You are Equally Responsible for Your Security Breaches

With the internet security risks rising up day by day, it becomes very clear that it is not only the fault of the cyber criminals but somewhere we are also responsible for that. How are we responsible?? Well the answer is obvious; it is our lack of awareness and concern.

As for the specimen, let us consider the most recent example of the largest Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on Spamhaus. A number of computers were exercised to project an attack that nearly broke down the Internet. This is one of the oldest cyber attacks but once again, it is proven very dreadful. If we look back in the past, in the year 1990, dreadful networks of ‘zombie’ machines were used in the similar way to damage the websites until they go offline, unusable, terminating e-commerce. In some cases, Denial-of-Service can be a mere act of joy, while in others it might be an intentional work of an intruder.

Also in the year 2007, in the city of Estonia the Internet was shut down because of denial-of-service attacks, which were populated and affected by botnet communication, and in 2008 Georgia was severely affected by botnets.

How DDoS causes chaos in the Internet?

Generally, DDoS or DoS attacks are administer by botnets, a bunch of internet-connected programs that smartly infects the systems as well as provides the access of corrupted computers. A small malicious software or malware or spam email becomes the source of this attack. Within this technique, a hacker gains access to several systems at a time, turning them into zombie computers, which in turn act as an element of powerful botnet to transfuse viruses, spam generation to create havoc.

Main targets of bots include unsecured computers or those, which are vulnerable for such attacks. As soon as a vulnerable computer is found, botnet infects it and report back to their superior named command-and-control server. Until and unless a particular task is assigned to them, botnets remain backstage.

You can relate the above technique in real life with the sleeper agents (spy) who creeps in the security of the organization until a pull together attack is prepared.

Previously there was not enough exposure to the Internet so it had limited number of users who definitely were unaware regarding the security breaches or threats prevailing around.

We all are aware of the fact that an individual is targeted at airport for carrying illegal assets. Similarly, applications/software’s, emails, etc. are targeted and enforced to carry malicious contents. Avoiding such circumstances will not help prevent such attacks. One should be aware regarding these types of threats and should take appropriate actions to secure and to update those security practices time to time, as this gesture only will ensure the protection against the prevailing security threats.