The Web Is Under Attack!

Are you afraid of attacks coming from the Internet? Well, you should be, as long as you're not taking the required security measures, but we'll talk about them a bit later. Now, let's see why is everyone talking about attacks these days, because when there is smoke, there should also be some fire somewhere, don't you agree?


Earlier this month, McAfee's AVERT labs claimed 10,000 pages using Microsoft's Active Server Pages(ASP) were infected by using SQL injection. Only a few days later, Neil Carpenter, an employee at Microsoft, detected an additional 14,000 maliciously-modified Web pages!

Unfortunately, it doesn't stop here - following the previous attacks, McAfee reported more than 200,000 Web pages infected by an automated attack against phpBB-based sites! The problem is not that some page will have a message like "hacked by dArK", but that some attacks are leading to data loss - an that includes personal information, password, even credit card info in some cases.

Now, let's finish by talking a little about those security measures I was talking earlier. First of all, if you are a system administrator, I am sure you know what to do; if you don't, then quit that job and go wash some cars for a living. The big problem is that most regular users think their passwords are secure, and their computer is absolutely safe. Well, they are not. Here are my advices...

1. Never use passwords that you can remember!
2. Never keep your passwords in plain text files on your hard drive - use some USB stick or other portable memory to keep all your passwords on, and be sure to keep that as close to you as possible!
3. Use a firewall, an antivirus and an antispyware solution.
4. If you're not sure about a site's reliability, don't store any password or personal data on it!
5. At last, never use the same password twice!

I hope the above will help you stay safe, because Websites won't suddenly cease being vulnerable, and those attacking them won't grow tired anytime soon of finding new exploits and using them!