Premium Essay

Computer Threats

In:

Submitted By yvettew509
Words 940
Pages 4
Yvette R Williams
Strayer University
Computer Threats
Professor Richard Carroll
June 18, 2010

The worst thing about computers are the bugs and viruses. There is a myriad of information and opportunities on the internet but if you do not have adequate protection it will be the same as if your were crossing an intersection blind folded.
In the beginning when email had become popular one of the worst things what would happen was that someone would intercept your message and use that information for illegal gain. Then came the bugs or viruses that would be secretly embedded in your attachments. Now we have threats that are far worse than anything I would have ever imagined. There are people for who knows what reason, who creates programs just to shut down computer networks. It is true that not every instance of a bug or virus is about money. I had a professor who has a family member who not only wrote viruses and sent them out, but was also a collector of computer viruses. For the life of me I still cannot figure out why. Then there are the people who do this for monetary gain. These people have ways that are unimaginable for you and I to think of ways to steal personal information from others. Look at the social websites like Face book, Twitter and MySpace just to name a few. People are putting all types of personal information on these sites. We believe that these sites are harmless and who would care about what schools we graduated from or what cities we live in. But little do we know that this type of information in the wrong hands can and will do a great deal of harm to the individual. While using these websites we give birth information and we also create passwords which will allow not only access to the website but will also give access into our own computer. That is how it works and once someone else gains the necessary acceptance to the

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Threats to Computer Security

...Threats to Computer Security Source: An Introduction to Computer Security: The NIST Handbook National Institute of Standards and Technology Technology Administration U.S. Department of Commerce Special Publication 800-12 Computer systems are vulnerable to many threats that can inflict various types of damage resulting in significant losses. This damage can range from errors harming database integrity to fires destroying entire computer centers. Losses can stem, for example, from the actions of supposedly trusted employees defrauding a system, from outside hackers, or from careless data entry clerks. Precision in estimating computer security-related losses is not possible because many losses are never discovered, and others are "swept under the carpet" to avoid unfavorable publicity. The effects of various threats varies considerably: some affect the confidentiality or integrity of data while others affect the availability of a system. 1. Errors and Omissions Errors and omissions are an important threat to data and system integrity. These errors are caused not only by data entry clerks processing hundreds of transactions per day, but also by all types of users who create and edit data. Many programs, especially those designed by users for personal computers, lack quality control measures. However, even the most sophisticated programs cannot detect all types of input errors or omissions. A sound awareness and training program can help an organization reduce the number and severity...

Words: 1147 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Threats to Computer Networks

...TABLE OF CONTENT Introduction 2 Threats 2 • State-sponsored espionage and sabotage of computer networks 2 • Monster DDoS attacks 2 • The loss of visibility and control created by IT consumerization and the cloud 2 • The password debacle 3 • The insider threat 3 UAE CASE 3 Precaution 4 Conclusion 4 Bibliography 5   Introduction As the requirement of the paper I will explain the types of fraud may face by the organisation computer networks. Along with I will discuss two cases of such fraud in UAE and finally I will discuss possible precautions to mitigate the risk of such frauds. In recent year the computer network threats become technically more advanced, sophisticated, more organised and at the same time difficult to detect. It is important to mention that these attacks not only damage network security for financial frauds but this also aim to disable and reliability of the infrastructure as well, which may cause worse type of threat to the national security. (Tom Cross and Eric Savitz, Forbes Staff, 2012) Threats Most respected financial magazine FORBES has mentioned five main security threats to the computer networks which includes. • State-sponsored espionage and sabotage of computer networks o In 2012 a very famous virus called Flame was discovered which was not traced by the software in years. Similarly virus named Shamon destroyed the data of oil and energy companies and made the machines unbootable. • Monster DDoS attacks o DDos stands for the...

