Security Secrets Hackers Don’t Want You To Know

Let’s face it, the Internet is a perfect place to get your information, music, videos, and almost anything you need or want. But with the good always comes with the bad, and of course what other than those pesky hackers that try nothing but to upload viruses just for you and then try to steal your information, scary right, not if you learn more than the security basics.

First of all, I hope everyone knows the first rule in basic security (and I mean really basic) such as always staying up to date with your Antivirus Definitions as well as your program patches that are needed, unfortunately this means the dreadful long process Windows Updates too, and always staying in touch with your common sense, that if something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t, it could range from a simple program file to a website, meaning to get online street-smart to protect yourself into being tricked by phishing websites or downloading trojan horses.

Now sure, you might do everything above and a little more, this goes for the non-technical people as we all know, that people like myself (the geeks), can well protect ourselves online, but what happens when you still feel insecure even staying up to date with everything? Well with a move from basic security tips to advanced security tips, you will be able to protect yourself better online with of course, please remember, that security is all about trade-offs. With most of these tips, what you gain in security, you lose in convenience, and believe me when I say that.

Knowing What Programs You Still Use, and Verify That They’re Up to Date

When I say know what programs you use, this means everyday use to once or twice a week, what ends up happening when you install and a program and forget about it, you forget not only that you have it but that program you downloaded will stay there and after a few years it may be nothing more than a security hole today. If you don’t use a program, uninstall it from your PC! To remove unwanted apps, visit the Windows Install/Uninstall section of the Control Panel. Bottom line, if you’re not using a program, lose it. From a security perspective, every program, especially popular applications, is just another path that hackers can use to break into your system. A useful security tool is the Secunia Online Software Inspector, which scans your PC for out-of-date software. Really useful for the less technical users.
This goes the same for browsers, if you notice that your browser is acting slow, you might want to consider removing plugins, and also updating plugins all the time since they are the most vulnerable when surfing the net.

Brute Force Passwords

Stronger Passwords!

Okay When I say brute force, I simply mean creating and using stronger passwords, I seriously doubt that the password “ballon12″ would do the trick, Hackers will be more than happy to use that against you, Often they steal a person’s password and user name, most likely via a phishing attack, they try that combination on other popular services–Facebook, Gmail, PayPal, Yahoo, to see if it works there, too.
How do you protect youself? Luckily there are free and simple password management tools, such as KeePass Password Safe, that are available to manage your passwords for you. But a note, using this is a bit more work, you may tire of constantly jumping between a password manager and your browser every time you want to log into a Website, but remember that security always involves trade-offs.
Consider using stronger passwords that use a symbol or upper and lowercase characters. And make one that YOU can REMEMBER, don’t make one that’s “!DF)xJSsl@” and hard to remember later on.

Back Out of Rogue Antivirus Offers

Rogue Antivirus

There’s about several popular antiviruses out there, but sometimes they might disguise themselves or act like an antivirus, it’s good to have a sharp eye into paying attention to the small details. Far too many users have had this experience recently when you’re surfing the net on a totally legitimate site when a scary-looking warning message pops up suddenly and alerts you that your computer is infected. You try to get rid of it, but more windows keep popping up, urging you to scan your computer.

If you do allow the website to do this, the scan always finds security problems and offers to sell you software that will take care of the problem. This is an example of 100%  rogue antivirus software. The only thing the software does is put money into the pockets of criminals.

These type of issues, especially rouge antiviruses have become one of the most annoying security threats in todays internet. Every time you try to close those websites, another popup appears. So next time that does happen or before it does, here are a few tips:
First of all, never buy the rogue antivirus software. It will never work and more than often it will trash your system. If the website keeps on nagging at you, either press Alt-F4 to close your browser directly or press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to open your system’s task manager and shut the browser down from there. Closing the browser generally puts an end to the pop-up problem.
Another way to steer clear of these attacks is to be careful when reading a popular story. Often hackers follow Google Trends and Twitter’s Trending topics, and they can quickly promote one of their malicious Web pages to the top of Google search results.

Avoid Scripting

You might ask yourself what avoid scripting is, let alone what scripting itself is. This piece will be the most important because mainly JavaScript is what hackers use to target and load malicious software onto your computer, so steer clear of JavaScript, especially the ones from websites you don’t trust.

For those who don’t know, JavaScript is very popular, and for good reason because it works in almost all browsers, and it makes the internet a lot more dynamic. But like I said, the bad comes with the good. JavaScript can also enables bad guys to trick your browser more easily into doing something that it shouldn’t. The deception could be something as simple as telling the browser to load an element from another Web page. Or it could involve something more complicated, like a cross-site scripting attack, which gives the attacker a way to fool the victim on a legitimate Web page.

This is a tough security threat to dodge since JavaScipt attacks are everywhere. For example, if you use Facebook, you may have seen one of the latest ways that scammers use to lure in users. Scammers have set up fake Facebook pages offering things like a free $500 gift card if you cut and paste some code into your browser’s address bar, this is a big no-no. That code that they want you to insert is JavaScript, and you should never add it to your browser. Scammers are currently using this technique to open up unwanted surveys, fill your social networking profiles with spam or even to send you to phishing pages.

And it gets worse, even though a site might be popular or known, hackers can add JavaScript to hacked or malicious Web pages, too. To avoid attacks there, you can use a free Firefox plugin called NoScript that lets you control which Websites can and cannot run JavaScript in the browser. NoScript goes a long way toward preventing rogue antivirus programs or online attacks from popping up when you visit a new Website.
And better yet, by blocking scripting everywhere and then using NoScript to build a whitelist of trusted sites, you can eliminate most of the so-called Web drive-by attacks that currently plague the Internet.

If you don’t use Firefox, you still have some options for disabling scripting. Just like Firefox users, Google Chrome users can disable JavaScript universally and then build a whitelist of sites where it’s permitted.
Unfortunately, neither Internet Explorer nor Safari has a NoScript equivalent (aww how sad), but IE users can adjust their Internet Zones security settings to require prompts before scripting. And IE 8 includes new cross-site scripting protection to protect you from some attacks.

Bottom line, some of these tips might seem somewhat a little of out place for some non-technical users, but this can save you a lot, and make you  immune to some new attacks not known out there. Stay stay, surf safe!