Your PC Might Be Vulnerable To Security Threats

"The next time a website says to download new software to view a movie or fix a problem, think twice. There's a pretty good chance that the program is malicious," says Microsoft.


In this day and age, everything from our cellphones to our toilets have security measures that are meant to protect us from catching a virus and compromising our system in the process. Computers, browsers and software systems are now designed to protect us from malicious downloads, viruses and bugs, and more and more effort (and cash) is put into making sure that it remains that way. Even Obama is on the brink of sanity throwing up orders at his line of officials to make certain that the 'WikiLeaks' scenario doesn't happen again.

But despite all the effort, there is still one flaw that hasn't yet been covered by our very own geniuses (although, i would have to blame the not-so-genius PC users for it). We are still very vulnerable to security breeches because regardless of warnings popping up on Internet Explorer, about 5 percent of the users choose to ignore these alerts and download potentially untrustworthy softwares containing Trojan horse programs (we have all done it at one time or another).

Evolution has taken another step forward and hackers are now relying completely on ignorance of users like us. Without a hint of what we are up against, we choose to download unknown softwares from unknown sites. We do not realize that these softwares, where they can be very helpful, can also compromise the information on our computer.

The process of spreading these Trojan horse programs is a very simple one. Entice the person using the computer to download a program and 'hack and sack' them! It's called Social Engineering. "The attackers have figured out that it's not that hard to get users to download Trojans," says Alex Stamos, a founding partner with Isec Partners, a security consultancy company.

Social Engineering is how the Koobface virus spreads on Facebook, Web pages are hacked,fake antivirus warnings designed to look like messages from the operating system are popped up and malicious websites that look like they have interesting stories or videos are linked to search engines.

According to Joshua Talbot, a manager with Symantec Security Response, "The attackers are very opportunistic, and they latch onto any event that might be used to lure people."

We will keep you updated on the topic but as for now please, brush up your security techniques and steer clear of unidentified and suspicious softwares. I know it's gotta be tough by man up!!