Hacking and Prevention

Hacking and Prevention

Zachery B. Lively

Lone Star College-Kingwood

English 1302

ABSTRACT

This essay is about the hacking crimes that are happening in today society and how we are working to make reasonable solutions to stop these things from happening. Hacking crimes are happening around the world, but more importantly they are happening right in your friendly coffee shop, grocery store, even outside of your house. Anywhere there is a Wi-Fi connection (which everyone can’t seem to live without) there is a way for the hacker to get into your personal information. There are many way to prevent these types of thing from happening. You can make sure your phone doesn’t have its Wi-Fi on, password protect your accounts, as well as many other options. As time goes on so do the intelligence of the hackers. Now a days all the hacker needs to do is walk by you with a special machine and he or she can steal your credit card info without even touching you.

In today’s world hacking has become somewhat of a big problem. Back in the day these “hackers” didn’t have the tools that they have today. People have devoted their life to hacking, some have even gone as far as to join groups such as the vast group called “Anonymous”. Calling themselves “Hacktivists” because they are trying to get people to see the flaws of government. When really all they are doing is violating laws and taking information that isn’t for them to see. These hackers have come so far as to use a common Wi-Fi source to hack anyone’s computer that uses the same free Wi-Fi. Not only do they hack your computer but some in some cases people have been found in airports stealing credit card info just by walking close to you. They can use a machine to magnetically steal the info right from your card. There are many ways people have tried to stop hackers from getting in to their system, but the best way to stop hackers is to use a strong Fire wall.

        Even though there have been improvements on securing information there are still a few problems that hackers exploit. One of the many ways to exploit the computer is to use and method called “DDoS”. DDoS is a type of DOS attack where multiple compromised systems, which are often infected with a Trojan, are used to target a single system causing a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. “Many observers think of DDoS attacks as requiring major bandwidth resources, in the hands of ‘Black Hat’ (malicious) hackers, in order to mount. However, as Anonymous has proved with LOIC, several hundred users’ minor bandwidth can be married together to stage a wide-band DdoS attack”(Gold, 2013). Basically what gold is saying is that the hackers have found a way to do more with less. They can make a big cyber-attack off smaller bandwidth’ when everyone thought they would need a very large one. Another problem a hacker can exploit is the fact that a computer cannot think. “one way is to “trick” a computer by using someone else’s code, leading the computer to give access to the unauthorized user”(Sharaby Oct 2011). That is a major way that they can get into information that they aren’t supposed to. They basically tell the computer to give them the passwords they need to get into where they need to be. The last major way that hackers get into our systems is by placing Trojans onto our computers threw ads on the internet. Basically what a Trojans does is it get through your system by acting as something it is not. Most of the time these Trojans will appear on you internet web page as an Ad, and it can be an Ad for anything as long as you click on it the Trojan will get into your system. How can they do this? It is a technique called Cross-Site Scripting and it “is a vulnerability in a web application that occurs when input is taken from a user and not properly sanitized before it is processed by the user’s browser”(Bowles, 2012). All of these are many of the ways hackers can get into your computer, whether it’s from exploiting the internet or its DDoS, and can steal your information.

        Again there are many solutions to stop hacking, but the main way to do so is to use what is called a Firewall. Basically a Firewall is a program or device that acts as a defense to keep malicious elements out of a network or specific computer. Firewalls are developed in hardware and software with specific criteria to block or prevent unauthorized access to a network. This is the thing that is going to make it harder for the hacker to penetrate your computers defense. He or she will not be able to put the Trojan into your computer because the Firewall will notice that there is something wrong with the code in that Trojan and will alert you that it tried to get in and will also deny the malicious virus access to the computer. “These profilers are used to train the statistical models, so that they can recognize unusual behavior when it occurs” (Tarran, 2014). These profilers Tarran is referring to are within the Firewall. These are the things that point out the bad code trying to get in. Basically without a Firewall your computer and or systems are very susceptible to being hacked.