What we should fear while surfing the web

By Michał Rosiak, ITN Security Expert, Orange Polska The development of modern technologies results in our spending more time surfing the internet. This is not only for pleasure and leisure time, but also due to work responsibilities. An increasing amount of people are unable to imagine completing their daily tasks without access to a computer, a smartphone, and above all the internet. What risks are connected with this? What should we watch out for? What should we refrain from doing, and what precautions should one take? Who attacks and why? Cyber-criminals often remain anonymous and are seldom taken to court for their wrongdoings. In the case of a committed crime, their identity is the least of our problems – the harm rendered is of greater importance. The motives of cyber-criminals are similar to regular criminals – they want to enrich themselves at the cost of the victim by stealing vital data or using one’s computer or internet connection for their own purposes. What exactly poses a risk? The attackers’ activities can be divided into a few groups: First, attempts to steal important information, e.g. passwords, log-ins to important accounts (including e-banking), etc. This can be done through a number of methods, but most often using malicious software, also known as malware, among others trojan horses (files that simulate legitimate programming), or keyloggers (programs that record and transmit keyboard or mouse strokes) and others. This way the criminal can access a victim’s bank account, electronic mail, as well as many other services which can contain vital information – such as data from the company where the victim works. Second, utilization of a victim’s internet connection in order to connect one’s computer to a so called botnet, in other words to a network of subordinate computers, which allow a cyber-criminal to conduct various activities and retain anonimity. Our computer can hence be used to conduct a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, in other words, to flood the bandwidth or the computing resources of our computer.  The attacker impersonates the victim’s IP address, and sends many queries as the victim to various servers, which floods the server and the victim’s services with a deluge of responses. As a result, the victim’s web page becomes unreachable via the internet. It is also possible that the DDoS attack focused on a particular service is only a cover for a different, more serious attack, with the aim to e.g. steal important information. Third, destruction of data or disabling user control over important data. In such cases, malware has proven to be very harmful as well, especially viruses (that change file functions and consequently infect further data connected to them), rootkits (interfering with operating system files), or exploits (which take advantage of a flaw or vulnerability in an unprotected program to introduce malware). How to protect oneself? An absolute necessity is an anti-virus package, usually also functioning as a firewall. They allow for regular disk scans as well as the scanning of downloaded files. Thanks to the functionality of a firewall we will be able to block a significant part of suspicious programming, as well as internet traffic that behaves abnormally. Nonetheless, such passive protection can be insufficient since some unwanted programs can pass through without our consent – for example, when we click on a link, malicious code may be downloaded and consequently malware can be installed in the background, all without our consent or knowledge. A similar scenario may occur during the download of a seemingly harmless file, which introduces a number of harmful programs into the system. Considering this, besides a regularly updated operating system and programs (all programs, not just the anti-virus), common sense security precautions are also highly recommended – the checking of suspicious files and not clicking on suspicious links. The entirety of our precautions should be complemented with regular computer scans – although, even then, we cannot be one hundred percent sure that our security is complete.