WWW attacks

Small business owners and individual PC owners usually do not have the resources to hire the professional staff required to combat these nuisances. Many of these worms place high on computer security threat lists. The truth is, a computer worm is not a practical joke. Computer worms are very dangerous and should be treated as such. For example, a worm could send out copies of itself to everyone listed in your e-mail address book, and their computers would then do the same, causing a domino effect of heavy network traffic that would slow down business networks and the Internet as a whole.

A computer worm is a reproducing program that runs independently and can travel across computer networks. The difference between viruses and worms is the method in which they reproduce and spread. A virus is dependent upon a host file or boot sector, and the transfer of files between computers to spread; a worm can spread on its own. Worms can also tunnel into your system and allow somebody else to take control of your computer remotely. Viruses and worms have the ability to steal the information out of e-mail programs and send themselves to everyone listed in your address book. If you receive an e-mail from someone with a message you don't understand or a file you weren't expecting, always contact the person and confirm the contents of the attachment before you open it.

When new worms are unleashed, they spread very quickly, clogging networks and possibly making you wait twice as long for you (and everyone else) to view web pages on the Internet. An example of a worm is the i-worm/so big; overnight it copied itself across the Internet, infecting so many computers the systems were unusable. Numerous sites disconnected themselves from the Internet to avoid re-infection. This type of denial of service is very costly to all that depend on computers. These attacks cannot be stopped and no one knows when the next attack will occur.

Other viruses can spread through programs you download from the Internet or from virus-ridden computer disks that you borrow from friends or even buy in a store. These are less common ways to contract a computer virus. Most people get viruses from opening and running unknown e-mail attachments.

Beware of messages warning you that you sent e-mail that contained a virus. This may mean that the virus has listed your e-mail address as the sender of tainted e-mail. This does not necessarily mean you have a virus. Some viruses have the ability to forge e-mail addresses.

Only you can place a value on your data. We can reduce the negative impact caused by these attacks. A properly configured computer can protect your data.

We can help you and/or your staff in maintaining a safe and dependable computing environment; it is your data - it is up to you!

cs@undotechnology.com

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