Do you know about hacking?
Basically, hacking is a term that is used for anyone who breaks into a computer or network system and mostly, it’s given a wrong general notion.
But looking in-depth, hacking is broken down into some major and minor categories, and as recognised by all the major security providers as in schools and national departments (EC Council, US Cert, CVE, SANS, InfoSec, Metasploit, Blackhat, etc), its broken down into five (5), which are;
- White Hat Hackers – Professional hackers specialised in finding vulnerabilities and reporting it and or providing solutions to them
- Black Hat Hackers (Crackers) – Security Professional hackers who find system vulnerabilities and try exploiting them for fame, monetary gains or revenge.
- Grey Hat Hackers – These are professionals who sometimes find vulnerabilities and report them and sometimes exploit them.
- Script Kiddies – New hackers who use tools and strategies on a trial and failure bases.
- Suicide hackers – Hackers who are mostly revenge hackers, hacking knowing that the possibility of getting caught is high.
Other classes of hackers are defined but the above are the major recognised hacking groups.
Understanding Hacking
Understandably, we have all been hacked at some point in time, believe it or not, and majority of us are using computers which is a zombie to a hacker. A zombie represents a computer which has been compromised, but not to steal data, rather used to attack other computer systems.
Mostly, hackers (black hat) hack computer systems randomly which they use to hack bigger computer systems or networks to bring them to a halt by over flooding them with traffic known as DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service).
How do you get hacked?
- Remember a time, when you are sent an online link for a video or picture from a friend or random sender and you clicked on it? You are hacked!
- Do you know even opening some attachments on your computer which is connected to the internet can get you hacked?
- Do you know even opening a word document with a Macro can get you hacked?
- Do you also know your antivirus can’t stop traffic which is initiated from your computer?
- Virus, worms, spyware and adware etc can be transferred through anything that deals with computers and the internet.
- In some situations, you may see new programs or files in your computer. If you are the only user on the computer and new programs are installed, this could be an indication of a hacked computer.
- Software updates that included new programs or files.
- When installing a new program it may have installed other extra script programs. For example, it is common for plug-in and other free programs by checking a box asking if you would like to install a new Toolbar or antivirus on your computer. If these boxes are checked, new programs are installed.
- Backdoors and Trojans Horses are by far the most common programs to be installed on the computer after it has been hacked. These programs allow the hacker to gain access to the computer.
Usually, you get yourself hacked unknowingly, and you won’t realise you are hacked, because it runs in the background.
When you get hacked, a hacker will create a backdoor on your computer to maintain access to your computer, usually by injecting a script into your start-up files which may be undetectable to the antivirus.
Prevention
Avoid clicking on unknown links, opening unknown files, porn sites, porn pictures sent to you, avoid clicking on banners from untrusted sites, avoid forward hoax messages, avoid connecting untrusted drives to your computer, and most of all, keep your computer updated and a trusted antivirus always updated but most important of all, know that you are not 100% secured when using any computer gadget or connected to the internet, but maintain a 99.999% level of security.
Remember to keep your device secured and encrypt your MOST sensitive data’s to make it hard to crack, if not, keep them in external storages.
Make sure you turn on or install a third party Firewall in your computer to prevent your computer from being vulnerable.
Posted by Bakary Jadama
Ousman Faal [Digital Vigilante] is a Tech Entrepreneur & Digital Skills Trainer who teaches both in the classroom and online. He has experience in various technologies and likes sharing it with others. Ousman has published 149 articles on this blog. He is the CEO of Faalen Technologies and Skills.gm.
