Friday, November 11, 2011

What is a Botnet, Drive-by-Download, or DDoS Attack? Familiarize yourself with more PC security terms.

What is a botnet, drive-by-download, DDoS attack, keylogger or rootkit?You may have heard about the recent DDoS attack carried out by the well-known hacktivist group Anonymous or that humongous botnet consisting of over 4,000,000 computers that the FBI just brought down.  However, as you’re reading the articles you may be thinking to yourself, “What the heck is a botnet or DDoS attack?!”

Well, here’s your answer – along with the definitions of a few other tech terms you’re likely to encounter:

Botnet


A botnet is a collection of PCs that are infected with malware allowing a hacker to control them remotely. Typically botnet operators use their army of zombie computers to carry out DDoS attacks and send out spam.

You may have heard of the Rustock and Kelihos botnets that were dismantled earlier this year?

Drive-by-Download


A drive-by –download takes place when a user visits a website that hosts one or more exploits targeting potential vulnerabilities within the visiting machine - whether it’s the web browser or a browser add-on like Java.

If the visiting computer is vulnerable, malware will be downloaded onto their machine, usually without the end-user’s knowledge.

DDoS (Denial-of-Service) Attack


Imagine it’s Black Friday and a huge mob of shoppers are all rushing to the door at the same time to get in. The huge group of flailing arms and limbs, kicking and screaming as they all try to squeeze through prevent anyone else from gaining entry.

That pretty much sums up what a DDoS attack is – a denial of service (or website, in this case). The bad guys usually carry out DDoS attacks with the help of botnets.

Keylogger


A keylogger does exactly what its name implies, which is to log any keystrokes typed by the user of an infected machine. Keyloggers typically come bundled with Trojan Horses and are used by cybercrooks to harvest sensitive information like account logins and banking details from infected computers.

Rootkit


The term ‘rootkit’ stems from a combination of “root”, which refers to the all-powerful Admin account on Unix systems and “kit”, which refers to a set of programs that allow someone to maintain root-level access on a PC.

Rootkits are often used by malware authors to gain admin privileges on a computer and evade detection, whether it’s from the end-user or any residing antivirus protection software.

Great, now I'm afraid to do anything on my PC. Now what?


Now that you’ve familiarized yourself with more of the dangers lurking around every mouse-click and keystroke, you can take the steps necessary to make sure your PC is safe and secure.

Thankfully keeping your computer safe from malware isn’t difficult. However it does require the use of a few tools and a dash of common sense.

  1. Make sure you’re running up-to-date anti-virus and anti-malware software that offers must-have features like real-time scanning, a personal firewall and email filtering.

  2. Minimize the chances of your computer having any vulnerabilities that can be exploited by malware by ensuring that all system and program updates are downloaded and installed.

  3. Refrain from opening any email attachments that appear to be suspicious and make sure you manually scan any email attachments you do wish to download prior to opening them.

  4. Think twice about following any links that your gut instinct tells you not to, especially if it’s on a social networking site as that’s one of the favorite ways for cybercrooks to spread malware.

  5. Opt to download software from their legitimate vendors vs. using pirated copies as the bad guys are known for tacking malware onto software they then share via P2P networks.

  6. Set system restore points and back up all of your precious data as you never know when they’ll come in handy.


Be sure to follow us“like” us or circle us to stay up-to-date on the latest tech news and security threats.

No comments:

Post a Comment