Do you ever play games on your PC? If so, you may be easy meat for the malware writers.
What does this mean? We all rely on technology to get things done. Whether it’s writing a letter, playing a game, or hammering out a project that must be finished today, there are times when we’re concentrating on just one thing almost to the exclusion of everything else. It’s at this point that we’re most likely to to fall foul of the nasties.
For example, you may be researching on the web for a particular piece of information that you need to finish a project. You rattle away through Google’s search results — and then you realise that the result is on a page you’ve visited before. So you type in the web address but, in the haste to get at the details you need, you spell the URL incorrectly.
This is what they’re waiting for. There’s a web address for almost everything you type in. most are legitimate but a huge number are not. They sit at the margins of what we want, but expect a percentage of us to make a mistake when typing in the address. When that happens, you don’t go where you expect but to another page entirely. Almost any typo will take you somewhere you probably don’t want to go.
The page might announce that you’ve typed in the wrong address, or it might look very like what you think you typed in. but there’s a high chance that the page could attempt to install software on your PC that you surely do not want installed. For example, it might be a keylogger that can track your passwords and transmit them elsewhere, or a piece of malware that turns your machine into a zombie, the name used for members of a botnet — a network designed for mass spamming or denial of service attacks. And you won’t know it’s happening.
So why mention games? Because of the intensity with which you’re playing and the concentration levels required, you’re at your most vulnerable when you zap off to a site to download a utility or grab advice from a forum. That’s when the mis-typed URL grabs you and can pull your machine over to the dark side.
There are some simple steps you can take to prevent this, including leaving your anti-virus software switched on, turning on silent/gaming mode, and beware of downloading games through warez sites. You can also configure your machine to use OpenDNS, which can help trap malware sites and is a fast, free alternative to your ISP’s automatically configured DNS (domain name server). DNS is the Internet’s mechanism for converting the URL you type into a universally recognised Internet protocol address — www.bbc.co.uk translates to 212.58.246.95, for example.
There’s lots of ways to catch an infection but fortunately, awareness as well as the right technology can help prevent that. So whether you’re working or having fun, be aware and be safe!
