The Art of Phishing

When it comes to online security and preventing against threats to your computer system in general. All we hear about are computer viruses, trojan horses, adware and spyware. These are all important and sure, you wouldn’t want your computer system infected with any of these malicious wares, but to me, they’re not the most serious threat by any means. For me, the single biggest thing that scares me online is a Phishing attack.

For those not in the know, a phishing attack is where someone e-mails you and diverts you to a website that appears to be something it isn’t. A good example is getting an e-mail what appears to be from your local bank. The e-mail looks perfectly formatted and branded using the banks logos and wording. You’d think it was legit. The e-mail then asks you to click on a link which takes you to a website, again often branded using your banks logo and colours. The website then proceeds to ask you to login using your bank account details for whatever reason. Of course, the website you’ve just entered your details into isn’t your bank at all and your access credentials and security information has just been forwarded to a hacker half way around the world.

Spotting these threats is tough and I myself have almost fallen for it a number of times. Especially when I get legitimate e-mails from my bank and credit card companies often. I consider myself fairly web savvy so can only imagine how many people who are not so clued up must fall for this tactic.

The only real way to check if the website is legit is to look at the domain name in your address bar. Make sure it is indeed your bank (or other online account) before entering your credentials. Also, make sure that the page is secured by looking for the padlock in your web browser status bar.

Anti Virus Software

The anti-virus software market is extremely popular. There are 10+ large players in the industry and no one company really has a monopoly on the others. This is quite rare when it comes to computer software in general. There is normally always one major player but in the anti virus and virus scanning software market, there isn’t. With that said though, all of the virus protection applications that you can buy off the shelf at your local software store do pretty much exactly the same thing, they protect your computer from harmful computer viruses.

With this in mind, it doesn’t really matter so much which brand you buy. All that matters is that you buy one with a good virus definition database and more importantly, buy an application that offers free, daily updates. Computer viruses change vast with new ones being released daily, so you need to keep up to date. Some applications I have seen in the past charge you significant amounts to update your various patterns and definitions. This is something you need to look out for.

All virus prevention and scanning applications offer the basic service of identifying viruses within your system currently and also alert you should you try and open a file that contains a virus. Some of the more advanced and ultimately popular virus scanning applications such as BitDefender also contain malware, spyware and adware protection elements that take virus scanning a step further than the traditional sense by protecting you against online and web based threads. Some applications also feature anti-phishing tools in order to stop you giving out your personal data to those pretending to be someone else such as your bank for example.

Protecting Yourself From Computer Viruses

There are two things that need to be done when it comes to protecting against computer viruses. The first is simple, be careful what you download, receive and open. The second, install a good virus scanner. These might sound obvious but viruses are still being made as people are still not taking the necessary steps to secure their computer systems.

90% of all virus infections are caused because of user error. Whether the user has downloaded a file from the Internet or opened an e-mail attachment from someone they don’t know, it’s nearly always down to the user. Computer viruses cannot just pick out computers and random and infect them, they require at least some sort of interaction and execution from the user. Unfortunately, we’re not alert all the time. How many times have you had someone e-mail you a file over or transfer a file to you via your Instant Messenger and opened it without a second thought? I know I have and why not? You wouldn’t expect your friend or colleague to be sending you something harmful - but what if they didn’t know about it? The more intelligent, if you can call them that, virus out there distribute themselves using the users own contact lists and appear to be from a legitimate source. The only way to avoid such infection is to assume that everything is a virus and confirm the source before opening.

Of course, the user can only be relied on so much. If we didn’t open any file we ever received we’d be in a sorry state, so we really on applications. In particular, virus scanners. Pick up any virus scanning and protection application from a major brand at your local PC software store and it’ll do the job of protecting your system from 99.9% of the viruses out there currently. Most even protect from user error and will not let you open infected files no matter how much you try to.

