NWA-PCUG Newsletter
Article, September 2005
Barlow's Hard Drive Newsletter - August 2005
How Internet Predators Can Harm Your Computer
By Gene Barlow
User Group Relations
Copyrighted August 2005
This is the first of a two part
article on Internet Security. This article will focus on the harm that
predators can do to your computer while you are attached to the Internet. The
second article addresses what you can do to protect your computer from these
predators. You need to read both articles to get the whole story.
Introduction
The Internet was originally
designed as a communication tool between users of a few mainframe computers
located inside some Universities and Government offices. To access this early
Internet, you had to use a terminal that was inside these secure locations and
attached by cable to one of the mainframe computers involved. The outside world
could not get access to this early Internet system. Because the original Internet
was limited to a very secure environment, no security measures were designed
into the Internet. Later, as the scope of the Internet was broaden and became
available to almost anyone around the world, additional security features were
not added to the Internet. The Internet was initially designed without security
and security was never added to the Internet as it grew.
The Internet has become one of the
most useful features of our computers. Almost all computers can be connected to
the Internet through phone lines, wireless, or via many types of broadband
connections. Today, we keep in touch with our families and friends via Internet
email, chats, and Internet phones. We find enormous amounts of information on
almost any topic by researching the Internet. We locate hard to find items on
the Internet and can order them and have them delivered to our door. We access
our bank and investments using the Internet to handle our financial affairs.
The Internet has brought us tremendous benefits in the past few years.
That is the bright side of the
Internet. Unfortunately, there is also a dark side to the Internet that many of
us are not fully aware of. The simple fact is that while you are connected to
the Internet and can access thousands of locations, thousands of predators on
the Internet can access your computer at the same time. As our connection time
to the Internet increases, the risk of having harm done to our computers is
skyrocketing. Broadband Internet connections greatly speed up our use of the
Internet, but these are always connected and so our computer is always
available to these predators. The purpose of this article is to identify who
these predators are and how they use your computer for their own needs. The
following article will show you what you can do to protect your computer from
these predators.
Internet Predators
Who are the Internet predators
that cause harm to your computer? They are called Hackers and they come in a
variety of types. Taking a cliché from the old western movies, these hackers
are often distinguished by the deeds they do. If you remember the old western
movies, the cowboys that wore white hats were usually the good guys. The bad
cowboys normally wore black hats. Likewise, you have the White Hat Hackers and
the Black Hat Hackers. They both break into your computer, but the White Hat
Hackers do no harm and only do it for the challenge. The Black Hat Hackers are
not as kind and will do all sorts of damage to your computer once they break
into it. Finally, you have the Script Kiddies who are young kids learning to
become hackers.
Where do these hackers hang out?
There are hundreds of hacker web sites around the world and the hackers use
these sites to exchange ideas and things they have learned about hacking into
certain computers. They also brag about their hacking accomplishments once they
have broken into a special computer. This brings them the admiration of their
fellow hackers. Young kids from 10-14 years old learn to become the future
hackers of the world on these web sites. So these web sites are the training
ground for new hackers to learn and develop.
Taking Over Your Computer
What do these Internet Predators
do to your computer? The Black Hat Hackers go through a number of steps to
break into and harm your computer. The first step is to scan for a target. They
want to find a computer that has fast internet access, has enough empty space
on their hard drive for storage of their hacker tools, and is a fast computer.
While this is the ideal target, they will take a less valuable target if they
can access it easily. They have special computer programs that scan and test
computers connected to the Internet. Did you know that your computer is tested
on average of 17 times each day by hackers looking for a target? When will they
stop at your computer and decide to use it for their purposes? One in four
computers will be hacked this year, so your turn is not far off.
Once the hackers find a target, their
next task is to break and enter into that computer. Unfortunately, this task is
very easy to do, since most computers have no security protection at all to
keep the hackers out. Some users will have a firewall set up to prevent hackers
from entering their computers. These firewalls have doors in them called ports.
A firewall may have 256,000 doors or ports in them with some of these doors
wide open. When a hacker finds a firewall, all he needs to do is to scan these
ports until he finds one that is open and available for him to enter into your
computer. Finally, hackers know of weaknesses in your operating system and
Internet browser. He can take advantage of these weaknesses in the software and
break through any security you think you have in place. It may take him a bit
of time, but eventually, a hacker will find a way to break into your computer
without you even knowing that he is doing this.
