Internet Viruses: A Preventable Threat

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Have you ever been a victim of Internet malware?

Deceitful: hackers who exploit webcams to spy on you!

Mobile Cloud Labs

Photo by anieto2k. Flickr

Hackers sneak into your webcam more often than you think as a method to watch internet surfers without being noticed. To do this, you just need Internet access and a program that is silently installed on your computer.

Imagine being spied on by a hacker that has installed this software on your computer. Whenever you are connected to the Internet, the hacker can log in, see everything that happens on your screen and observe you through the camera. Of course, this intrusion occurs without you being aware of it.

Hackers can install Trojans or other viruses on your computer using your help unknowingly. Simple things like going to what appears to be a normal web page with nothing more than a harmless picture, can activate Trojans that will give access to files, passwords and every folder on your computer.

There are other programs that were originally created to repair and perform maintenance remotely by online support teams that can also be a problem. In the wrong hands, these programs have become espionage instruments that can be downloaded in special forums. This means that people don’t need to have great “hacker” skills, all they have to do is pay for these programs giving them the potential to use them against you.

Criminal organizations earn a lot of money by selling spyware programs. These organizations are very professional, well established and very successful. That’s why if you suspect you are being watched or that a hacker is manipulating your computer, follow these recommendations:

1. Immediately disconnect your computer from the Internet.
2. Clean your computer with an antivirus program.
3. Before opening any link, hover over to see if takes you to the desired page.
4. Do not open any files that you receive by strangers via email.
5. Place a sticky note, tape or Band-Aid on your camera to block all unwanted and prying eyes.

Always remain vigilant while on the Internet!

Spam: The Digital Plague

Spam, the digital plague
183 million spam messages are sent worldwide on a daily basis. Spamming can be a lucrative business that saturates email accounts and can transmit malware and viruses to your computer or mobile device.

It is estimated that worldwide, the damage caused by spam reaches in excess of $12 billion dollars. Anti spam activists such as the Spamhause Project or Google, fight against this plague.

Spammers usually operate with nonexistent companies to buy IP addresses and use outside servers. Unfortunately, 4 out of 5 spam messages advertise suspicious online businesses. For example, the so-called Nigerian scam is designed to make you think that you can get millions of dollars but only if you send a sum of money in advanced.

Other spam messages contain files that infect your computer or mobile device that allow hackers to control and access them remotely. Anti spam organizations maintain spam lists, which are used to block suspicious senders and report them to the police.

This digital plague is not something exclusive to Russia and Nigeria, as it is generally thought. In fact, industrialized countries such as Germany and Japan are in the top 10 lists, with the US in the first place.

 10 Worst Spam Countries

Image: The Spamhaus Project

In many countries, spam is difficult to control due to legislation and also because it is difficult to verify that a person did not give consent to receive such messages. Once the spammers are identified, anti spam activists report their information to the police in order to assist in putting a stop to it.

Despite the efforts of organizations such as Spamhaus or the police, the battle against spam is far from over. Spammers are constantly evolving and changing their methods until eventually this junk email will be more methodical, unrecognizable, and better integrated into the daily life.

The amount of spam is not expected to reduce, however anti-spam organizations have a clear objective: to prevent spam from reaching our inbox.

Spam is digital trash and as such it should be sent to the recycle bin unopened. Do not click on any links from spam emails and always protect your mobile devices against malware and other threats with antivirus solutions such as MyAntiTheft.

Tips to Prevent Online Christmas Scams





Learn how to protect yourself when shopping online:


Snapchat is splashed by third party app leak

Snapchat is not in deep water like everyone thought, data leak was due to non-approved third party apps.
Snapchat provides a temporary means of transferring images and videos to your friends, family or acquaintances that have the app in their mobile device. Snapchat has an internal private API (application programming interface) that it does not make available to developers and 3rd party applications. This however does not prevent developers from reverse engineering Snapchat’s internal API and providing unauthorized service that violates Snapchat’s terms of service.

The data breach in recent news was not due to security flaws at Snapchat but to 3rd party app that utilizes the private Snapchat API without approval. With people could save and browse their Snapchat images. The security breach was due to Snapsaved having an internal misconfiguration on their servers.

You need to be careful as a user when giving apps login credentials or permission to access your Snapchat data. You could potentially grant permission for a malicious app to steal your snapchat data and information. For these reasons it is important to know more about the developer and app you are using.

Not all the third party apps are malicious, they can offer services and helpful functionalities to different products. However, it’s important to recognize the third party apps that represent a security risk by looking at the kind of data they are accessing, and their security and privacy policies.

A brief history of hacking

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster” -Sun Tzu-

In a digital world enemies are changing and updating. Hence, it’s good to know a short history of who they are to be aware of their threat.

1969, Phone Freaking: By blowing a toy whistle into a phone receiver, John Draper illegally accessed the phone network and made free calls. “Phreaking” portmanteau of the words phone and freak affected many people such as Steve Jobs.


1985, KGB-Hack: During the cold war, German hackers infiltrated the Pentagon and other US military computers in order to sell confidential US information to the Russian secret service.


1992, Michelangelo Madness: This virus caused hysteria after media reported that it would delete data from millions of infected computers on March 6th, the birthday of the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo. Computer users connected to the Internet bought large quantities of anti-virus software but in spite of all the madness, the virus caused little damage affecting only a few thousands computers.


1999, Email Virus: By sending billions of emails the Melissa virus overloaded the Internet with data. To prevent the worm, email providers like Microsoft shut down losing approximately 80 million dollars.


2007, Hack attack in Estonia: Estonian Internet was swamped and sabotaged in a series of cyber attacks against government organizations, banks and the general public. This cyber-warfare distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS), creating cyber-armies or botnets to send coordinated crash-inducing attacks to targeted Web servers.


2010, Cyber-warfare: The Stuxnet virus severely weakened the Iranian nuclear program by destroying more than a thousand uranium centrifuges. The US Government is suspect of creating and spreading the virus.


2013, Big Coup: Globally networking criminals manipulated data of credit cards and withdrew 45 millions dollars at ATMs around the world. The criminals, responsible for this cyber-robbery are still free.


Hacking is about finding security weakness in networks. Worms and viruses are widely spread nowadays and it’s better to protect your mobile devices with the best, Android Security Suite.

Don’t let malware score a goal against you in the world cup

malware. worldcup. BLOG

Cyber crime can score a goal against you during this world cup as mobile malware is becoming more spread, stealing information, exhausting the life of your devices or money with apps that you install in your mobile devices.

Hackers are targeting IOS but hitting harder on Android devices, as 99% of cybercrime in the first quarter of 2014 targeted Android. Due to the open architecture of Android, it has allowed the increase of threats such as mobile banking Trojans.

Another kind of popular malware being found is Ransomware, a type of malware that locks your device and holds the victim ransom until payment has been made, making it very difficult to uninstall.

Also, malware spreads easily and quickly through social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Impressive pictures or videos are the most common ways to lure victims to download them.


Nowadays, with the world cup at the highest peak many football fans around the globe follow the latest news and applications in search of a variety of pictures, videos and games.

But for people not aware of these threats, a large portion of these apps are malware and they are set to read your private messages, identify your location or steal your bank account information.

To prevent this, it is not only important to have an antivirus like MyAntivirus but also to read the application permissions before install which require access to your contact list or to pinpoint your location. Some malware can send SMS messages that cost you money or install other malware apps without your knowledge.

The world cup, as any other big event in the past, is becoming a great hook for hackers to attract victims.

Caution is always advised, so get a good antivirus such as MyAntivirus to prevent the installation of malware but also, think twice before agreeing to intrusive app permissions and pushing the install button.