A fourth of those emails were blocked by the university’s security system, and several recipients reported the phishing attempt. This past spring, Clemson University decided to test their cyber security by sending out a 100 malware-infected test emails to faculty and staff. And just last week it was reported that Eurofins Scientific, one of the biggest forensic services firms in Europe, actually paid an undisclosed sum to cyber criminals after their systems were infected with ransomware. This spring Philadelphia and Baltimore experienced similar cyberattacks. Last year the city of Atlanta had to shut down their online systems after ransomware encrypted their files and hackers demanded $51,000 to let them back in. Far more common are modern varieties of malware like worms, ransomware, trojan horses, and adware.
Today, actual viruses-which are specific types of malicious software that self-replicate and require users to launch them-are rare. However, hackers and cyber criminals are always coming up with new and improved ways to spread their malicious software.
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If you want to protect yourself now, you need a premium antimalware service like Malwarebytes that’s always one step ahead of the bad guys.īy now computers and the internet have been a part of everyone’s daily life so long, you’d think everyone would know how to stay safe online. Unfortunately, cyber criminals these days are a lot more sophisticated, which means it’s a lot easier to fall prey their myriad malware traps.
And even if you did engage in some risky online behavior, most malware was pretty easy to detect with basic antivirus software.
As long as you didn’t visit suspicious websites or open those forwarded emails from your aunt, you were probably okay. Back in the day it was pretty easy to protect yourself against malware.