Once inside your computer, the
hacker goes about setting up shop in your system. He may first look around for
anything of value that he can steal from you. It may be as dangerous as your
social security number, credit card numbers, or other financial information
that he can use in the theft of your identity. Identity Theft is the number one
consumer problem today and the number of thefts is growing each year. If your
identity is taken and used, it will cost over $10,000 in goods and services to
resolve the problems from this crime. The hacker may find your personal digital
photos saved on your computer and share them with others on the Internet.
Finally, the hacker may help himself to copies of any software he finds on your
computer.
Next the hacker will make changes
to your computer to fit his needs. He will store his hacker tools on your hard
drive so that it is available for him to use in a moments notice. These tools
may include viruses and worms to send out from your computer, key loggers to
watch the keys you press as you enter your password to get into your online
banking, email monitors to read your email messages, and other devious tools he
has available to use from your computer. Once he gets all of his tools loaded
on your computer, he will make your computer secure from other hackers. He will
close up all of the open ports and operating system weaknesses in your computer
so that other hackers will not be able to break into it. He wants your computer
for his own use and not to share it with other hackers. He will leave one very
well hidden back door open so that he can get back in to your computer at any
time he wants to. The hacker now has your computer all ready for his future
use.
Using Your Computer
Having set up your computer for
his needs, what things will a hacker do with your computer? First, he may set
up your computer to send out viruses to other computers. He will start with
your email address book and send out these viruses to all of your friends and
family members. After all, he does not want to have his computer identified as
the source of the virus. Junk mail is also sent out mostly from hacked
computers. My computer was hacked a couple of years ago and thousands of SPAM
messages were sent out late night using my computer. The next morning my inbox
was filled with bounced messages from email addresses that were no longer
valid. Just emptying these bounced messages from my inbox took hours to
accomplish. Working with my ISP, we found the faulty code that let my system be
hacked and fixed it. I quickly learned that these hackers are serious. Another
favorite hacker use of your computer is to send out porn pictures. It would
really embarrass me to learn that my computer had been used to distribute porn
to others. I may even be held legally liable for permitting this porn to be
distributed from my computer.
Some hackers pride themselves in
bringing down main computers, like eBay, Yahoo, or AOL. Other hackers go after
mainframe computers at banks, stock markets, and government offices. To do
this, they need to use more than one computer. Hackers will break into and set
up hundreds of computers which are called Zombie systems. The hacker can
activate these Zombies to do what it wants in a few seconds. Your computer may
be sitting as a Zombie computer waiting to be activated to attack some large
government defense computer. When it is activated with hundreds of other Zombie
computers, they all send messages at the same time to the large computer under
attack. When the mainframe computer is hit at the same time by hundreds or
thousands of Zombies, it can’t handle the load and will shut down to protect
itself. Just what the hacker wanted. The shutdown of a major computer may take
hours to bring back up and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost
businesses to these companies. This is serious hacking and your computer might
be involved without your knowing it.
Check Out Your Computer
So, how do you know if your system
has been affected by a hacker? Hackers pride themselves in doing their mischief
without anyone knowing that they have been hacked. So, finding out that you
have been hacked is not easy to do. There are a few excellent software tools
that have been designed to find and remove hacking tools from computer systems.
The second article of this series will identify all of the things you need to
do to protect your computer from hackers and to remove their mischief if you
have already been hacked. Watch for this article to be sent to you in a few
days or you can find it on my web site (www.usergroupstore.com) in the
Newsletters section after
I hope you have learned more about the harm that can happen
to your computer on the Internet. If you have questions about this article or Invisus tools,
please email them to gene@ugr.com
and I will try to answer them for you. Watch for my following article on
protecting your computer from Internet predators.
Gene Barlow is the president of User Group Relations, a
consulting firm specializing in promoting computer products to the user group
community. He has over 40 years of experience with computer systems. He worked
for IBM for 34 years and managed IBM's user group support organization for 14
years. He helped hundreds of user groups get started and is sometimes called
the Father of User Groups for his involvement. When he left IBM, he set up his
own consulting firm and has represented many software vendors to the user group
community the past 9 years. He is an outstanding speaker, writer, and helper of
end users and loves working with user groups. You may contact him at
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User Group Relations
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