Hi everybody,

here is an opinion why everybody really need security, based on my own research. I know this probably debated here for death, but once in a while we guys should bring that discussion on board and should discuss it to failure. So here is some security vulnerability and how you can increase the chances to make your self safe. Please do tell me how you feel.


The Need for Security

Objectives
-type of information and data sought by hackers.
-several ways that hackers can break into your system(s)
-some basic steps to prevent them breaking in


So why do we need all this security?

Well, you don’t. If you don’t connect to any network and your computer is locked in the safe and you lost the keys. But that is not the case here. Your computer security is as important to you as your computer and that important data inside it. As we started to share data and information, operating systems become more complicated and have added more information sharing tools. You can pay your bills online; you can do your income tax, shop online and keep your important business transactions and so on. As you do these things, you are transferring personal information across the Internet, information that can possibly allow someone else to borrow your financial and personal secrets, or even steal your identity. So did you get the picture, what will happen if some one is getting all the information you are putting through your computer?

Hacker’s attraction:

What attracts a hacker? It is a question, which only can be answered by hacker. But I will try here to list some common motives.

Passwords and Account logins: Stealing your passwords and logins is like stealing your keys. Once a hacker has your keys, they can do whatever they want inside your system. This is often just the first step in a larger plan. There are programs available in market you can officially buy them and crack any account password. And yes including yahoo messenger, aol messenger, msn messenger, icq account, at&t netmeeting…. And so on.
(we will talk about some safeguards later)

Credit Card Numbers: Everyone need money, and these numbers are like cash to hacker. Once you lost your credit card or become an individual of identity theft, your account can be emptied and you get to fix the damage.

Identification Information: All of us heard about identity theft, where not only someone steals your credit card numbers, but also your social security, driver’s license, and bank account numbers. With this information, attackers can open new bank account, new loans, new loans can be received without your knowledge. Down the road after some years later you will end up with a lot of damage and hacker is gone by that time with money.

It is true, the risk, that some one is stealing your personal information is low, but not myth. The newspapers are full of these kind of thefts, and clearly some criminals are successful for a while. If you are careful with your vitals, your risks are limited.

Businesses and corporations face similar risks, with one significant difference: most hackers might want to hack into a large corporation because of some personal issues or in order to get competitive information, or to just cause trouble. The list is very huge, but here are some of the common information targets favored by hackers:

Customer Information: Again credit card numbers highly attracts attacker, including their buying habits are extremely valuable to competitors. Some targets can be big shopping malls and grocery stores. Hackers also will sell this data to the competitor, or to embarrass the company by making this information public. Some of these companies keep maintain more personal information than you imagine.

Source Codes: Remember the hack of Microsoft in 2000; someone stole the whole source code of windows 2000. So this could be very profitable theft too, hacker can sell those source code to competitor for big amount of money or hacker can just keep it to him/her self and can design the whole new operating system to counter Microsoft new OS, and can make a lot of money by selling that new invented OS.

Free bees: Hackers are looking for ways to get free Internet access. If they can hack into a company’s dial-up connection. They will use it as free utility and then of course they will not stop there but all the damage done by them to others will be blamed on company whose system was used by the hacker.

Some basic steps to prevent them break in:

1) Never open any email attachment even if it is .PDF or .txt because by default windows hides last extension of any file for example: if you will get an email which would say hey here is your e-book requested by you and you will see the file name is ebook.pdf or ebook.txt. This is not true because actually it can be ebook.pdf.exe or ebook.txt.exe because by default the exe part is hidden in windows and you are now opening the document which is in reality a Trojan. There are programs available over the net which can join two files together and can be easily attach any important document or file with Trojan.
2) Always update your virus definition, everyday, because what if virus is been written tonight and then sent to you and by vary nature of antivirus, it only detects viruses which are known to it. Other than that, newly written virus is just another program running in your machine like other. It won’t pick it up. Always update your virus definition every day or every other day. Some leave their updates to automatic in every two weeks. This is a worse thing you can do about updates.
3) Firewall, this is very important tool you possess. Just to install firewall will not ease your tension, learn how to configure it. I will cover some more points about firewall in my next article. Most firewalls comes with basic tutorial or help documents, please read them. You will learn more than you know about your firewall now. It will help you to close open ports without getting disconnected and will increase your security.
4) Change your passwords everyday and there is nothing wrong in writing them down on post it, but then put them in some secure place like your safe. You can find Password generators software in market for free. An dictionary word or your own name or any of your friend name or your car license plate number or your birthday or any thing related to you can be the worse choice. Because hacker will look here first. The idea of changing your password everyday is based on my own research, LC4 takes some times whole one day to crack an password in that case if you don’t change it everyday, and if attacker is using l0pht, you are done with your security.
5) This could not be the scene all the time, your hard drive could be fail and all of your data is gone now. In that case please have some backup plans. Keep your data backed up. Just in case.
6) If you are not using some programs in your computer please disable them or un-install them . If you are not sharing any files and folders and printers please disable those features.
7) A lot of windows NT workstation connected to LAN are configured to get in by simply type administrator as an user and you can just leave the password section blank, and it will let you login. Make sure you are not the case.