BY RICHARD MATTHEWS, KIEREN NIĈOLAS LOVELL
Every day, often multiple times a day, you are invited to click on links sent to you by brands, politicians, friends and strangers. You download apps on your devices. Maybe you use QR codes.
Most of these activities are secure because they come from sources that can be trusted. But sometimes criminals impersonate trustworthy sources to get you to click on a link (or download an app) that contains malware.
At its core, a link is just a mechanism for data to be delivered to your device. Code can be built into a website which redirects you to another site and downloads malware to your device en route to your actual destination.
When you click on unverified links or download suspicious apps you increase the risk of exposure to malware. Here’s what could happen if you do -- and how you can minimize your risk.
What is malware?
Malware is defined as malicious code that will have adverse impact on the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of an information system.
In the past, malware described malicious code that took the form of viruses, worms or Trojan horses.
Viruses embedded themselves in genuine programs and relied on these programs to propagate. Worms were generally stand-alone programs that could install themselves using a network, USB or email program to infect other computers.
Trojan horses took their name from the gift to the Greeks during the Trojan war in Homer’s Odyssey. Much like the wooden horse, a Trojan Horse looks like a normal file until some predetermined action causes the code to execute.
Today’s generation of attacker tools are far more sophisticated, and are often a blend of these techniques.
These so-called “blended attacks” rely heavily on social engineering -- the ability to manipulate someone to doing something they wouldn’t normally do -- and are often categorized by what they ultimately will do to your systems.
What does malware do?
Today’s malware comes in easy to use, customized toolkits distributed on the dark web or by well-meaning security researchers attempting to fix problems.
With a click of a button, attackers can use these toolkits to send phishing emails and spam SMS messages to deploy various types of malware. Here are some of them.
A remote administration tool can be used to access a computer’s camera, microphone and install other types of malware.
Keyloggers can be used to monitor for passwords, credit card details and email addresses.
Ransomware is used to encrypt private files and then demand payment in return for the password.
Botnets are used for distributed denial of service attacks and other illegal activities. DDoS attacks can flood a website with so much virtual traffic that it shuts down, much like a shop being filled with so many customers you are unable to move.
Crytptominers will use your computer hardware to mine cryptocurrency, which will slow your computer down.
Hijacking or defacement attacks are used to deface a site or embarrass you by posting pornographic material to your social media.
How does malware end up on your device?
According to insurance claim data of businesses based in the UK, over 66 percent of cyber incidents are caused by employee error. Although the data attributes only 3 percent of these attacks to social engineering, our experience suggests the majority of these attacks would have started this way.
For example, by employees not following dedicated IT and information security policies, not being informed of how much of their digital footprint has been exposed online, or simply being taken advantage of. Merely posting what you are having for dinner on social media can open you up to attack from a well-trained social engineer.
QR codes are equally as risky if users open the link the QR codes point to without first validating where it was heading, as indicated by this 2012 study.
Even opening an image in a web browser and running a mouse over it can lead to malware being installed. This is quite a useful delivery tool considering the advertising material you see on popular websites.
Fake apps have also been discovered on both the Apple and Google Play stores. Many of these attempt to steal login credentials by mimicking well known banking applications.
Sometimes malware is placed on your device by someone who wants to track you. In 2010, the Lower Merion School District settled two lawsuits brought against it for violating students’ privacy and secretly recording using the web camera of loaned school laptops.
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