Just dump 1

To be truly secure in all environments whether it's the real or virtual world you have to first know it’s basic security rules.

Despite major Security outlays and legislative proposals to reduce cyber crime, we the lawful computer users are losing the war against cyber crime.

Lets dig the statistics:

If you consider that there are 2 billion computer systems that have an internet connection and rather optimistically assume that 99 percent of them are secured against basic threats and types of attacks.

It still means that 20 million attacks per month will be successful.

This translates into 240 million computers to get infected with malicious software each year.

To understand about the attacks lets get into prehistory:

In the 90's, Robert Morris who became famous largely as the creator of the first widely spreading computer worm. The worm exploited software bugs in Unix services in send mail and among others in RSA. [RSA (Rivest–Shamir–Adleman) is a public-key cryptosystem that is widely used for secure data transmission.] and also attempted to crack our password.

He himself accepted that he released the worm in order to measure the size of the internet. later on he created a system in which the system would ask the user if the computer is affected with the worm earlier. If the user replied yes than it will not affect it again.

But Morris decided that one of the seven system, despite of its answer, will be affected again.

About 10 percent of Unix systems attached to the Internet roughly several thousand computers were infected with the worm and so the first attempt to gauge the size of the Internet in the 90s ended up as the first global denial of service attack.

He than again dutifully alerted his reader about the new virus which was worse than the first one. A virus that would distribute itself for the charging point if it has 60 hz and also from changing serial ports.

There are also silly hints on fighting the virus first:

1. Don't attach your computer to a powerline

2. Don't use batteries either.

3. Don't copy any files and don't read any messages

4. Don't use serial ports don't use modems

As we enter 21st century, this era is known as the era of plagues

Some of the plagues:

1. Code Red:

* exploited an IIS server vulnerabilities to deface affected websites

* infections doubled every 27 minutes

* every 20 or 27 days, it run denial of service [A Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack is an attack meant to shut down a machine or network, making it inaccessible to its int ended users.] attacks on selected web servers

2. Nimda

* propagated in 12 different ways

* infected more than 2 million computers in 3 days

3. Klez

* spread over the entire web in just 2.5 hrs

4. Slammer

* infected over 90% of vulnerable microsoft SQL severs in 10 mins

* the number of infected machines doubled every 8.5 seconds

Recently, media doesn't give much details about the computer viruses and these all started after 2005

In 2005, ZOTOB virus was released. It did not affect much and so people did not give it much importance. But later on it was discovered to be the first commissioned virus targeted specific companies only to make money. And after that people are employed for making virus.

As we know that some group of people break the rules for their purpose, similarly, in the field of the computers, some people exploit the system.

It would really be naive to think that internet is very secure but it's just opposite.

Let's get into figures;

85% is an important number. This is the percentage of attacks which are guided in ways that render your typical protection measures such as anti-virus scanners, software upgrades for both operating systems and in solid applications or enabled firewalls essentially.

These attacks can be performed internally, locally or through social engineering.

To have these protection in your system is necessary. There is no guarantee that you'll be protected from the viruses but at least it's not easy to attack. On the contrary leave the system enabled and update it often even every day.