Thursday, July 9, 2009

Guide to Internet Scams, Hacks and Hoaxes

As Internet scams increase in sophistication, Network Box advises users to be more alert, with the publication of a whitepaper regarding common hoaxes, hacks and Internet horrors.  The whitepaper looks at the different kind of common attacks, with examples of each, and simple ways for IT managers and employees alike to avoid falling victim to them.  Editor's Note:  As the graphic on the left depicts, people could avoid getting hit with these by exercising a little common sense. 

Hacks:
The ‘hacks’ section looks at attacks through application vulnerabilities and SQL attacks, and gives a number of examples of high profile recent hacks, including the attack on hosting company, Vaserv.com, which had more than 100,000 websites deleted from its systems.

Hoaxes:
The guide shows an example of the log in page of a hoax site (pretending to be Natwest) next to the real site, to show how sophisticated some of these fraudulent sites can be now. It advises users to look out for the padlock symbol, indicating the authenticity of the site; https, rather than http – always used by real sites for sending secure information over the Internet; and the real URL, as opposed to a bogus URL – commonly (and easily) overlooked by users.

The guide is available in PDF format here.






Disqus for ePayment News