Cybersecurity Awareness –   By Ron Frechette, The Cyber Guy

October is the time of year between fall and winter when our days begin to get shorter and the nights longer… and much cooler. This is also the time of year we celebrate Halloween.  The threat of witches, vampires, werewolves, and zombies are looming around every corner, ready to cast a spell or take a bite out of us and turn us into one of them.  As children growing up, many of us have a scary Halloween memory or two we still remember.  As we grew older, we began to realize there are no zombies hiding in our bedroom closets that were going to get us… and the horror of Halloween began to wear off over time.

What if I told you that zombies really do exist? At least they do in cyberspace.  In the cybersecurity world, we call these monsters, “Computer Zombies”! Based on a significant increase in data breaches and compromises we are seeing this year, we could very well be experiencing a Computer Zombie Apocalypse!  In fact, the odds are extremely high that some of you have already become victims of these horrific acts.  If so, your computers may be causing great harm to others and you have absolutely no idea what and when this is happening.  Talk about spooky! What is a Zombie Computer?

A zombie computer is a computer connected to the internet that has been compromised by a hacker or computer virus that can be used for malicious purposes under the direction of a cybercriminal from a remote location. Most owners of zombie computers have no idea their system is being used in this manner.  Because the owner is unaware, these computers are symbolically compared to fictional zombies.

“A key sign that your computer is under a zombie spell is when it suddenly begins working extremely slow for no reason whatsoever.”

This is probably because it is busy attacking other computers as part of a botnet.

What is a Botnet?

A Botnet is an army of literally tens of thousands of internet-connected devices that are controlled by a group of cybercriminals. Botnets can be used to perform distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS attacks), steal data, send spam, and allow attackers access to the device and its connection.  The Marina Botnet, one of the largest discovered, had an estimated 6,215,000 bots.  Imagine an internet army of over six million enemy soldiers that can attack at once. And then imagine that your personal computer is participating in the attack without your knowledge of it ever happening.

Botnets are Big Business on the Dark Web

Creating zombie computers for botnets is an extremely lucrative business in the cybercriminal world.  The group that controls the botnets will pay another group for every computer they infect with malware that allows them to control our PCs remotely for malicious purposes.  Cybercriminals are very good at tricking us into loading malicious software.  Often, they masquerade themselves as legitimate anti-virus software when, in reality, we are loading malicious software that enables malware developers the ability to install things like rootkits and botnet enabling software. How Can We Avoid the Zombie Apocalypse?

• NEVER click a link you are not familiar with or provide personal information to anyone when chatting online. – When talking on social media sites like Facebook, if your friend starts asking off the wall questions, make direct contact to make sure it is really them.
• Consider using a second scanner. Many anti-virus programs don’t detect bot net-related software. Install a second opinion scanner such as Malwarebytes to ensure your primary anti-virus software did not miss anything.
• Constantly strive to educate yourself about cybersecurity best practices. is power!! Get smart about cyber!

Wishing you all a safe and fun Halloween in cyberspace!  Please share any feedback or additional insight!

Sources:

• https://www.lifewire.com/what-are-malicious-bots-2487156
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_(computer_science)

Cross-posted from The Park Press