Welcome to DR's note, your weekly dose of knowledge from Circuit Stitch.

This week we will talk about Cyberattacks and how to protect against them.

   

To start off this week's DR's note, I want to share something I overheard while out getting dinner one night.  The TV was on the news at this place and patrons were talking to each other and watching the TV.  I overheard someone say “Cyberattacks, why should we care about that cyberattacks?”  That person then was just spouting off nonsense about a topic he knew nothing about.  To be a little honest, I do live in an area that is not full of super high dollar industries.  But that doesn't mean we can just bury our heads in the sand to the plight of the cyber world and its effects on our everyday lives.  If you remember just last years the Colonial pipeline that got attacked with ransomware and temporarily shut it down.  The cyberattacks don't necessarily go after individuals, though they do use social engineering on individuals at companies to help them gain access.  It is a very scary thing to have happened, but if you are ready and knowledgeable, then you have less of a chance of falling victim to these cyberattacks or scams.

    Let us look into steps that you can take to shield yourself against potential cyberattacks.  First off, make sure all your devices are up-to-date with the latest software.  When your device is up-to-date it will have the latest security patches, this will help keep you secure.  These patches are important because someone found a vulnerability that the software manufacture needed to fix with the security patch.  Basically, it is a hole in your system that a hacker can use to get in and gain info.  Next, never give any sensitive data (SS number, Pin number, credit card number, etc) over text, email, messenger app, etc.  If someone hacks that site and views chat logs, then they will see what ever sensitive data you sent in plain text that they can then use.  Now the hacker will not be scouring each message with there own eyes to look for this data, no, they will have a program run through millions of messages in a matter of minutes. Lastly, for this week it is, passwords, you should not use the same password for multiple accounts.  You should also make it complex, let me show you some examples; Password (this is too easy, and they have this in every word list for any brute force hack), *p^2Sw0rd*(this looks similar to password but is more complex and therefore much harder to crack).  You don't need to get crazy with the amount of complexity, but just change up one or two things so that it is not easily guessed.  There is more you can do to help protect yourself, but I feel that if you do just these three, you are on a more solid foundation than most people out there. 

    If you have a question or a topic you'd like me to discuss, feel free to leave a comment below. Thank you and have a great week.

Welcome to DR's note, your weekly dose of knowledge from Circuit Stitch.

 This week we continue the series of Know thy enemy, and this week we talk about Worms.

    Worms are a strange sounding malware for a computer, but this is one of the most damaging viruses that can be on your devices.  Well, what are worms and how do they harm your devices.    Here is how Malwarebytes (a popular anti-malware software) defines worms, a computer worm is a subset of the Trojan horse malware that can propagate or self-replicate from one computer to another without human activation after breaching a system.  Basically, after you have installed the Trojan (the malware we talked about last week) and activated it, it will do its thing as it infects your system.  It will self-replicate in that it will create many of itself to not only hide in your system, and then it will send out these copies of itself to other systems connected to it.  It does this, infecting of connected systems across the internet or LAN(Local area network).  Once you are infected with the worm it can do several things other than the self-replicating, and they are; install other malware, consume bandwidth, delete files, overload networks, steal data, open a backdoor, and deplete hard drive space.  It's worth mentioning, there is a difference between a Computer worm and a worm virus.  The former doesn't need any human interaction for it to work and run itself, the latter does, you need to activate it for it to start on its journey of destroying systems. 

    There have been many types of computer worms out there, here are some of the more infamous ones that if you are curious give them a Google; Morris worm, Bagle (aka beagle, mitglieder, and lodeight), Blaster, Conficker, ILOVEYOU, mydoom, Ryuk, SQL Slammer, Storm Worm, Stuxnet, and most recently the WannaCry.  Now, the WannaCry was more of a ransomware attack, but had worm components in it to help it infect hundreds of thousands of computers over 150 countries in just a few hours.  Crazy stuff, this malware is no joke if you get infected.

    What are the symptoms of a computer worm, and how do you get rid of them?  First the former, you will notice your computer slows down, freezes, and crashes a lot.  It will also throw up error messages on a constant basis.  Some other things you could notice would be missing or corrupt files, rapidly depleting hard drive space even if are not downloading or installing anything new, and you may notice firewall breach alerts.  How do you get rid of them?  The best solution is to get a good antivirus or anti-malware (my suggestions are Malwarebytes, they have a good track record), but do not op-in to a free one as it will most likely not fix the issue you are trying to fix.  If you try and just get rid of the virus yourself you will find that it might be impossible, as several factors will come into play; the worm could be active(so the files are in use and can't be deleted), more than one worm process may be running (the act of stopping one can just have it restarted back up by another), it has hooks into registry links that make it incredible hard to pin down and delete, and finally it could have infected your back-up so that if you would try and just load a back-up of windows you will just load a back-up with the worm still infecting your system.  If you do not want to pay for anti-malware, then your only other option is to completely erase your hard drive and reinstall your operating system from scratch. 

I hope this have been a little enlightening for you on the dangers of a worm to your system and any systems connected to it.  As always, you can leave a comment below if you have any questions.  Thank you and have a great week.

Welcome to DR's note, your weekly dose of knowledge from Circuit Stitch.

This week we continue the Know thy enemy series, and we talk about Trojans.

    So what are Trojans?  Now, we are not talking about the rubber balloons that come in the square wrapper.  We are going to talk about the malicious virus's that infect your computer.  So let's define what a Trojan is, a Trojan is a virus that can infect either any form of technology, what it does is it describes itself as a legitimate piece of software or code that once on a device it can give attackers the access they need to export files, modify data, delete files, or just plain alter the contents on the device it is infecting.  They might use different types of tactics to get you to fall victim, like social engineering, spoofing or phishing.  Trojans can come packed into game downloads, software tools for your device, apps, or even software patches. 

    So how can you protect against Trojans?  The best and easiest way is to keep your security software up-to-date.  No matter what you are using, if you do not have your security software up-to-date, then you can easily fall victim.  The patches that put in these up-dates is because they found new threats, that without the patch leaves you vulnerable.  But just keeping your security software up-to-date is not enough, it takes some know-how and restraint from you.  Here are a couple of tips, firstly downloading any pirated media (music, movies, games, books, software, etc.) could potentially be Trojans.  The attacker is looking for you to be like  “Hey want to check out the new Spider-Man movie for free, just click this link it's super safe and legit”.  Secondly, you can get it from unsolicited means like scam emails or text messages that have an attachment or link to click on.  They can seem like they are coming from a familiar source, but be careful and vigilant.  Thirdly,  only access website with the beginning of HTTPS.  The S is very important because it means it is secure, and keeps you safe.  Lastly, never sign in to an account if after you clicked on something it pops open a new tab or window and asks you to sign in, if you need to sign in go to the actual website and do it.  That way you know that you are not possibly signing in to a spoof site just used to get your credentials. 

    I hope this opens your eyes to how bad Trojan virus's can be and what type of havoc they can wreck.  As always if you have any questions feel free to message me.  Thank you and have a great week.