Know About Cyber Crimes and Protect Yourself From Hackers
In the world of cyber crimes, one has to be very vigilant to prevent loss of highly sensitive information from their system. If you wish to protect yourself from online scams, it is essential to have knowledge about hackers and various cyber crimes.
Hackers
Hackers are individuals who intrude into others system without permission in search of information (hacking). They can be categorized into three groups depending on the degree of their ability to commit cyber crimes. Beginners are generally kids, who intrude for fun. The other two groups include intermediate and advanced where the advanced hackers are difficult to trace.
Cyber crimes
Hacking: Hacking means intruding into other’s system without permission and this is the most common cyber crime we come across.
Process of Hacking:
To intrude into a system, the hacker follows the following steps:
·Identifies system that is vulnerable to hacking. In case of large corporations, hackers keeps dialing the extensions associated with that office to find out a phone that is connected to the computer. He uses that system for hacking sensitive information about the company.
·After identifying a vulnerable system, he makes attempts to break the password. If he succeeds in his attempts, he will have all the files of the company under his custody.
·To protect from being identified, the hacker deletes the log file of the system every time he intrudes the system.
In addition to hacking, there are many other cyber crimes that cause huge losses if unidentified.
Phishing cyber crimes:
These crimes are committed by setting up a site that is identical to a genuine bank site or sites like PayPal. Then, the phishing site sends out a mail requesting for bank or credit card details with link to the bank website. If the user clicks on this site, he will be directed to a phishing site which grabs all the details he enters. The hacker can make use of this information to carryout transactions.
Another phishing crime is to request the customers to purchase articles from a phony online store. The offender collects few orders and disappears without delivering the goods.
Trojan Phishing is a phishing scam in which the criminal sets up a connection with Trojan infected systems and continues to obtain information from the systems. He may even install software such as keylogging software, which provides information about each and every keystroke. This sort of cybercrime involving the keylogging software is highly dangerous.
The above cyber crimes can be prevented by practicing the below given two simple measures:
·Proper identification of the URL of the site before logging into the site.
·Use of updated versions of firewall, spyware, browsers and the operating system.
Last note, beware of hackers and avoid becoming victims of cyber crimes. Government bodies throughout the world are working together to identify solutions for cyber crimes.