Week 4 Case Study Sec280

Trent Hirt

Sec 280 ILab4

01/28/2016

Thesis Statemement

DIfferent types of potential security risks for a personal computer.

Introduction

The purpose of this case study is to identify all of the potential security risks that we could see with personal computers, and some of the techniques an attacker might employ to access information on a computer. This will help to identify ways in which we can better secure our personal computers and information from intrusion and theft.

Body

Virus is one of the most common types of security breaches that effect a personal computer. It is a piece of software that can replicate and infect a computer without knowledge and permission of the user. It can only spread when it is transmitted by the user over the internet or network, or through cd's or memory devices. A virus can delete files, reformat the hard disk and cause other damage to a computer. They can also replicat themselves and present text, video, and audio messages. They are not designed to do damage but they can take up memory and cause erratic behavior, and cause system crashes and loss of data.

Spam is electronic junk mail that is sent to you from email adresses collected from chat rooms, websites, news groups, and Trojans which harvest users address books. Spam can clog personal email box's and overload mail servers and impact network performance. The most real danger is not in being the recipient is by accidentaly being the transmitter of it. Spammers regularly take control of computers and use them to distrubute spam. Once the computer is compromised their personal information may also be illegally acquired.

Spoofing is an attack in which a person or program acts like something else in order to gain access to a computer such as a URL or website. Once personal information is obtained the information can be used to make transactions or create fake attacks in a users name. This can ruin the user credit rating or deny access to the...