Time and again, many of us are taken unaware that the Internet could pose a threat to our lives at times when we least expect it. There are groups of unethical computer users including hackers who are out there devicing ways to get into email boxes, stealing personal or confidential information from unsuspecting Internet users and implanting malware, viruses or worms that can lead to profound damages.
Web and Blog Attacks
These days, Internet users are likely to be confronted with the threats of web and blog attacks.Sites that we commonly use were attacked and they include WordPress, Google, Twitter and Facebook. These attacks is the result of available loopholes that exposes a website to malware, viruses, trojan horses, spyware and adware among others. The main intent behind these attacks on government and private websites such as credit card transactions, gateway payments and online banking transactions is to obstruct communication between the website or blogs and their many visitors.
Attacks by hackers can come in the form of implanting viruses, spyware and malware into webpages. Sometimes, other websites can infect a particular webpage because the website's infected link sends out viruses instead of advertisements to other sites. The webpage may have direct hyperlinks to infected websites.
Denial of service(DOS) attacks on websites are committed by flooding the website's server with many authentication request that will cause the server to deny further requests for authentication. Thus, making the website inaccessible to visitors.
Cross-site scripting(XSS) attacks include the act of compromising of private information, manipulating or stealing of cookies, creating of requests as if from a valid user, and executing of malicious codes. The attacker usually makes use of a hyperlink containing malicious content which is then distributed through any possible means to websites and blogs over the Internet.
Impact of the Attack
Business websites will not be able to provide the normal services to customers because the website's functions may have been disrupted by the attack. This amounts to a business loss and eventually leads to poor reputation when the website is not restored to its original state. Blogs become inaccesible to visitors or otherwise, infested with malware, viruses, spyware among others.
Visitor's PC maybe infected by the malware if he has ignored any warning message and clicked on the link to activate any malicious scripts. Malware that has been transferred to the PC could result in a system crash or damage to hardware which can be costly to replace.
Addressing the Attack
The attacked website or blog should be temporarily taken down so that the search engine's web crawler will not label it as a harmful site. The identity details of website or blogs have to be changed as well as a strong password is needed.
The website should be restored by uploading the most recent backup copy if the damage is irreparable. Web pages should be scanned for viruses, malware and trojan horses among others using anti-malware so that they can be removed from the website. All available patches should be updated to the latest date.
Preventing Website and Blog Attacks
To avoid being attacked visitors should try not to click on the links in the webpage where the attacker has planted the malware. One may check the actual addresses of the genuine website and retype them on the address bar of the browser to avoid accessing malware infested websites, blogs and getting their PCs infected. Otherwise, malware may be passed back into the Internet when the user visit another website or blog.
Installing anti-malware enable the scanning and removal of malicious codes that have found their way into the PC and preventing further attacks over the Internet. Anti-malware includes Dr.Web Anti-Virus 5.00, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010, Avast! Professional Edition, Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0, Norton AntiVirus 2010, F-Secure Anti-Virus 2010 are among others. There does not exist an anti- malware that is 100% effective in preventing malware from infecting a PC.
Latest and upcoming web browsers beyond IE 8.0 and Mozilla Firefox have built-in features that can detect using heuristic means to identify an attacked website or blogsite. A message that informs the user that the website has been reported attacked will be shown to alert users.
Web 2.0 has brought on tremendous development to social media such as blogs, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter that brought change to the way we socialise and interact today. The dark side of such developments is the corresponding emergence of Internet crimes in the form of web and blog attacks, defamation, bullying, identity theft and forgeries among others as in real life crimes that have become a part of the communities which we live in.
Picture Source: The Internet
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