first known viruses that were written for Apple II systems around 1982. Elk Cloner spread by using a technique called “boot sector”. When a computer booted from an infected floppy disk, a copy of the virus was placed in the computer’s memory. If an uninfected floppy disk was inserted into the computer Elk Cloner would be copied to that disk, allowing it to spread disk to disk.

ILOVEYOU was a computer virus that attacked tens of thousands windows personal computers on and after 5^th May. It started spreading as an email message with the subject line “ILOVEYOU”. The virus would overwrite image files, and sent copies of itself to the first 50 address in the Windows Address Book, and infected 50 million computers.

Email Spam

Email Spam.

Email spam, also known as junk mail, is an email that is sent to a huge number of people. Clinking on any of the links or attachments on the email may send you to a phishing website, or a site hosting malicious software. 

Spam may be cheap for the people who send it, but it can be a serious expense for a business. Spam management costs businesses more than $71 billion annually in lost productivity.

There are ways to prevent spam:

• ·         Use a spam filter; many internet service providers are increasingly providing this service.
• ·         Be careful who you give your email address away.
• ·         Don’t advertise your email on chat rooms or websites.
• ·         Don’t click on any links or adverts in the email.
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Although these might not always stop spam, they will reduce the amount you get and will keep you safe from getting any malware or viruses on your computer.

Encryption

Encryption.

Encryption is the translation of data into a secret code. Encryption is the most effective way to achieve data security. To read an encrypted file, you must have access to a secret key or password that enables you to decrypt it.

There are many advantages to encrypting files:

• ·         Encrypted files by one user cannot be opened by another user if the latter does not possess appropriate permissions.
• ·         The user with permission to decrypt a file is able to work with the file like with any other, without experiencing any restrictions or difficulties.
• ·         Other users receive a restricted access notification when they attempt to access the encrypted file.

But there are also disadvantages to encrypting files:

• ·         If you forget your passphrase and/or keyfile then there is almost no chance of recovering your data.
• ·        The very existence of encryption programs or encrypted files will attract suspicion as to what it is you are trying to protect whereas a non-encrypted system would not attract the same level of interest.

Malware

Malware.

Malware, or malicious software, is software used to disrupt computer operation, gather files, and gain access to private computer systems. The first infectious program was made as an experiment or prank, but nowadays they are used to gather to steal personal, financial or business information for the benefit of others.

There are many ways malware makes it onto your computer:

• ·         Installing something that wasn’t from a trustworthy source. These can often be screensavers, toolbars or torrents that weren’t scanned for viruses.
• ·         Through emails, as they can be spread easily and quickly, and do not require the user to send the email, as the virus itself will scan for email addresses and send the email itself.
• ·         Some websites themselves can infect your computer just by going onto them.

There are many ways to prevent your computer from getting any malware:

• ·         Installing pop-up blocker as many pop-ups have malware on them.
• ·         Install a personal firewall.
• ·         Set up your browser to notify you when anything tries to download.
• ·         Don’t download software or programs from unknown sources.

Computer Virus

    

Computer Virus.

A computer virus is a type of virus that can harm your computer. While some may only play annoying tricks on you, others may delete important files on your computer and possibly prevent it from working.

There are many different types of viruses made to do many different types of functions. Here are a few for an example:

• Trojan Horses - these viruses can appear as either a joke program, or a helpful program that appears to be helping you, but has started up the virus which will destroy important files, harming your computer, or will get data from your computer.

• Worms - worms will make other copies of itself and will find its way around your computer. They can also copy themselves into an email, allowing it to move from one computer to another instantly.

There are ways of preventing your computer from getting viruses. Making a back up of all your files can help save your work/files in case you do happen to get a virus. There are some anti-virus software that can be downloaded in order to find and delete these viruses, such as Norton, or McAfee. Also being careful to not download programs that you do not know are 100% safe.