Research has shown that Black Hat hackers in many cases are far ahead of their White Hat counterparts. Many of the wares produced by Black Hats are now “dormant” and waiting on your system to be activated when signaled. They are mainly trojans that wait for you use your online banking. Viruses have quadrupled from over 15,000 in 2007 to almost 60,000 in 2008. F-Secure says there were 59,177 programs called “Trojans,” circulating on the Internet since last year, compared with 15,969 in 2007 (USA Today).
Things to consider to have a fighting chance:
- Keep your PC up to date. If running Linux, make sure you keep up with the system updates (especially the critical updates). On a Windows box, ensure that Updates are enabled.
- An anti-virus software must be installed. I suggest AVG. Even on a linux machine you should run anti-virus software to prevent the propagation of viruses to Windows based machines.
- Install some form of Spyware Removal Tool.
- It seems Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is at the top of the list of “most hacked” browser. Firefox and Chrome are far less susceptible to attacks, making them safer browsers. Use them instead.
- Secure your wireless network. Try to use WPA2-PSK at the very least with a more secure pseudo-random generated key. A good key generator is found here.
- Ensure a firewall of some sort is running. Windows Firewall is the absolute bare minimum.
It seems, after all that, it sometimes comes down to just plain common-sense sometimes. A lot of trojans and viruses make their way into your system when certain executables are run. If you receive a file by email, always check the extension on the file. For example, spears.jpg.vbs is not a picture but a vbscript that could be potentially dangerous.
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