Network monitoring is an essential responsibility for businesses of all sizes. Medium-sized and large companies typically have a network monitoring system in place either onsite or offsite in the cloud but what about small businesses? This is exactly what hackers are asking when they are seeking to breach a network.
In the last few years small businesses have become (more…)
Backdoors are a method that hackers use to establish unauthorized access to a network from a remote location. Hackers use backdoors as a means of gaining repeated access to a network without being logged by the systems administrator. This type of network intrusion hides its presence while the hacker is actually using the network without the knowledge of others.
How Backdoors Work
Hackers gain access to a network by (more…)
If you’re a Facebook user, odds are you’ve seen it. Joe Smith posts a new status that says something to the effect of, “Check out the picture I found of you.” It is followed by a link consisting of a series of random letters and numbers. Now, the dilemma ensues.
OMG! Joe has a picture of me?! OMG! I just have to see it. I know it looks shady and it might be a virus, but if there is even a chance that there is some random picture of me out on the Internet, it is totally worth the risk of costing my company countless IT engineering dollars too fight a potential virus.
The user can’t resist and decides to click the link. It produces a “Page Not Found” error. “Well maybe if I click on it 7-8 more times it will come up.”
At this point, that little bot that was downloaded on the first attempt now has 7-8 little bot friends. In a couple days they are going to have a web browser pop-up party on the user’s screen and their Google home page will be redirected to some site of questionable moral fiber.
The user isn’t going to report it right away because they are so embarrassed. When they do report it, they have been doing NOTHING but work for the past 2 weeks and would not even think of surfing Facebook during work hours. It is officially the anti-virus software and the IT administrator’s fault. Lengthy Safe Mode scans with software like Malwarebytes or SuperAntiSpyware find numerous infections in repeated scans eventually prompting the need for a full rebuild of the PC.