While great strides have been made in internet protection from hackers, users are not entirely protected hackers who can still strike anytime.
Harish Chandar the Founder of Indiatech based in Mumbai, a cyber security expert, shares his experience in recognising the tell tale signs that you are under attack.
# 1 You are connected to the Internet and browsing some site and suddenly your browser automatically opens another web site on its own!!
Alert: Browser Hijackers are malicious software’s that makes you go to the sites that the hackers want you to go.
Browser hijacking programs are many times usually found in freely available softwares or sometimes by clicking on malicious Advertisements
# 2 You receive text alerts on your mobile that mysterious and illegal transactions of money has been done on your credit/debit card, leaving you shocked!!
Alert: This can happen due to your credit/debit card information having been ‘leaked’ through some methods to hackers.
One way is the ‘Phishing Attack’. Here hackers create a fake, but authentic looking webpage of a famous company or bank or ecommerce site and you might have used your credit/debit card on this fake site.
Shocking Alert: Your credit/Debit card information can also be stolen by using a device called as ‘Skimmer’, these skimmers are secretly used by malicious people in Hotels, Fuel stations, Shops and just about any place where credit/debit cards are being used.
# 3 You get an email from your friend/relatives/boss requesting you to deposit money in a given bank account and later after depositing you realise that the email was not sent by them at all!
Alert: What you experienced just now is called as ‘Email Spoofing Attack’
In this attack, the attacker using certain special software’s can hide or mask his real email Id and instead use any email Id.
Millions of people across the world have fallen to prey to ‘Job Offers’ from ‘reputed companies’, which turned out to be fake emails.
#4 You are sitting at your favourite Café or Restaurant and you can see a Free WiFi Network signal on your mobile.
You connect to it and the page on your mobile says to enter your Gmail or Facebook or any such ID for authentication, you put all these details innocently and click Next and nothing happens!! No websites, No internet connection!
Alert: Hackers can create fake WiFi hotspots and keep it near public places, for people to connect. The moment you put in your Gmail or any such information, the fake WiFi hotspots will send this information to the hackers immediately, thus compromising your critical data.
#5 You drive up to a Petrol/Fuel filling station and fill up your car’s tank
Somehow you feel the amount shown on the gas pump display and what you have just filled does not seem to tally!
Alert: There are some small chips or circuit boards available, that are used by some gas pump dealers on their pumps, once installed the chips will display the readings on screen correctly, but will fill up the car tank with much lesser amount of fuel, thus cheating you.
# 6 You are online and suddenly you find an alert message on your screen that says “Your Computer is infected with viruses, click here to scan and remove them”.
You click on the message and the next moment, the site asks for your credit card info for payment to clean your computer.
Alert: Fake Virus alert message is the most common method employed by malicious websites to trap unsuspecting people and ask for money, never click on such advertisements.
# 7 You are in a hotel room and worried if the valuables you have in your luggage is safe in the hotel room, despite you being the only one with the Hotel Key Card.
Alert: It has been demonstrated conclusively that Hotel electronic locks based on key cards can be hacked or opened. There are devices that operate wirelessly and they can be kept close to the hotel door lock to get the code for that lock.
# 8 You visit a neighbourhood Internet Café, to check your email, since your mobile/computer internet connectivity is down, but after that incident you find several bizzare emails in your inbox, also your friends and relatives receive emails from your email id, even
though you have not sent any of them!
Alert: Sometimes malicious people can install software called key loggers , on a computer. This software secretly, reads every single key stroke you do on the computer and stores the same on a text file, which can be read later.
These of course are just some of the symptoms of hacking, there are many more that can be both easy to detect or difficult, but the fact is that we really are living in a world that is just few ‘clicks’ away from getting hacked !