CompuClever Blog

How Antivirus Protects Your Computer From Hackers

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A few weeks ago a massive hack shut down much of the Internet. It’s widely believed the hack was carried out through internet devices—a good reminder to us all about taking care of our own security online.

On Friday, October 21st, a lot of people were having a hard time accessing the Internet. First, Twitter went down. Then PayPal no longer worked. Later on cloud storage sites such as Dropbox went offline. For most of the day tens of millions of people could not access some of the most important and most useful websites on the Internet. Reddit, CNN and Netflix were all affected.

Was it a Russian hack? Could it be the Chinese? Nobody could say for sure. The only thing that was certain was that massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack had occurred. The target of the attack was DNS service provider Dyn.

What is a DNS provider?

As as DNS provider and as a company, Dyn’s job is to convert human-readable website names such as www.facebook.com into computer-readable numerical IP addresses (for example, 192.168.0.1)—humans prefer to use easy-to-remember-addresses such as www.facebook.com rather than the long, insanely complicated numerical strings favored by our machine servants.

Websites like Twitter and Dropbox rely on Dyn to help resolve and translate the various kinds of links each company uses as part of their product. Continue reading...

Breaking News – Yahoo Admits Breach of 500 Million Accounts

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My heart dropped when I was alerted by CNN that Yahoo admitted today that 500 million user accounts have been compromised. As a seasoned IT professional who has been involved with the security industry for the past decade, this is probably THE worse security breach that’s occurred since the inception of the Internet.

Here are the key facts that you should be aware of regarding this breach:

  • In August 2016, a person codenamed “Peace” attempted to sell what he claimed to be 200 million Yahoo user information.
  • Back then, Yahoo only said they were investigating the legitimacy of the claim.
  • On Sept. 22nd 2016, Yahoo issued a statement acknowledging the legitimacy of the claim. Furthermore, Yahoo confirmed the scale of the breach is actually 500 million accounts.
  • Yahoo also confirmed that the information stolen contains name, username, lightly encrypted passwords, date of birth, and for some accounts, security questions and answers.

Nevertheless, till this moment, Yahoo hasn’t issued a notice to all of its users advising them to reset their passwords.

Here at CompuClever, we felt it is necessary to inform you about this event because there is a high possibility that either you or someone you know might be impacted by this incident. Continue reading...

Firewalls – First Line Filtration

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If our PC could be considered a well-protected fortress, we would think of the firewall as an essential part of the moat and drawbridge system – it monitors and controls entry. Most of us associate firewalls with large network corporations and sophisticated security systems. You might, however, be surprised to find your PC and personal devices have security issues similar to large corporate networks. This is why firewall technology is built into your PC and offers the first line of protection from offensive web sites and potential hackers.

We’ll begin with a definition of what a firewall is and then move into some basic questions and answers.  After that we’re going to provide information for those that might want to beef up their firewall protection.

The Firewall Basics

Effectively a firewall is a filter.  It is designed to prevent dubious programs and Internet services from establishing a connection or gaining access to your computer.

Firewall Defined: A firewall is hardware or software technology designed to monitor and filter incoming and outgoing traffic to your PC.  It is a network security function that effectively acts as a barrier.  The data that passes through depends on the pre-determined set of rules which are configured in the firewall settings.

Continue reading...

Antivirus Software – 7 Myths Debunked

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Making use of an Antivirus application is commonly understood to be a prerequisite of operating your computer in a connected, online world. Generally speaking, it is unthinkable that one would run a PC without being actively protected by legitimate AV software with a valid subscription, whether paid or free. Nevertheless, there are some common myths about antivirus applications. Some of these myths prevent users from providing themselves with adequate protection while other myths perpetuate untruths and misinformation.

Here are 7 myths about antivirus software that we get from interacting with users when dealing with security related support cases.  Let’s debunk the myths related to AV applications.

The Top 7:

Here are the myths that we cover in this article along with the real truths about each.

1. Authentication and encryption offers me all the protection I need.

It’s true that authentication and encryption can make it challenging for a criminal to get to your confidential information but not impossible.  Some authentication systems use a One Time Passcode (OTP) and send a Simple Messaging System (SMS) or computer generated call back system.

Unfortunately, cyber criminals have already found ways to circumvent multi-factor authentication which was supposed to radically reduce online criminal activity.   Continue reading...

How to Protect Your Computer from Ransomware

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Ransomware is the latest threat to afflict millions of computer users worldwide. What’s really startling is that even police departments are being affected. Let’s take a look at what ransomware is, and how you can protect yourself against it.

Cyber-criminals have so far collected more than $200 million in the first three months of 2016, and are on track to steal $1 billion by the end of the year.

How?

By tricking regular people, as well as businesses and institutions, to download “ransomware” that takes control of computers and servers. If you want to unlock your computer data, you have to pay the crooks.

It’s a lucrative scam and no one is safe: hospitals, school boards and even police departments have all been blackmailed by ransomware criminals so far this year.

You Don’t Even Have to Download Ransomware to Infect Your Computer

Most recently, Game of Thrones fans were targeted by ransomware just by visiting the Pirate Bay video downloading site.

What’s most frightening about this example is that the visitors to the Pirate Bay didn’t actually download any malicious files.

Instead, all they did was get secretly redirected to a webpage that exploited common security holes in their Internet browser.

Continue reading...