How
Internet Predators Can Harm
Your Computer
By Gene Barlow
User Group Relations
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
one 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 September 1, 2005. In the
meantime, you can check to see if your computer
has hacker tools on it by accessing my Invisus
web site at www.myinvisusdirect.com/usergroupstore. Look for and click on the small
red button that is titled, “Test Your PC Now”. This
will take you to a page where you can download a
trial of the hacker tool removal program and see
what hacker tools are located on your computer.
You will probably be surprised at what you find.
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 atgene@ugr.com.
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