Olympic Warning

Olympic Warning

The start of the Olympics has proved irresistible to cyber criminals, say security firms.
The volume of junk e-mail messages with an Olympic theme spiked prior to the opening ceremony, said Symantec.
The malicious messages try to trick people into visiting fake sites or opening booby-trapped e-mail attachments, say other firms.
Some messages falsely claim users have won an Olympic lottery and encourage them to respond to claim their prize.
Hack attack "The Beijing Olympics is gearing up to be one of the biggest events of the year and hackers and spammers will see it as a massive opportunity to compromise the unwary," said Con Mallom, a spokesman for Symantec.

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BBC NEWS | Technology | Hi-tech thieves target Olympics
 
Just in case someone does not understand how these things work, I will do my best to simplify the process.

Let's say I wanted to bring down a web site, but I cant get into the server in order to delete files, damage system settings, etc.

I could create a "virus" (Not the best term, but just for the sake of discussion)

By sending your computer these instructions, via e-mail, via connecting to my web site, etc, your computer now has instructions to attack the server I want to bring down.

In addition, I have instructed your computer to send this command to every other computer it comes into contact with, as well as all of the computers in your "contacts" list, web sites you visit, (if they are vulnerable) and on and on and on.

I would have put a future date in the instruction, say 6 months from now on such and such day at such and such time.

By then, hundreds of thousands of computers all around the world could be programmed to access one particular server at the exact same moment.

I will not go into any detail especially on a public web site. But this basic process can be utilized to bring servers down, (100,000 hits in under one minute)
It can create security vulnerabilities, disrupt communication, it can even be used to store and to share things like child pornography on innocent and unknowing peoples personal computers! :eek:

The really sad thing is that this is not the easiest thing in the world to do. In other words, the people who design these programs are pretty creative, clever, and computer savy.

Just imagine the good they could do if they were to set their minds to it.

Anyway, If you don't have updated virus and spyware protection you really should look into getting it.

And if your computer has been running slower than it used to... You might want to at least run some scans and go from there. (You computer may be running slow because it's so busy sending this stuff out to random ip addresses.)

And as always, if you don't know who it's from...dont open it! :)

God Bless!
 
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