Showing posts with label How-to. Show all posts

Breaks down Ransomware, what you need to know and how to protect yourself from these types of hacks.

It is unfortunately likely the next big thing in hacking, ransomware. Ransomware is a hot trend in hacks. The idea is simple. Attacking your machine to get to your data, but instead of taking it and then going and doing something nefarious with it, they leave it in place and encrypted, lock it up so, you can't get to it until you pay a ransom to the hacker that locked it up. This could happen to individuals small business or to a large organization. Infuriatingly, if you are the victim of a ransomware attack on your own personal machine and they're fairly rare still, but growing, there's a weird gray area you may find yourself in. 

The amount of money and the scale of the crimes being perpetrated is probably not big enough to get a lot of FBI attention and on the other hand, if you did stubborn and push back against the person holding your data for ransom, the amount of money is not enough for them to stick around. They will just move on and leave your data encrypted forever. 

Ransomware: CryptoLocker Ransom Note

The great option you do have is, before the attackers and once again, backup becomes important, but in a special way. Really consider a cloud backup, because many of the ransomware attacks can also seek out other data devices on the local network and perhaps attack them as well.

Scrupulously follow the usual skepticism about unrecognized email attachments and make sure you're running a firewall somewhere on your network. As usual, hacking is generally always been about financial gain but seldom has it been this directly so.
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Vishing is voice-based fishing and that's where you get a phone call from a financial institution that says to you,
we think you might have been a victim of some kind of financial misdeed with your credit card. So, is this your credit card number?
and it is. So, you say,
Yes 
They say,
Is this your expiration date?
and it is. So, you say,
Yes 
They say,
Just to confirm you're you, please flip it over and read us the code on the back of the card. 
You don't want to do that and in some cases there, they're so good at this, what they do is that once you confirm the security code on the back of the card, they go,
you know you really are a victim of identity theft. We're now going to transfer you to our security department
and the first words out of the mouth of the person answers the phone are,
what's your social security number? because we want to confirm you
and now you really give them absolutely everything.

If you get a call for a financial institution and they claim it's the security department, if they say anything other than,
we think there has been some suspicious activity on your credit card, we just want to confirm these transactions with you
If they ask you anything else, hang up. Flip your credit or debit card over. Look at the phone number. Call customer service and then ask them, if someone from that institution and they would have it in the notes on the computer, if someone called you. If they didn't, you've just saved yourself an enormous amount of grief.
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