Our last two posts were about Phishing, and you are probably wondering where we are heading with all of this phishy stuff.
Phishing is how hackers figure out where you are vulnerable. They can ask you for information you should never give them. They can also attach files which will not ask you for any information. They will, however, take information from you, and leave you a “gift”.
Not a gift you would ever want, however. This gift will be a set of instructions which can clean off your data, it can hold your computer hostage. Sometimes it can piggy back on to the data you send out to others and install it on their systems as well.
We talked about a few things you can do to protect your systems from Phishing, now let’s go further and discuss what can be done to prevent Malware from getting installed on your system. Or, if the installation has already occurred, how to remove it from your system.
From Security In A Box”
“You can sometimes clear up a malware infection just by running your anti-malware software and letting it take care of the problem. On the other hand, some malware is designed to survive a full re-installation of the operating system. Most infections falls somewhere in the middle. In order from least to most effort (and, unfortunately, from least to most effective), the following are a few options:
- Do a full scan with your existing anti-malware tool.
- If the suspect device is a computer, restart it from an anti-malware rescue disk (such as Windows Defender Offline or the AVG RescueCD) and then discard the USB memory stick you used to create the rescue disk.
- If you have a way to restore your device to its “factory settings,” backup your important files and do so. Do not backup any software. Be careful with the storage device you used for backup. Make sure it is clean before plugging it into your restored device.
- If the suspect device is a computer, you can reinstall the operating system after backing up your important data. Once again, make sure your backup disk is clean before plugging it into the device on which you reinstalled the operating system. If you use a USB stick to reinstall the operating system, consider discarding it.”
Better still, if you are part of a network, the moment you suspect something is wrong, unplug your computer or laptop from that network. Take it OFF LINE immediately and do not access any websites which would require you to type in a user name or password. Then call us.