Hi-tech attacks can really unplug this economy. Forget about the gas prices soaring and food prices spiking because the new threat to the economy is now emerging.
The problem
Hackers are now attacking vital American industries that are growing quick. That includes cyber attacks on oil and gas facilities, power plants or water supply. And what is even worse – companies are still not doing enough to protect themselves; they just don’t know what is going on.
The issue here is that they may not consider themselves targets and or they’re just simply not allocating the necessary resources. Form one hand, if you’re a water authority, you have to think you’re a target. From another hand, at some level you would think so, but most don’t want to believe it’s happening to them. And when they begin to make those investments – sometimes it’s too late.
Attack vectors
Let’s see what’s happening. Some 20 years ago, in order, to penetrate one of those facilities, someone would have to jump over a fence. Today, however, all you need is a connection to the Internet. One of the employees on the inside receives an e-mail from what looks like his boss. He clicks the link in the email and it launches the virus going to the network that begins to shut down their defenses, allows the bad guy into the backdoor and all of a sudden he’s able to penetrate the entire network. Often the bad guy will then request ransom in order to give the system back or maybe copy and trade secrets.
And again, usually the attack happens with the help of phishing and not everybody in the country knows what a fishing-type email is. And when you receive communications regularly from your bank or from a package delivery company you might do business with and communicate on regularly. And all of a sudden you’re getting another email that looks like a regular communication, and it has usual things in it or something like request to update your account. You click on it, because, again, you just got one yesterday, it’s not that big of a deal. Too many people click these emails, and right now phishing is one of the biggest issues.
Protection advice
A simple step to avoid it – just don’t click links in emails. It is very simple. If you want to visit a website just type it into the address bar, go to your bookmarks, just don’t click links in emails, because they’re dangerous today. You also have to have the latest best antivirus and other security software. For more protection you might want to contact identity theft protection companies. Just make sure that you’re locked down and you’re secure.
We need necessary defenses and education. Bad guys are working 24/7/365 to get to us, to get to major corporations, to get to our critical infrastructures. They know what they’re doing. They are full forced and organized.
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Guest article by: Alex Lamman is a 25 years old software engineer, snowboarder and just a loving father from Germany. He is Internet security addict and helps to run Privacy PC website.
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Guest article by: Alex Lamman is a 25 years old software engineer, snowboarder and just a loving father from Germany. He is Internet security addict and helps to run Privacy PC website.
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These geeks are really hard to track even geeks in the authority find it hard to hunt them down since most of them are from different countries using untraceable proxies.
Yup, They are hard to be traced and erased.
The recent malwares like FLAME and all have been believed to be made by any perticular country and reported that a huge number of hackers have worked behind this.
These cyber criminals are more dangerous than real life criminals
I’m really worried about the evolution of cyber attacks, but I also try to keep away from potential issues. As you have pointed out, not clicking every link in the spam emails is a good start to protect our PC.
This is very possible nowadays. There is no such thing as secure in the internet.