Category Archives: Keep Safe Online

Keep Safe Online, Security, Virus and Malware Descriptions

Viruses, Malware and Worms, Oh My! – Part 3

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If you’re confused about what virus, malware, adware, and Trojans, etc. are, here are some definitions for you:

Photo of Trojans Virus and Worms
The big three.

1. Virus 

This is an all -encompassing term but, fortunately, it’s a type of malware that we don’t see to often these days. A virus in a computer performs pretty much the same as it does in a human; it takes over completely, preventing other systems from working. A bad virus in either host can sometimes destroy that host completely. Many viruses were written to simply show the awesome skill of the person who wrote the script. Read that with heavy sarcasm. Some script kiddies , as they are sometimes called, don’t even write their own stuff. They copy scripts from more knowledgeable coders and claim them as their own, often signing their names somewhere in the virus code. These days, this type of individual would rather leave their work unseen and unnoticed by the users that they try to infect, in order to extract as much information as possible from them. A virus seeks to attach itself to as many files as it can on the host computer. This is the activity that your AV software should pick up. It’s the speed of the replication that makes them so very dangerous.

2. Malware

Anything that does damage, extracts private information or uses someone’s computer for purposes unknown to that user could be termed malware. There are many different kinds but, basically, things that do bad stuff to computers are designated as malware.

3. Adware

Adware is not nearly as bad as malware but it is aggravating and frustrating all the same. Most adware is installed with those seemingly helpful toolbars which many companies install with their software. Adware wants you to use a certain page for your homepage, a specific search engine, etc. Adware pretends to help you but, in reality, it only helps the company that installed it on your computer. One of the main problems with adware is that it frequently is missed by your anti-virus software. It’s not really harming your computer and it doesn’t act like malware so your AV program will likely not even notice that it’s running or pick it up on a scan. There are specific programs that seek out and destroy adware and we’ll get into these in a future post.

4. Trojan 

These are things that pretend to be other things, just as the original Trojan Horse pretended to be a gift way back in history. The computer user expects a file to be a certain thing, let’s say a Word document or PDF, but that file is actually the installer for a piece of malware. The unwitting computer user won’t know what’s going on behind the scenes when they click on the infected file. While everything may seem normal and the software may do exactly what the user expects it to do, it has also infected the computer with any one of dozens of kinds of malware. It’s not only hackers that do this. Governments use Trojans to manipulate computers and machinery in countries that may be a threat to them. If you’ve ever heard the term ‘backdoor’ in discussions of malware, this is what a Trojan seeks to install on the host computer. Once the backdoor is up and running, the infected computer can be manipulated without its owner knowing about it.

5. Worms

Probably the most famous computer worm is known as the ‘Stuxnet’ worm, designed expressly to infect Iran’s nuclear engineering projects. A worm is a virus but isn’t quite as bent on destruction as a simple virus is. Worms can do many things but their aim is to sit unnoticed, all the while feeding information out to the installer and, in some cases, preventing devices from performing as they should. If one country wants to eliminate a perceived threat, let’s say from a missile installation, it is possible to have those missiles misfire or go off-course through the use of a computer worm. If you’re familiar with the TV series Battlestar Gallactica from about ten years ago, you’ll remember that the Gallactica, which was not networked,  was the only spaceship which was not infected with the virus that destroyed the defence capabilities of every other networked military ship. Worms work their way from computer to computer though networks, often through updates. Some worms are designed specifically to target certain types of mechanical systems.

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An explanation of how the Stuxnet worm travelled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those are the basics. In our next few posts, we’ll show you how to immunize you and your family from these threats. While dangers do not lurk in every corner of the Internet, there are enough of them out there to make knowing this stuff very important. Tell your friends!

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Keep Safe Online, Security

Things That You Shouldn’t Click On

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In actual fact, there are probably thousands of things you shouldn’t click on when you’re on the Internet but we’ll deal with some that might pop up when you’re simply surfing. Here’s what got us started on this path.

We love Formula 1 racing, actually all forms of car racing. Unfortunately, our local networks don’t carry every F1 race. Luckily we’ve found several sites that stream these events live using TV feeds from around the world. While the commentators might not be speaking English, we don’t really care since a car race is pretty self-explanatory. Now, we’ll be the first to admit that this kind of streaming isn’t exactly kosher. It’s on the edge of what some people would consider being legal. Regardless, we’re hooked on F1 so we do it.

The sites that we use, which will remain nameless, are full of pop-ups and adult ads. On top of that, every page has warnings that suggest your browser is out of date, you need a plug-in to watch the video (you don’t) or your computer has a virus and clicking on a link will fix it. In reality, all of these warnings are false. The links look very official, however, and we think that you may find this kind of malware in other places on the Internet. Here are some examples of what we are talking about:

1.

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This looks official right? It’s not.

2.

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Your browser will play any video on the Internet. You do not need any other media player.

3.

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If you use Chrome, everything is up to date as soon as you open the browser. It’s done automatically.

4.

