PROTECTING YOUR COMPUTER FROM INTERNET INVADERS

Many years ago, a computer programmer improperly got into my computer and changed the text of an article I was preparing.  Years later I learned that can be easily done if you don’t have a good security system in your computer to protect what you put into your computer.

Later I asked a good friend of mine to improve a picture I had placed in my computer. While he was at his home, I watched while at my home what he was doing to make the improvements of the picture I had on my screen. My internet security firm can do the same thing when I have a problem in my internet. It is fascinating to watch their cursor moving about my screen while they are in India. That is because my screen is temporarily showing up on their screen.

It is really scary. That is why I always read my articles I publish in my blog just before I send them into the internet. Once they are in the internet, they can’t change the words in my articles.

Make sure that you have a good security system in your computer to protect what is inside your computer.

I remember years ago, when a picture of naked women kept appearing on my computer screen each day. My security firm stopped whoever was sending me those pictures. I am not a prude but having naked women appearing on my screen when I am writing articles is annoying. If I want to see pictures of naked women, I will bring them up on my screen on my own volition. Obviously I had visited a particular site in the internet and the pictures of naked women hopped into my computer. It was like trains carrying a different naked women getting off at my station (computer) each day.

What is really scary is that if an internet invader inserts child pornographic pictures on your screen while you are in bed asleep and the invader calls the police and when they see the pictures and arrest you, they won’t accept your statement that you don’t know how those pictures got into your computer.  

Cybercrime, or computer-oriented crime, is the crime that involves a computer and the network. The computer may have been used in the commission of a crime, or it may be the target. Cybercrimes can be defined as: "Offences that are committed against individuals or groups of individuals with a criminal motive to intentionally harm the reputation of the victim or cause physical or mental harm, or loss, to the victim directly or indirectly, using modern telecommunication networks such as Internet (networks including chat rooms, emails, notice boards and groups) and mobile phones.

Cybercrime may also threaten a person or a nation's security and financial health. Issues surrounding these types of crimes have become high-profile, particularly those that are hacking, copyright infringement, unwarranted mass-surveillance, sextortion, illegal child pornography, and child grooming. There are also problems of privacy when confidential information is intercepted or disclosed, lawfully or otherwise. Further. cybercrime can be used to target women with a motive to intentionally harm them psychologically by using modern telecommunication networks such as internet and mobile phones.   

Both governmental and non-state people engage in cybercrimes, including espionage, financial theft, and other cross-border crimes. Cybercrimes crossing international borders and involving the actions of at least one nation state is sometimes referred to as cyberwarfare.

In 1985, the Canadian delegation attending the Tenth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime held in Milan, Italy, was discussing the problems of abuses taking place in the internet. When it was my turn to address the 194 nations attending the conference, the second of my two speeches was about internet hackers. I gave them a scenario in which a twelve-year-old boy could even get into the computer that controls the sluice gates controlling the water flow of a large dam. that is thousands of miles away.  Several years later, a computer hacker did that but fortunately, the staff operating the dam managed to get control of their sluice gates thereby stopping what could have cause a real  havoc  on the town a couple of miles downstream. I also suggested very, very long prison sentences for internet hackers. Later, I wrote a short story about such an event which was published in a magazine and also in one of my books of short stories.

 Malware   is any software intentionally designed to cause damage to a computer, server, client, or  computer  network. Malware does the damage after it is implanted or introduced in some way into a target's computer and can take the form of executable code, scripts, active content, and other software. 

The code is described as computer viruses,  worms, Trojan horses,  ransomware,  spyware,  adware and scareware, among other   terms. Malware has a malicious intent, acting against the interest of the computer user however, it does not include software that causes unintentional harm due to some deficiency, which is typically described as a software bug.

Programs officially supplied by companies can be considered malware if they secretly act against the interests of the computer user. For example, Sony sold the Sony rootkit, which contained a Trojan horse embedded into CDs  that silently installed and concealed itself on purchasers' computers with the intention of preventing illicit copying. It also reported on users' listening habits, and unintentionally created vulnerabilities that were then exploited by unrelated malware.

One strategy for protecting against malware is to prevent the malware software from gaining access to the target computer. For this reason, antivirus software, firewalls and other strategies are used to help protect against the introduction of malware, in addition to checking for the presence of malware and malicious activity and recovering from such attacks.

The best-known types of malware such as viruses and worms, are known for the manner in which they spread, rather than any specific types of behavior. A computer virus is software that embeds itself in some other executable software (including the operating system itself) on the target system without the user's knowledge and consent.  

