the Different Types of Online Threats, Security Risks or Dangers

The Different Types of Online Threats, Security Risks or Dangers

• Ransomware:

  Ransomware is a sophisticated piece of malware that blocks the victim’s access to his/her files or computers. The malware does this by encrypting or making all the files on the victims’ computers unreadable and then ask for money to decrypt or make the files readable again. Ransomware may also block access to the victims’ computers by locking them out, therefore, preventing them from working on their computers. This is why this type of malware is called a Ransomware because it holds your PC or files for "ransom".

• Trojan horse:

  Trojan is one of the most complicated threats among all. Most of the popular banking threats come from the Trojan family such as Zeus and SpyEye. It has the ability to hide itself from antivirus detection and steal important banking data to compromise your bank account. If the Trojan is really powerful, it can take over your entire security system as well. As a result, a Trojan can cause many types of damage starting from your own computer to your online account.

• Virus:

  Looking at the technology 10 years back, Virus is something really popular. It is a malicious program where it replicates itself and aim to only destroy a computer. The ultimate goal of a virus is to ensure that the victim’s computer will never be able to operate properly or even at all. It is not so popular today because Malware today is designed to earn money over destruction. As a result, Virus is only available for people who want to use it for some sort of revenge purpose.

• Worms:

  One of the most harmless threats where it is program designed only to spread. It does not alter your system to cause you to have a nightmare with your computer, but it can spread from one computer to another computer within a network or even the internet. The computer security risk here is, it will use up your computer hard disk space due to the replication and took up most of your bandwidth due to the spread.

• Spyware:

  Is a Malware which is designed to spy on the victim’s computer. If you are infected with it, probably your daily activity or certain activity will be spied by the spyware and it will find itself a way to contact the host of this malware. Mostly, the use of this spyware is to know what your daily activity is so that the attacker can make use of your information. Such as if you browse on sex toys for a week every day, the attacker will try to come out with a sex toy scam to cheat on your money.

• Like-Farming Scam:

  Like-Farming is creating a fake Facebook page or post to lure people into liking, sharing, or commenting on it. Once the page or post creators, called Like-Farmers, have gathered up hundreds or thousands of likes, comments or shares, they will change the page or post and promote something else, such as products that they will receive commissions for selling. They may also sell the page or post with the information that was collected from the "likes," comments, shares, or send links to those Facebook users that go to malicious websites that will infect their computers with malware (virus, spyware, ransomware), or to phishing websites that will steal their online account credentials, personal and financial informatio

• Scareware:

  Scareware is something that plant into your system and immediately inform you that you have hundreds of infections which you don’t have. The idea here is to trick you into purchasing a bogus anti-malware where it claims to remove those threats. It is all about cheating your money but the approach is a little different here because it scares you so that you will buy.

• Keylogger:

  Something that keeps a record of every keystroke you made on your keyboard. Keylogger is a very powerful threat to steal people’s login credential such as username and password. It is also usually a sub-function of a powerful Trojan.

• Adware:

  Is a form of threat where your computer will start popping out a lot of advertisement. It can be from non-adult materials to adult materials because any ads will make the host some money. It is not really harmful threat but can be pretty annoying.

• Vulnerable Exploiter:

  Vulnerable Exploiter is a form of software which is programmed specifically to attack certain vulnerability. For instance if your web browser is ratong vulnerable to some out-dated vulnerable flash plugin, an exploit will work only on your web browser and plugin. The best way to avoid getting hit by exploits is to always patch or update your computer or mobile device software and operating system. Your software and operating system will auotmatically prompt you to update themselves, so when they do take the time out to do so.

• Fake Antivirus (AV):

  Fake Antivirus threat is a very popular on the Internet. Cybercriminals create fake antivirus and use fake websites and adverisemeents to trick and scare their potential victims into believing their computer are infected with virus or other malware Once the cyber criminals have convinced their potential victims that their computers are infected with so-called virus, they will then attempt to convince them into buying the fake antivirus to remove the viruses that do not exist.

• Phishing:

  The involves using a fake website which is designed to look almost like the actual website is a form of phishing attack. The idea of this attack is to trick the user into entering their username and password into the fake login form which serves the purpose of stealing the identity of the victim. Every form sent out from the phishing site will not go to the actual server, but the attacker controlled server.

• Bluesnarfing:

  Bluesnarfing is all about having an unauthorized access to a specific mobile phones, laptop, or PDA via Bluetooth connection. By having such unauthorized access, personal stuff such as photos, calender, contacts and SMS will all be revealed and probably even stolen.

• Bluejacking:

  Bluejacking is also uses the Bluetooth technology but it is not as serious as Bluesnarfing. What it does is it will connect to your Bluetooth device and send some message to another Bluetooth device. It is not something damaging to your privacy or device system compared to the Bluesnarfing threat.

• DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service):

  A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack occurs when multiple systems (botnet) flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system, usually one or more web servers. Such an attack is often the result of multiple compromised systems (for example, a botnet) flooding the targeted system with traffic.

• Browser Hijackers:

  A browser hijacker uses malware to take control of the victim’s web browsing session. It is extremely dangerous especially when the victim is trying to send some money via online banking because that is the best time for the hijacker to alter the destination of the bank account and even amount.

• Chain Letters:

  A typical chain letter consists of a message that attempts to convince the recipient to make a number of copies of the letter and then pass them on to a certain number of recipients. Originally, chain letters were letters one received in the mail. Today, chain letters are often sent via email messages, postings on social network sites, and text messages.

• Malicious Document:

  Virus today can be spread through document file as well especially PDF documents. Last time, people will only advice you not to simply execute an EXE file but in today’s world with today’s technology, document file should also be avoided. It is best if you use an online virus scanner to scan first before opening any single file which you feel it is suspicious. Microsoft Office documents like Word or Excel can contain Macros that be used to install malware on the victim's computer if the document is opened and the Macro is enabled.

• Mousetrapping:

  I am not too sure whether you had encountered a Mousetrapping Malware before where what it does is it will trap your web browser to a particular website only. If you try to type another website, it will automatically redirect you back. If you try clicking forward/backward of the navigation button, it will also redirect you back. If you try to close your browser and re-open it, it will set the homepage to that website and you can never get out of this threat unless you remove it.

• Obfuscated Spam:

  To be really honest, obfuscated Spam is a spam mail. It is obfuscated in the way that it does not look like any spamming message so that it can trick the potential victim into clicking it. Spam mail today looks very genuine and if you are not careful, you might just fall for what they are offering.

• Pharming:

  Pharming works more or less like phishing but it is a little tricky here. There are two types of pharming where one of it is DNS poisoning where your DNS is being compromised and all your traffic will be redirected to the attacker’s DNS. The other type of pharming is to edit your HOST file where even if you typed www.google.com on your web browser, it will still redirect you to another site. One thing similar is that both are equally dangerous.

• Crimeware:

  Crimeware is a form of Malware where it takes control of your computer to commit a computer crime. Instead of the hacker himself committing the crime, it plants a Trojan or whatever the Malware is called to order you to commit a crime instead. This will make the hacker himself clean from whatever crime that he had done.