1. Fear of identity theft
2. Protect their kids from predators
3. Protect their computer so it will still work ok
...
But I have not heard a single person outside of the tech industry ever say anything like
"eliminate one attack option for a hostile nation"
Take a look at the following link - When Russia and Georgia fought a small physical war last month - there was also a cyber component. The citizens of Georgia - military and civilian - could not get to the internet because of an attack called DoS. (Denial of Service)
"Russia is one of the most capable countries when it comes to launching system intrusion hacking attempts, distributed denial-of-service attacks, and operation of botnets," said Don Jackson, director of Threat Intelligence for SecureWorks. "Yet you'll notice the number of attacks coming from Russia are very low."
...
On the SecureWorks list, the United States has more than 20 million botnet compromised PCs. The next highest is China at roughly one-third that number, or 7 million. At first glance that may seem due to the size of each country and the number of computer users. Jackson said that isn't necessarily the case
A Denial of Service attack is a network of computers simultaneously making requests against a given server at a rate so high that the attacked server cannot respond. It's like trying to make a call out of a radio station during a promotion where they invite everyone to call in. DoS are most effectively run by Botnets. Botnets (robotic networks) are sleeper programs on regular citizens PCs. Like yours, or mine. When a botmaster wakes them up, he has an army to attack with. Last year a man arrested in LA who had a bot army of 250,000.
SOOOO - what do I do?
Well, Joe the Plumber, you can do a few things
1. throw out your computer, cellphone and any other computing device OR
2. get educated and stay educated! What is working for you today on your computer may not be enough tomorrow.
and of course - get a good firewall and AV/Anti-malware suite! :)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment