We’ve been preaching this for a while, yet many don’t see it as a real threat until it happens to you. Take a look at this link. ”Cyberattack in 2008 prompted new Pentagon cyberdefense plan”
Now my comments aren’t going to duplicate anything said in this article, however, some similarities exist. Something so small can be so destructive. My thoughts are directed to a corporate environment, but can be applied at home just as well.
Imagine yourself walking through the parking lot of where you are employed. You notice on the ground, a thumb drive (otherwise known as a flash drive). The first thing that comes to mind is, “cool, a free drive.” Maybe you’re thinking, “Gee I wonder what’s on it?” So you pick it up, take it into the office and plug it into your computer (or home computer.) Depending on your computer’s settings, you may have just had it “autorun” whatever was on this drive. It ran a virus/trojan/spyware/etc., completely transparent to you. It may have even been disguised as a picture or music file (e.g. FurryDog.jpg.exe, or Justin Beiber.mp3.exe). Some operating systems such as Windows will hide the .exe part, so it just looks like a .mp3 file. Either way let’s pretend you ran it. Before you decide whether it doesn’t work and to reformat and reuse it, it has already wormed its way into your computer. It is now monitoring all of your keystrokes and form submissions. Any credit card, social security number, passwords are all now being transmitted to someone else.
People get so caught up in worrying about what they are downloading from the Internet, they forget about the easy things. They become careless.
Will this happen to you?
