Nowadays, lots of computer user definitely will login to their social network account, checking e-mail, playing online game and even watching streaming video or music too. But during this time, we might be threaten by the scammers or attackers for exposing our computer security to them. Thus, we need to have some basic knowledge in order to protect our computer from those attackers.
First, let's discuss about a quite famous type of attack which is cross-site scripting attack(XSS). This is a method of attacking your computer through scripts such as JavaScript and this script definitely will be found from the Internet and even from your social network application such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. In this case, we take Facebook as the example of JavaScript embedded page. Recently, scammers have set up illegitimate Facebook pages offering things like a free $500 gift card if you cut and paste some code into your browser's address bar and this probably would be a threat to you guys too. That code actually is JavaScript and you guys should not add those code to your browser because once you add it to your browser then your pc already compromise by the scammers. According to Chris Boyd, a security researcher with Sunbelt Software, "Scammers use this technique to open up unwanted surveys, fill your social networking profiles with spam or even to send you to phishing pages."
To avoid from this attack, you guys can use a free firefox plugin NoScript that allows you to control which websites can run or cannot run JavaScript in your browser. Apart from that, you can disabled JavaSript through your Adobe Reader too. According to Symantec(2009), nearly half of all Web-based attacks were associated with malicious PDF files. Thus, if you make adjustment to your Adobe Reader setting for not allows PDF to execute JavaScript then the risks of being attack by the scammers will also reduce.
The second threat that I gonna discuss is pop-up messages. Sometime, when you are visiting to a legitimate website and suddenly a scary-looking warning message pops up. The message is contain some sort of message as your computer already been infected by the viruses/malwares but when you trying to close up the message then more windows keep popping up and convincing you to scan your computer as soon as possible. If you follow its instruction then the scan will give you a result of found some security problems in your computer and offers you to buy a software which can solve the problem. The software is a rogue antivirus software. The antivirus software probably is a nonfunctional software and the only function of the software is to put your money into their pocket.
Currently rogue antivirus program become one of the most annoying security problems and to the victim, the pop-ups can seem like an infection to your computer. Every time you try to close a warning window, another one appears and it keeps popping up unless you don't close the warning window. My advice is never buy the software from them and the software not just won't work but it may caused your system to crash too. You should either press on Alt-F4 to close your browser directly or press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to open your system's task manager to shut down your browser. By closing the browser, the pop-up problem generally ends at there. If the pop-up problem still remains then you can have a try on this software-Malwarebytes.
Okey, my sharing ends at here today. For more details of how to protect your computer, please click on here. Thanks for reading. (This article adopted and modified from PCWorld: Security Secrets the Bad Guys Don't Want You to Know)
