Malware School Part 1 - Phising
Since i’m currently revisiting some topics about Information Security, i’ve decided to enlighten you folks about the dangers of the interwebs. Let’s begin the chit chat discussing about the more famous buzzwords some of you may see on a daily basis on TV and news portals when the story is about hackers and security online, so yall can identify what you are reading about and maybe even avoid some of these pitfalls when you are searching for russian brides etc (oh the irony).
Malware stands for malicious software, and it’s more like a broad category of virtual germs that like it’s biological counterpart can infect your home (in this case where you browse the internet, be it a smartphone, computer or tablet.) These softwares often come bundled with a download from a suspicious source (“hey i’m a russian bride, before we can talk please download this feet pics pack and click on the exe file that comes with it”), or it can be an email that you SWEAR it was sent by your trustyworth bank manager with a link asking for your credentials. Malware are divided into several categories but today we will begin the discussion with one of the simplest ones, the phising:
Remember the email sent by your bank manager that we were previously discussing? It’s fake! (shocking). Phising, that comes from fishing, it’s a very common technique that aims at stealing your private information by pretending to be a realiable source like a service provider, a notorius business or even your work’s colleague. They often ask for “confirmation” of your credentials wanting to acess your passwords and / or home address etc. A simple way to avoid these scams is to never open emails sent by these fonts and if you have business with these services and think something is wrong, contact them through the official channels, often provided on their website. An advanced form of phising involve sending a fake email that also has fake phone numbers that redirect you to a scam call center. Beware!
So this is for now. I’m trying to keep the blog posts small so yall can read fast and easy and keep on with your lives ha! Next time we will be delving deeper at another type of malware, the infamous trojan!
Cheers!