How secure is your computer?

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sunward

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A report, to be issue today or Sunday:
Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries
A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers have concluded.

They point to the researchers from the Munk Center for International Studies and infowar monitor but their server is down/ busy. May just drive down on Monday to get details!

Scary stuff.
 
There is nothing....NOTHING....that is secure on a computer connected to the internet.

N O T H I N G

You should not perform any banking. It is not secure. If you must, about the only way to protect yourself is to keep a minimum balance in your account and to avoid ANY transaction that shows an account number reference to your other bank accounts.

Credit card transactions are not secure. This data can also be harvested.

About the only thing protecting most of us at this time is the "school of fish" phenomenon, where the school is so large that when some get picked off by hackers, most get away. That is a pi55 poor form of protection. As the numbers of identity theft predators grow, safety levels will get correspondingly worse. To date, there are very few meaningful penalties for these guys.

Because I work in the industry that I do, I get to see briefings on the sort of things going on by talented individuals, organized criminal groups, and foreign-sponsored espionage groups. The only thing I use the internet for is trivial stuff and inconsequential materials. Nothing will ever again convince me that the internet is "safe."
 
A report, to be issue today or Sunday:
Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries
A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers have concluded.

They point to the researchers from the Munk Center for International Studies and infowar monitor but their server is down/ busy. May just drive down on Monday to get details!

Scary stuff.
I heard of that. But I use linux :p
 
There is nothing....NOTHING....that is secure on a computer connected to the internet.

N O T H I N G

You should not perform any banking. It is not secure. If you must, about the only way to protect yourself is to keep a minimum balance in your account and to avoid ANY transaction that shows an account number reference to your other bank accounts.

Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure (over here) as long as you follow the bank's security reccommendations, they're responsible for any money stolen due to internet fraud/hacking/whatever.

You're right that nothing is completely secure, but the weak link in the chain is the humans using it. It's far easier for a scammer to extract your bank details from you and empty your accounts than it is for a hacker to get into an online banking system and empty your accounts.

Phil
 
Also it seems like the ConFicker aka Kido or Downadup Worm is set to strike on April 1st.

Seems like it could cause a lot of problems for users with unpatched systems or users without antivirus software or antivirus software that is not up to date.

Scary stuff.:eek:
 
I heard of that. But I use linux :p

Linux can be just as insecure as Windows if it's not properly configured or if the user does something stupid. I'm not saying that you don't know how to configure Linux; I just don't want people to thing that it makes them immune to anything bad on the internet.

When I had a Linux server running at home, I had SSH on so I could log in remotely from school. Whenever I checked the logs, there were basically nonstop attacks against the SSH basically trying to bruteforce the password. I had it set up with shared key authentication, and I think I disabled password-based logins, but I didn't really understand it, so I don't know for sure (why would they keep trying if they knew it was shared ke only?). I wanted to set up port knocking so the port would always be closed/stealthed when I was not using it, but I could never figure out how.
 
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