New risks for home computers

  • Thursday, January 3, 2002 9:00pm
  • Business

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Computer hackers, once satisfied to test their skills on large companies, are turning their sights on home computers, which are faster, more powerful and less secure than ever before.

The hackers can steal your identity, destroy your data or use your computer to launch attacks on Web sites or your friends.

"Home machines weren’t very interesting targets a few years ago," said Mikko Hypponen of the anti-virus company F-Secure in Finland. "That’s all changed now."

Experts attribute the threat to several factors:

  • Many home computers are now as powerful as business computers, with enough memory and processing power to make them alluring staging areas for wide-scale Internet attacks that affect other computers.

  • A growing number are connected directly to the Internet through high-speed DSL and cable lines that remain open all the time. Computers left on around the clock are most vulnerable.

    Protect yourself

    To prevent hacker attacks on your home computer:

  • Choose passwords that are difficult or impossible to guess.

  • Back up critical data at least once each day. Larger organizations usually perform a full backup weekly and incremental backups every day.

  • Buy and use virus protection software. That means three things: having it on your computer, checking daily for new virus signature updates, and scanning all the files on your computer periodically.

  • Use a firewall program as a gatekeeper between your computer and the Internet.

  • Do not open e-mail attachments from strangers, and be suspicious of any unexpected e-mail attachment from someone you do know. It may have been sent without that person’s knowledge by an infected machine.

  • Unlike businesses with permanent security staff, most home users are slow to secure their computers with the latest anti-virus and firewall software and to plug security holes by downloading the necessary fixes from software makers such as Microsoft.

  • Many home users are unaware of Internet threats and are too willing to click on unsolicited e-mails that might be infected with malicious programs.

    "Home users have generally been the least prepared to defend against attacks," Carnegie Mellon University’s Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center warns. "In many cases, these machines are then used by intruders to launch attacks against other organizations."

    Internet analyst firm Jupiter Media Metrix estimated that 71.2 million American households had personal computers in 2001 — almost three-quarters of the nation’s households — and 61.2 million had Internet access.

    Viruses and worms — which are viruses that don’t need human intervention to multiply — make up a large part of the threats to home computers. In the past year, users’ computers have been infected with malicious programs with catchy names like Code Red, Nimda, SirCam, Anna Kournikova and others that could be spread through Internet e-mail or surfing.

    Anti-virus firm Message Labs reported that it detected one virus per 370 e-mails in 2001, double the rate of the previous year.

    The federal government is trying to better educate and insulate home users, hoping it will slow the spread of Internet viruses or worms that could slow the entire Internet and its e-commerce.

    The outbreak of the Code Red Internet worm last summer sparked an unprecedented show of force from government and private industry.

    "We’ve never seen a virus before that … just jumped from one Web server to another," Hypponen said. "It really made Code Red more like a weapon than anything else."

    Although home computers were not affected, the message government and private security experts want home users to take away is that computer maintenance needs to become as routine as locking your house and car. Home users need to routinely update their anti-virus and Internet firewall software against threats and check for software fixes that software makers provide for free.

    "If you’ve got a system out on the Net and it’s not patched, there’s a very high degree of likelihood that literally in a matter of hours you’ll be popped," warned Amit Yoran of computer security firm Riptech.

    New technologies will be at risk to hacking this year, Yoran cautioned. Wireless networking, which is now so cheap and easy to use that consumer models are growing popular, is especially vulnerable.

    "What we’re faced with is widespread adoption (of wireless networks) throughout corporate America and throughout consumer markets, and people haven’t really thought through how to protect," he said.

    Copyright ©2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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