Spyware Removal

Unfortunately these days, AdWare and SpyWare in general is becoming a real problem. For the most part, Internet users are learning how to spot potential adware / spyware offenders when viewing / running online applications, but there is still a large chunk of web users worldwide who will download and install anything presented to them. Fortunately, most AdWare and SpyWare is pretty harmless when compared to their malicious counterparts, trojans and viruses. Most AdWare applications will literally just offer you advertisements, divert you to certain websites or manipulate your search results where as spyware applications tend to monitor your online activity more than anything with a view of profiting from your usage habbits. Still, they are a problem and we want to do our best to be rid of them.

Luckily these days, most of the off the shelf virus scanners have built in adware and spyware protection which halts the malware as it’s trying to be installed. There are also numerous third party applications out there that can be purchased and downloaded to specifically tackle the problem of Spyware. These small tools are updated almost daily and are invaluable in the battle against such applications. A popular application (and has been for some time) is the Lavasoft AdAware tool. This application contains a seriously comprehensive list of almost all adware and spyware applications out there as well as a list of websites that are known to offend. If you run this tool, you’re fairly safe and fairly well protected against such issues. There are however a large percentage of web users who have spyware installed and simply don’t know about it as it doesn’t actually do anything other than log.

Understanding The Trojan Horse

The Trojan Horse, as you might have guessed gets its name from the Trojan Horse used in the Trojan war. A Trojan Horse in computing terms works in pretty much the same way as the original Trojan horse. It first appears to be something of value to the user but when opened or executed, it is something completely different entirely. Some Trojan applications are attached to legitimate applications such as games and utilities which continue to work in the way they’re supposed to. If you receive one of these, the chances are that you won’t even realise you have a Trojan running. The tell tale sign used to be running an application that when clicked / executed appeared to do absolutely nothing, although with Trojans now appearing as legitimate applications, they’re becoming harder to spot.

There have been numerous, well publicised computer Trojan horses over the past 10 years or so. The most common two were BackOrifice and NetBus. These two trojan horse applications, when executed, allowed the sender to gain access to the remote computer. Once the hacker has access, they’re able to edit / delete files amongst other things.

Trojan horses these days are fairly uncommon. This is mainly down to advances in virus protection software being able to detect such bolt ons to seemingly normal applications but more so, the fact that users, particularly online are more savvy and will definitely think twice before accepting and opening an executable file from someone they don’t know. Of course, the more intelligent Trojan horse applications have taken this into account and in some cases, distribute themselves whilst pretending to be being sent from someone you know. Luckily most operating systems will warn you several times before allowing you to open such a file.

Most Trojan horse applications are geared towards the home user and the Windows operating system. Companies seldom suffer from Trojan attacks as a whole.

BitDefender Virus Prevention Software

I have been using computers for the best part of 15 years, I have been online for at least 10 of those and during that time have tried many weird and wonderful virus scanners and virus prevention applications. I used to just use the free ones that you could download here and there but always found that the virus definition library was always a couple of years out of date. Pretty useless if you’re using the Internet and putting yourself at risk from viruses that were coded and released just yesterday. I have also tried some of the high end releases from Sophos and Norton and whilst they appeared to do a great job (touch wood), I don’t think they were worth the cost. However, one paid virus scanning application I can recommend is BitDefender.

I have been a user of this application for around 4 years now, mainly because it is very competitively priced admittedly but as well as that, it has all the features you would ever need in an anti virus application. The thing I like the most about BitDefender is that it just sits there running, in the background without taking up too much memory and I know it’s working for me. I feel safe. Almost every week it alerts me of threats when I visit certain websites and open certain files. I am just looking at the amount of viruses it has “caught” over the past month and it’s quite significant. I can only imagine what would have happened to my data and computer if I hadn’t had it running!

It also has a great anti phishing filter to protect me from malicious websites trying to coax me into entering my data - not that I’d fall for that anymore. I just think it’s a good all round application that does everything, stays updated and is priced very very competitively.