Weapons of cybercriminals

Weapons of cybercriminals

Hi friends,

In our last post we discussed about what cybercrime is and which crimes come under its purview and now we are writing this article about the weapons of cyber criminals. We think this will help you to know about the nature of those crimes in a nutshell.

1) Hacking: - Gaining unauthorized access to a computer system.

2) Viruses: - Viruses are software that is capable of executing an unwanted action on the victim's computer and has a mechanism for replicating itself inside other computers that come in contact with the infected machine. It may also infect the other program (Came into being in 1982 by a high school student Rich Skrenta).

3) Worms: - A more dangerous evolution of viruses, worms are self-propagating, meaning they do not need any intervention from the victim—such as clicking on an infected software attachment in an email— to transfer themselves to other computers. (Came into being in 1988 by Robbert T Morris)

4) Trojans: - Trojan horse software installs itself on the user's computer when they click on a link or a disguised computer file or attachment. Once installed, the software can be controlled remotely by hackers to extract money, passwords and other sensitive information. It can also be used to create a relay point or zombie for forwarding spam, phishing e-mails and Trojan software to millions of other computers on the internet. (Came into being in 1989)

5) Root kits: - Software that hides the presence and activity of intruders. Used in combination with Trojan software, hackers can change system settings and make use of the computer without the user—and usually without monitoring software such as firewalls or anti-virus programs—being able to detect it. Once hackers get "root access," to a computer, they can manipulate it to do anything they want. (Came into being in 1970-80)

6) Phishing: - Phishing (the word has come from catching fish) attempts to trick Internet users into divulging their personal information for use or resale by criminals who can profit from the information. Originally delivered through crude typo-ridden emails, phishing has matured into a range of sophisticated methods that are cable of fooling even experienced computer users. (Came into being in 1996). Its like catching fish in the internet.

7) Vishing: - Computer users are cajoled into calling a phone number to give up their personal information directly to a waiting criminal.

8) Spear phishing: - Criminals obtain access to a corporate network or social networking site, and obtain email addresses of people familiar to the potential victim and create messages that purport to come from direct bosses, HR departments or close friends.

9) Pharming: - Criminals manipulate legitimate websites or use tools to redirect traffic to bogus sites that collect victims' information or take over their machines.

10) E-mail and Instant Messaging Redirectors: - E-mail redirectors are programs that intercept and relay outgoing emails, then send an additional copy to an address to which an attacker has access. Instant messaging redirectors monitor instant messaging applications and transmit transcripts to an attacker.

11) Keyloggers and Screenloggers: - This is program that installs itself into the web browser or as a devise driver and it monitors keystrokes on the keyboard (including passwords) and data that is input and send it to phishing server.

12) Transaction Generators: - Unlike many of the other types of crimeware, a transaction generator targets not an end-user’s computer but a computer inside a company’s transaction processing center. The software generates fraudulent transactions for the benefit of the attacker from within the payment processing system. Additionally, transaction generators often intercept and compromise legitimate credit card data.

13) Spam e-mail: - It is a kind of e-mail bombing to hundreds or thousands of victims resulting in the victim’s e-mail account ( in case of individual ) or mail servers ( in case of a company or an e-mail service provider) crashing. It can be made worse if recipients reply to the email as they get the real address of the sender.

14) E-mail spoofing: - This term is used to describe fraudulent email activity in which a sender address and other parts of the email header are altered to appear as though the email originated from a different source. This technique is used for sending spam email and phishing for hiding the origin.

15) Spyware: - This is a program that secretly gathers the information through internet connection without our knowledge and sometimes it is called in the name of malware or adware. It comes from the downloadable files from the internet in a hidden format and when we give consent it is automatically downloaded.

Thanks

Urproblemmysolution team

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