Test 2 – review
- Computer Crime and security
- Phishing :
- Is a scam is one on which victims are tricked into providing personal information such as account numbers, passwords, and credit card details to what they believe to be a legitimates company or organization. ( characteristics of bait emails and it looks real )
- How is phishing is different from a prank or hoax?
- Always money involve, bad grammar and story, links in email, gave you beneficial and ask your popular company involve and threats ( “your account will be blocked”, “ask your assistant” ).
- Examples of phishing vs.real/important email.
- Scammers often create a “look-a-like” webpage that is designed to look like the target company’s official website and the information submitted on these fake websites is used to steal funds from the user’s accounts or steal the victim’s identity.
- How to avoid getting phished :
- Do not follow any links that come with the spam mails, which will lead you to websites that ask for conformation of your account information.
- Never copy an unknown link from these kinds of spam mails and paste them on your web browsers. These links are made to look very humble by the phishers but they will actually land you to some scam and fraud sites.
- Be careful about opening or saving any document or attachment that come with spam mails. Do not trust these kinds of emails even if they appear to be sent by some authorized entity.
- Never ever send your confidential information about your account in an email.
- It is better to be protected from these scams by using firewall, anti-spyware and anti-virus software. Make sure to update this software regularly for security of your pc.
- Do not respond to those scam mails, which even seem to offer sound business or ask you to avail a refund. The fraudsters often send you phone numbers so that you call them up for business purpose. They use Voice over Internet Protocol technology. With this technology, their calls can never be traced.
- Why is it called phishing ?
- The origins are a combination of "fishing" and "phony"; its beginning was with phone hacker to get control of legitimate accounts.
- What is pharming and how does it work?
- It means when a fraudster creates false websites in the hope that people will visit them by mistake and sometimes people do that by mistyping a website address ( relies on you to make a mistake while you are typing ). Then the fraudster will try to obtain your personal details when you enter them into the false website.
- Social engineering. What is it and how is it involved with computer crimes?
- Social engineering is a term that describes a non-technical kind of intrusion that relies heavily on human interaction and often involves tricking other people to break normal security procedures.(understanding human nature and how to exploit our weaknesses). Using deception to obtain confidential information from someone by phone or in person. For example, the "social engineer" may persuade someone to reveal an ID or password for a supposed benign purpose (my computer is down, can I use yours in the meantime). Sometimes, a combination of social engineering and hacker skills are used to steal information. However, no matter how secure a network may be, the "con" played by the social engineer is often the most effective way to break in.
- Hackers and hacking:
- What is a hacker and what sorts of things do they do?
- Someone with advanced understanding of computers and computer networks. Hacker may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, protest, or simply challenge.
- What is malware and what does/can it do?
- Malware is short for "malicious software." Malware is any kind of unwanted-bad piece of software that is installed without your acceptance. Can cause an awful lot of damage. It's a hijacker which can take control of websites and place advertisements on them that have not been approved by the webmaster.
- What are some examples of malware?
- Viruses (You must run the document ) , worms ( Runs itself, spread by itself to other documents and the computer send itself to your contacts ) , adware, spyware ( looks to everything and records everything you type ), Botnets, stuxnetand Trojan ( lazy worms – free games )
- Could we have cyber battles or even full-scale cyber wars in the future?
- It means computer to computer conflicts. There is no guns or weapons but there is cyber weapon. And these weapons entirely of software code. One of them is stuxnet virus which been used in wars.
- As you all know, our society has become more and more dependent on the Internet. In the future, cyber-attacks will not just mean a stolen bank account number or a few private photos. Valuable information that is stored on servers across the world are no longer safe, and countries have entire systems linked over the internet, such as transportation, electricity or industry. All of these are vulnerable, and an attack of any of these systems would result in a partial or even total collapse of society.
- Are government working hiring/using hackers? Why? How?
- Computer hacker skills are in great demand in the government to fight the cyber wars that pose a growing national security threat and they are in short supply. The worked the black ( to get information ) and the white hackers ( to protect )
- What are black hat vs. white hat hackers?
- A White-hat hackers are the “ethical hackers,” experts in compromising computer security systems who use their abilities for good, ethical, and legal purposes rather than bad, unethical, and criminal purposes.
- Black-hat hackers (illegal) violate computer security for personal gain (such as stealing credit card numbers or harvesting personal datafor saleto identity thieves) or for pure maliciousness (such as creating a botnet )
- What is hacktivism and why is it important?
- A combination of hack/hacker and activism. The use of computers and computer networks as a means of protest to promote political or sociallyends.
- What is Anonymous and why is it important?
- Is an internet meme that organized in 2003 on the image board 4chan, representing the concept of many online and offline community users simultaneously existing as an anarchic, digitized global brain.