On the other hand, a worm is a stand-alone malware software that actively transmits itself over a network to infect other computers. What can happen to your computer is when someone sends you a message from their computer, they have inadvertently sent you a worm that was already in their computer. Now your computer also has a worm of its own in it. These invaders lead to the observation that a virus requires the user to run an infected software or operating system for the virus to spread, whereas a worm spreads itself.

A computer virus is software usually hidden within another seemingly innocuous program that can produce copies of itself and insert them into other programs or files, and which then usually performs a harmful action (such as destroying data).^\ An example of this is a PE infection, that is a technique, usually used to spread malware, that inserts extra data or executable code into your  files.                                           

Screen-locking ransomware is actually a type of cyber police ransomware that blocks screens on Windows or Android devices with a false accusation in harvesting illegal content, trying to scare the victims into paying up a fee to remove the illegal content such as child pornographic pictures.  Jisut and SLocker impact Android devices does more harm than other lock-screens, with Jisut making up nearly 60 percent of all Android ransomware detections.

A Trojan horse is a harmful program that misrepresents itself to masquerade as a regular, benign program or utility in order to persuade a victim to install it. A Trojan horse usually carries a hidden destructive function that is activated when the application is started. The term is derived from the Ancient Greek story of the Trojan horse used to invade the city of Troy by stealth.            

Trojan horses are generally spread by some form of social engineering, such as, where a user is duped into executing an e-mail attachment disguised to be unsuspicious, (e.g., a routine form to be filled in), or by drive-by download. Although their payload can be anything as many modern forms act as a backdoor, contacting the person using his or her computer  which can then have unauthorized access to the affected computer. While Trojan horses and backdoors are not easily detectable by themselves, computers may appear to run slower due to heavy processor or network usage. That could be a sign that there is a Trojan horse inside of your computer.

Unlike computer viruses and worms, Trojan horses generally do not attempt to inject themselves into other files or otherwise propagate themselves.

In the spring of 2017, Mac users were hit by the new version of Proton Remote Access Trojan horse that was created and  trained to extract password data from various sources, such as browser auto-fill data, the Mac-OS keychain, and password vaults.

Once malicious software is installed on a computer system, it is essential that it stays concealed, to avoid detection. Software packages known as Rootkits allow this concealment, by modifying the host's operating system so that the malware is hidden from the user. Rootkits can prevent a harmful process from being visible in the system's list of processes, or keep its files from being read.               

Some types of harmful software contain the ability to evade identification and/or removal attempts to hide themselves. An early example of this behavior occurred when a pair of programs infesting a Xerox CP-V time sharing system took place.

Each ghost-job would detect the fact that the other had been killed, and would start a new copy of the recently stopped program within a few milliseconds. The only way to kill both ghosts was to kill them simultaneously (which is very difficult) or to deliberately crash your system which will cause you the loss of whatever you created in your computer.

A backdoor  is a method of bypassing your regular normal authentication procedures, usually over a connection to a network such as the Internet. Once a system has been compromised, one or more backdoors may be installed by a hacker in order to allow the hacker access to your computer in the future in which the entry is unknown to you.

The solution has often been suggested that computer manufacturers pre-install backdoors on their systems to provide technical support for customers, but this has never been reliably verified. It was reported in 2014 that the US government agencies had been diverting computers purchased by those considered "targets" to secret workshops where software or hardware permitting remote access by the agency was installed which were  considered to be among the most productive operations to obtain access to networks around the world. Backdoors may be installed by Trojan horses, worms, implants, or by other methods.

Since the beginning of 2015, a sizable portion of malware utilizes a combination of many techniques designed to avoid detection and analysis.

The most common evasion technique is when the malware evades analysis and detection techniques by  fingerprinting  the environment when executed.

The second most common evasion technique is confusing automated tools' detection methods. This allows malware to avoid detection by technologies such as signature-based antivirus software by changing the server used by the malware.

The third most common evasion technique is timing-based evasion. This is when malware runs at certain times or following certain actions taken by the user, so it does its stuff during certain vulnerable periods, such as during the boot process, while remaining dormant the rest of the time.

The fourth most common evasion technique is done by obfuscating internal data so that automated tools do not detect the malware.

An increasingly common technique is inserting adware that uses stolen certificates to disable anti-malware and virus protection, Technical remedies are available to deal with the adware.

Nowadays, one of the most sophisticated and stealthy ways of evasion is to use information hiding techniques, namely stegomalware.

In conclusion, make sure that you have a reliable anti-virus program installed in your computer. And if you get a message stating that your anti-virus contract has expired, renew it again promptly. If you don’t, your computer may end up like the fictitious king who wore no clothes since  your computer will be as bare as that king.