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Wrong. No plugin needed.

5.

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Chrome updates itself. Don’t click on anything like this.

6.

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This looks official but it isn’t. Internet Explorer is upgraded with Windows Update, not in the middle of browsing the Internet.

OK, you get the point. If you only surf well known sites, you’ll be fine. The problem comes when you step off the main road a bit and click on a link in Google that just might lead you to a site that installs malicious software if you click on the wrong button. Chrome will try to protect you from all of this but it’s not perfect. New malware sites pop up every day. You have to learn to protect yourself.

When you come across things like this, simply close the browser completely. When you restart it, don’t restore the last session, otherwise the whole thing will start again. Now, the problem that might come up is that some of these malware popups won’t allow you to close your browser, even if you click the little X on the top right. In fact, if you do click on that X, a whole other window might pop up! What to do? Here’s where we need the old ‘three finger salute’, the magic buttons that bring up the Windows Task Manager. Look for these keys:

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Control (CTRL) Alt and Delete (Del). Press all three at the same time.

By pressing these keys, you bring up this screen:

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Click on Task Manager down at the bottom.

Once you click on Task Manager, this is what you see:

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Look for Chrome or whatever browser you are using.

What you are looking at is essentially the On/Off switch for everything that is running on your computer at this point in time. Once you find the program that won’t shut off, highlight it by clicking on it, then click on End Task down at the bottom. This applies to any program, of course, not just browser windows that won’t close. Say you’re using VLC or Media Player and it won’t close. Use this technique to shut it down.

TIP: Why is all of this important? If you do happen to click on any of these things, malware (bad software, like a virus) will be installed on your computer. Once this stuff is installed, you probably won’t notice much difference but, and this is the bad part, a key logging program will be running in the background, sitting there waiting for you to log in to your bank account. Once you do that, your password and credentials are sent off to a third party who can now steal your identity and, of course, some or all of your money.

We’ve shown you how to spot bad links and how to resolve a window that won’t close. Your job is to make sure that you and everyone who uses a computer in your house is aware of this. Tell your friends, share this post, tweet about it! Be the town crier, if you want everyone to be safe. We’d advise you to use Google Chrome as well as  good anti-virus, anti-malware software. We like Windows Defender (Windows 8) or Microsoft Security Essentials (older versions of Windows). Both are free, by the way. You don’t have to pay for protection.

Thanks for reading. If you have questions or comments, use the form below. Better yet, like us on Facebook and you’ll be able to keep up with everything we post there. Here is the link: Computers Made Simple on Facebook

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keep Safe Online, Security, Strong Passwords

The Only Password You’ll Ever Need

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Security experts tell us that we should have a different password for every account we use. That’s easier said than done, isn’t it?  If you’re tired of trying to remember obscure passwords for all of your online accounts, here’s a quick and easy way to streamline the process. There are a few ways that you could integrate this into your daily routine but that’s up to you. We’ll give you the basics, you adjust the parameters. Let’s get going:

First: 

Make a reasonably strong initial password. Here’s a link to our post on how to do exactly that: Passwords – How to create a good one. You can actually write the password down, that part won’t matter too much if someone else finds it.

System A: 

2. Let’s say that you’re going to sign in to your Outlook or email account. You would use the password you just created then add a letter that corresponds to the account you’re currently using. If your password is AbC54F (bad example, we know) then you would add an ‘o’ if you were using Outlook or a ‘g’ if you were signing in to Gmail. Whether you add the letter at the start or the end or the middle wouldn’t matter, as long as you remember where it goes, as in: oAbC54F or gAbC54F or AbC54Fo or AbC54Fg. Caps are possible too, of course.

You’re using a different password for each different account, that part satisfies the security experts, plus you’ve got only one thing to remember for each account, aside from the password itself. That one thing, the letter, is staring you right in the face so it’s a bit hard to forget. To make things a bit more complicated, you could add the same letter or the first two letters, one at the start and one at the end, to make your gmail password gAbC54Fm or oAbC54Fu for Outlook.

System B: 

While system A keeps the experts happy, you still have to remember the password as well as the lettering system you’ve set up. System B eliminates that problem but won’t satisfy the security peeps. For any account you use, add a punctuation mark or letter or number to one end of the password. In other words, you would enter the password, such as AbC54F, then put an ! at the start or a ? at the end, something like that. It doesn’t matter what you use, just remember where you put it. If you use the same punctuation mark, number or letter for every account, there’s virtually nothing to remember, except the initial password.

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Create your main password with mnemonics, then add something to it to keep it secure.

Mnemonics 

Use mnemonics to create the main password as described in our post, the link is at the top of the page. If that password is strong enough, and easy to remember, then you can use it for all of your online accounts using our ‘add something to it’ technique. Better yet, make up your own system using our basic instructions. A word, a year, something that is unique to you but, best of all, something that will be totally secure, even if someone gains access to your main password. Now you can forget obscure combinations of numbers and letters, leaving you more memory room for birthdays and anniversaries. How cool is that?

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