Under Attack

Screenshot of blocked attack report for 4KCC Blog

Many activities take place on the Internet about which “regular” computer users have no clue. Oh, you’ve heard of the Dark Web – I’ve written about it here – but there is more going on behind the scenes than that. As an example, have a look at the screenshot above. It is a daily report I receive regarding this blog. It shows attacks on my site which were blocked by special software I use. Notice the “and 359 additional attacks.”

These attacks are hackers attempting to take over my site. Why would they do that? There are multiple reasons why any site is attacked. A hacker might want to infiltrate a site, including this blog, to inject malware so that visitors to a legitimate site might be infected by malware. Or, they might want to “mar” a site with propaganda – political, social, personal. Often, a hacker wants to take over a site simply for bragging rights. Whatever the case, hackers work hard attempting to take over a site or log in to an account.

Besides trying to attack sites, sometimes hackers attempt to log in to a site as if they were the owner. Here’s just part of a log for this blog site where people tried to log-in by guessing my user name and password:

Screenshot of failed log in attempts

At this point in this post, you might be asking yourself, “John, why should I care about someone trying to break into your blog site or attack it?” That’s a fair question but there’s a good answer to it. There are hackers trying to get into your stuff, too! They work hard to break into your email, your financial sites or your computer in general. Actually, they aren’t usually looking for you in particular, they are looking for any computing device or account that has lousy security.

I’ve said all this to remind you: 1) use secure passwords; 2) don’t use the same password everywhere; 3) keep your anti-virus, anti-malware up-to-date; 4) don’t ignore computing device or app updates; 5) don’t call the number in those fake pop-up messages about your computer having viruses, etc.; 6) hang up on anyone who calls claiming to be from Microsoft, Apple or Google and who tells you your computer is infected; 7) don’t allow strangers onto your computer.