The Red Dot

Computer security

virus

Malware- Malware is short for malicious software and is designed to infiltrate a computer that is made from a special code that is destructive or makes using a computer very annoying or slow.

Types

Spyware- Spyware is designed to get into a system and gather information without the users consent.and types of spyware could be a key logger that remembers ever key you type or another type would be ad ware and this would sit there and wait for you to go on a website and send you pop ups and all of this data is stored and sometimes sent to big companys that send you loads more ads and pop ups.

worms- A worm is a self replicating code that consumes the bandwith of the victim also some worms and make the victims computer a zombie which means it sends a huge amount of worms out to other computers and then that worm makes that computer a zombie and so on.

Trojan horse- A trojan horse is a virus that gets into the computer bye pretending to be something that isn’t harmful and then once it gets past the anti virus system it will release and do its work and what it does is allow a hacker to remotely access a computer and once inside of the victims computer it is possible to install other Malware and Spyware.

This is what a hacker would use to create a trojan horse virus because you can input the ip address that you have obtained and then put the port that you would like to try and obtain the password using a key logger or something of that nature that obtains information without the users consent.

Spam- Spam is a program that sends bulk email for advertisements or it can be used for social engineering which is pretending to be something such as a bank sending you an email and trying to get your credit card details or address.This would be an example of spam.

Phishing- Phishing is a way to obtain personal information such as credit card numbers bye pretending to be the victims bank or could be advertising a product and instead of the victim trying to buy this great item the hacker takes the credit card details.This is a type of social engineering.

Encryption

Encryption is used to protect a  connection or protect a document, There are 3 common types of encryption and these are 64 bit 128 bit and 256 bit, 64 bit encryptions are not used that often any more because it is to easy to decipher or to crack so that is why most public encryptions are 128 bit because to the common user it is hard to crack  but for the government it is not hard to crack because terrorists could be sending messages or using phones that are encrypted on a 128 bit connection and the government have super computers that can crack that without taking to long to act on so that is why in America 256 bit encryption is illegal because the government cannot decrypt it quick enough to act on it E.G: A terrorist is sending a message saying that they will blow up something or an attack then if the government intercepts the message or it is picked up by the filter then they cant read the message quick enough to act on it because by the time they have decrypted the message then the thing that they were trying to find out has already happened.