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With the exponential increase in the number of people, young and old, using the web, it's become increasingly lucrative to be a cybercriminal. Billions of money is moved online amongst individuals and amongst firms everyday, its a massive market place and the stage appeared to be set for the larger players to come and play - The organized crime. No longer is the single wicked computer programmer the primary threat out there. The big crime bosses fairly quickly recognized the economic opportunity that’s in front of them and so they seized it. Today organized crime is far more sophisticated than what we’re used to see on TV. They hire hackers, they have fraud internet sites and also have R&D teams that constantly attempt to develop the next best way to steal cash. Here are several statistics from Symantec regarding the scale of cybercrime . There are 556 Million cyber crime victims annually(156 Million a day!). The international cost of cybercrime is 110 Billion dollars. 2/3 of online adults have been victims of cyber crimes sometime in their lifetime. OK, enough of the intro…Lets get down to business and check out more common cybercrime tactics. Malware Classification: Malware is general expression used to refer to a malicious software or script. Malware may be, a Virus, a worm (much like a virus, but with somewhat distinctive attributes) a Trojan horse or a rootkit.Trojans are programs specializing in taking control of the infected computer and Rootkits are the concealment professionals, specializing in embedding themselves in machines and hiding numerous mischievous processes from the user. How can we get infected: To get infected by Viruses, Trojans and Rootkits the user executes some action. We either mistakenly download them or someone sends them to us. The second we attempt to open the malware file, our complete system gets infected. The malware can be mounted on a normal software, for example an iTunes executable. After the infected file is opened, the malware hides itself inside the system. From now on, the malware has a considerable level of control over our system, depending on the sophistication of the malware. Botnets Botnets is a really terrifying problem. A botnet is a massive band of computers that are controlled by cyber criminals remotely. First the computer systems are infected by Malware which the user runs by mistake, once the computer is infected it will become a “zombie”. The zombie tries to set up communication with their controller, the owner of the malware. The zombies become slaves, they're within the total control of their operator. Cyber criminals can harvest the power of the botnet in various techniques in order to earn a decent profit. They generally utilize zombies to send spam to huge numbers of people. We’re dealing with Many billions of junk e-mail mail messages per day! Another widespread use of botnets is what’s referred to as a Distributed Denial Of Service attack or “DDOS attack” . DDOS occurs when the hacker that's controlling the zombies, instructs them to try and take down a website or online service. This is accomplished by ordering the zombies to create countless connections to the targets that the operator determines, rendering them not reachable for legit users. Cybercrime earns money from botnets by renting out command over their botnets to clients in the illegal hacking community. Although anti virus programs can usually detect the botnet malware, lots of people are unacquainted with this matter and don’t protect their computers properly. Can you imagine having your computer in your own home turning into a zombie and having it be a part of all types of illegal cyber crime or cyberwarfare activities all over the world? This has to be a alarming thought… Fraud Fraud has been around since the dawn of humankind, however the internet made it easier for fraud evolve into a whole new level. The key purpose of the frauders that reside online is straightforward: Get as much private data about as much individuals as possible. They use a wide variety of methods, some of the most common ones start from the spam that the botnets send. The mail usually says something regarding a cash prize that’s waiting for you if enter your own personal information. Often it contains a hyperlink to a website that pretends to be a website you trust, in hope to steal your details as soon as you submit this info to the fake website. The phony website scam is referred to as “Phishing”, and it’s seriously popular these days. The primary lesson to take from this is that you ought to pay extra attention to the websites that you are visiting, especially when you’re submitting your own personal information. as an example frauders like to use website URLs like twitter.shop.co instead of .com original name in an attempt to trick people. Avoiding this is simple, simply take a look at the URL and ensure it’s genuine. There are many scams and techniques to take advantage of people. Be smart! Don’t give up your personal data to anything that appears suspicious. So to summarize, the cybercrime process functions like so: Cyber criminals create Malware. Malware creates botnets and botnets create spam and with spam, more information is thieved from people. The spam also helps distribute even more malware which further increases botnets. The personal info that's taken from people might be sold in black markets and each and every form of information has a price, for example a credit card number might be worth X Dollars and a Facebook account name + password may be worth Y Dollars. Cyber crime is an fast growing business.The hacker's techniques become more and more sophisticated as time goes on. We need to be informed of the risks if we wish to avoid becoming the next victims. Here's a nice article about Botnets that I suggest you read if you'r interested.
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cybercrime, viruses, malware, botnet, computer security,
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