- Who was Guy Fawkes and what does he have to do with Anonymous?
- He was the most Britain’s notorious traitor, and he was one of the group[ that planned to blow up the houses of parliament using 36 barriers of gun powder. Later, he was caught, tortured and executed. He discovered a mask that became a popular sign around the world.
- Privacy and security:
- What is the ‘big brother’ concept that many worry about these days?
- Governments and other powerful social institutions are sping on you because they have access to your data, such as Google, Facebook, … ..
- Why do internet users need to know about big brother?
- To avoid problems and knowing that everything is seeing by government.
- Can we have a private life on line?
- No, because the privacy not exist with our mew life in technology.
- How can we avoid problems with people finding out things about us that we would like kept private?
- do not pose anything about you ( location – pictures )
- How can/ should we protect our computers from hackers, viruses, phishing and other modern problems?
- Using programs such as McAffe, Norton, Symantec and AVG.
- Update and scan frequently.
- Use strong passwords
- Can we ever be 100% safe from viruses, hackers, etc? why or why not?
- No, because
- Strong vs. weak passwords.
- A strong password consists of random letters (at least 15 characters, has uppercase letters and lowercase letters, symbols and numbers ) that set out in a way that no one can run a program using your personal information to figure it out.
- A weak password consists of dictionary words, places, or names – frontwards or backwards, in ANY LANGUAGE (includes the names of spouses, friends, children, pets, etc.), the same as above using the first letter capitalized or with a digit at the beginning and/or end, a pure number less than a million, your login-id, social security number, birth date, or license plate.
- Computer hardware: .
- What is the “network effect” and why is it important?
- The effect that one user of a product or service has on the value of that product to other people. (the more people using something makes it more valuable to everyone).
- What is a products “ecosystem” and how does it involve the network effect?
- A system formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their environment. Ex: BlackberryMessenger : one of the largest mobile social network with more than 5 million active users.
- What is the opposite of the network effect and what does it mean?
- Anti-Network Effect: the fewer people who use something makes it less valuable to anyone.
Motherboard: main part of computer/ big box everything is connected with it/ has many plugs.
CPU: The central processing unit, is computer brain, it goes to motherboard, it is a big chips.
Chip: Small part of computer connected to cards, many small chips in the computer.
Bus lines:
- How are multi-core CPU’s different and why were they made?
- bigger chips use more electricity and generate more heat. Also, much bigger CPU’s would need giant coolers and power supplies to operate. It was made for more speed.
- Why don’t (can’t) we just make faster single-core CPU’s ?
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- What are Hertz, Megahertz and Gigahertz and what do they tell us about CPU?
- Hertz : is a way to measure the speed of computer processing/ 1 Hertz= 1 cycle or operation per second.
- Megahertz : 1 Gigahertz = 1000 megahertz = 1000000000 Hertz.
- Gigahertz : The new standard measurement unit.
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- What types of computer memory are there and why is each different type important?
- CPU, RAM, Flash and Hard /
- What are the differences between long-term vs. short term memory?
- Long-term memory : Also known as non-volatile memory/ if the computer does not have power you will still have the data ( saved in the Hard disk drives and USB memory sticks) / much more permanent/ much larger capacity(up to 3 TB)/ no need for power to save/ once saved, data is permanent.
- Short-term memory : Also known as volatile memory/ if the computer does not have power, your data is gone ( saved in RAM = Random Access Memory= has the largest influence on performance outside of CPU speed (more RAM= better performance ) / limited in size and capacity/ fast/ expensive but it getting cheaper/ temporary/ needs power to operate.
- How has computer hardware changed over the years and is it likely to change?
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- What has happened to storage prices and sizes in the past 40 years?
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- What is hard disk fragmentation?
- fragmentation decreases a computer’s performance by forcing it to use extra resources to read and write that. It then takes extra time to locate all portions of a document or program. A defragmentation utility puts files bach together, which helps the operating system read or write them faster. And this make almost everything you do on your computer faster.
- What is NAND/Flash memory and why is it important ?
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- What has happened with older types of data storage mediums?
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- Computers vs. Peripherals : what are the differences?
- A Peripheral is a device attached to a computer, but not physically part of the system unit. It expands the computers capabilities. For example, printers, image, scanners, microphones, etc.
- What are some good guidelines to use when purchasing a new computer?
- Buy the most computer you can afford/
- Bigger/faster = longer useable lifespan
- Use it without mercy. You won’t keep it for more than 4-6 years.
- Buy computers with high-capacity hard disk ( 750 GB minimum )
- Buy CPU’s with the most cores and GHz possible whenever you purchase a new computer.