Sec-280-Wk4-Case Study

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Personal Computer Security

SEC-280

August 1, 2013

Computer security has always been the number one concern of every personal computer user. It is important to be aware of external threats in order to keep a network safe from intrusion. History has shown, a malicious attack can occur in many forms, at any time, and can cause severe data loss and compromise confidential information. In order to understand what can be done to protect our computers from hackers and attackers, the main question is what are the types of threats and what can be done?

Past computer threats have been well documented how the attacks were carried out. For example, a (2009) Conficker Worm allowed its creator to remotely install software on infected machines. The software was designed to send SPAM, steal ID’s and direct users to online scams and phishing sites. (Potter, 2009). In this case it is important to disable a remote system service if not needed. This will safeguard any future attacks from this remote service access and not allow a hacker to steal your personal information.

Other famous worms and viruses such as I Love You (2000) targeted email accounts, and Blaster (2003) and Storm (2007) targeted the Internet websites (Potter, 2009). These worms and viruses infected computers when the end user opened the links.

Phishing is another technique of social engineering where an attacker attempts to obtain sensitive information such as username, passwords, credit card numbers and details about users bank accounts. A common example of phishing is when an attacker sends an email supposedly from a bank telling the customer a security breach has occurred and instructing them to click on a link to verify the username and password, unknowingly to the user they just gave the attacker their password (Conklin, 2010). In the case of phishing, for...