Free Internet Access? Don’t fall for this one One of the popular internet scams that has been doing the rounds since 2017 is the one about “Free Internet”. This scam seems to resurface and somehow manages to claim quite a few unsuspecting victims. Here’s how they catch you. Ads are created on Google, Facebook, popular search engines and social media platforms advertising free internet hours. The ads look professional and show up on general searches and on social media when surfing. This offers a sense of validity. Once you click on the ad, you will be taken to their website, where you will be asked to perform an action, such as Filling out a form with your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Sharing your credit card information, and though you will be promised that your card won’t be charged, you may end up signing up for something or subscribing to a service for which your card will be charged later. Sharing a few e...

Online shopping? Watch out for these red flags Who doesn’t like online shopping? Online shopping has opened up a whole new world to us. Get whatever you want, whenever you want, without wandering from store to store. It doesn’t matter if it is too hot to venture outside or if there’s a blizzard out there, you do your shopping from the comfort of your couch and the stuff at your doorstep. You get great deals, some are better than in-store specials. But, did you know cybercriminals love the concept of online shopping as much as you do. Cybercriminals are exploiting the growing popularity of online shopping to cheat unsuspecting buyers through techniques such as phishing, malware injection, etc. Here are a few tips that may work to keep you safe from being a target of cybercriminals as you shop online. How to determine if the ad or shopping site is genuine? As you browse the web, you will come across various ads targeted at your interests. Businesses engage in ‘Retargeting’ which means t...

DNS Cache poisoning: What every SMB must know In one of the most common poisoning attacks, the attacker poisons the DNS Cache with the aim of leading visitors to a fake website. In a DNS cache poisoning case, the attacker gains control of the DNS server and then manipulates cache data such that anyone typing the URL of the actual website is redirected to the fake one. This could be a phishing site where the attacker would have carefully laid out a trap to capture the unsuspecting victim’s personal data or secure information. For example, the visitor thinks they are logging into their bank’s website online, but are actually on the attacker’s phishing site, where they enter the login credentials. Protecting yourself against DNS poison attacks Here are some ways to protect yourself and your customers from becoming victims of DNS poison attacks.     As discussed before, one of the most common poisoning attacks is the DNS attacks. Cybercriminals try to corrupt your DNS server using thei...

Protecting yourself against poison attacks Data poisoning by way of logic corruption, data manipulation and data injection happen when the attacker finds a way to access your data set. The kind of poison attack varies depending on the level of access the attacker is able to achieve Here’s what you can do to ensure such access is prevented. The data poisoning attacks discussed above adversely affect your IT system’s machine learning capabilities. So, the first logical step would be to invest in a good machine learning malware detection tool. These tools are different from the typical anti-malware tools you get in the market and are specifically designed to prevent machine learning capability poisoning. Always follow general IT security best practices such as- Training your employees to identify spam, phishing attempts, and possible malware attacks Following good password hygiene, which means never sharing passwords and only using passwords th...