Words: 1014 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Threats and Attacks to Computer Network

...Chapter 4 Threats and Attacks to a Computer Network Research shows that “threats to the computers and networks have been an issue since computers began to be used widely by the general public. Nowadays, any computer or network that is connected to the Internet is at risk” (http://infopeople.org/resources/security/basics/threats_vulnerabilities.html, 2008) There are unlimited different types of threats exists in computer networking field but in this report mainly six different common but important threats were discussed. 4. 1 Spoofing Spoofing is a technique used to hide identity of traffic originator or assume identity of trusted entity or fooling a computer into believing which actually you are not. The most common spoof is email where a hacker pretend to be a different internet address from the one you have just to gain his/her credit card no, passwords, personal information or to theft any identity. Spoofing normally involves sending many packets/messages pretending to be a real legitimate person and spoofed IPs are very hard to back track. There are many different types of spoofing, such as ▪ IP addresses, MAC addresses changing attacks ▪ Link alteration ▪ DNS server spoofing attack ▪ Content theft ▪ E-mail address changing attack 4.2 How Penetration Attack Works? Penetration attack is basically to an attempt to break the security features of a system in order to understand the system or system design and implementation. The main purpose of penetration...

Words: 934 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Computer Threat You Did Not Know

...10 Computer Threats You Didn't Know About 1. Fake Tech-Support Calls You might get an unsolicited phone call from a tech-support representative claiming to be from Microsoft or another big-name IT corporation. But the caller won't be who he claims to be. After warning you that "suspicious activity" has been detected on your computer, he'll offer to help once you give him the personal information he requires to get his job done. That job isn't fixing your computer. In fact, he's really just after your personal information. If you receive a call like this, hang up, call the company the bogus technician claimed to be from, and report the incident to a legitimate representative. If there really is a problem, they'll be able to tell you; if not, you just thwarted a data thief. 2. DNS Redirection Internet service providers (ISPs) such as Time Warner Cable and Optimum Online claim they're trying to help with DNS redirection, but the reality seems to come down to money. Domain Name System (DNS) redirection overrides your browser's normal behavior when you can't reach a webpage. Instead of displaying the normal 404 "File Not Found" error, the ISP sends you to a page of the ISP's choosing usually a page full of paid advertising and links. Innocent though that practice may be, computer viruses can do the same thing,redirecting your browser to a hostile page the first time you misspell a domain. With ISPs, you can opt out of their DNS redirection (you'll find links below all the ads);...

Words: 1447 - Pages: 6

Premium Essay

Sec280 Devry Threats to Home Computer Systems

...Threats to Home Computer Systems I sometimes imagine a way of life as simple as sitting on a rock, watching the sky, tending to a cave. Could there have been anything complicated in those times, many millennia ago? In fact, there was: security. It must have been an enormous stressor to guard your cave dwelling from other primitive beings looking to gain something they were not entitled to. Maybe they suspected personal items such as weaponry or stored food, or to take a peek at your secret glyphs—directions to a source of something valuable. Today, we may not live in caves, and as such our secret information may be stored in sophisticated machinery rather than drawings on cave walls. However, human nature to steal and protect is still as common as it was in early humans. It was not so long ago that the home computer was in its primitive stage. In a few decades, this “advanced typewriter/calculator” has evolved into a way of life, along with its own set of threats to our security. These threats can be categorized as either software or behavioral, and can certainly be combined. Social engineering is a behavioral type of threat. It does not need to apply just to computers. Some social engineers call you on the telephone attempting to get you to reveal personal information, such as your social security number. But this can be done through email, as well. You may think the email is from someone you trust and you respond with information, such as passwords. Passwords, however...

Words: 945 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Stereotype

...How Stereotypes Affect Us In this video Claude Steele tells about his research on stereotype threat and the way it affects us. Each of us has social identities such as gender, age, race, sexuality etc. Stereotype threat is an experience of being in situation or doing something for which a negative stereotype about one of your identities is relevant. African American can be seen as a violent person in a neighborhood with predominantly white people or white student can be perceived as a racist in class that is predominantly nonwhite, that are some of examples of stereotype threat. Dealing with things, because of particular identity in particular place that what makes the identity real. We often have fear to be judged in terms of negative stereotype. That can make us sad and confused, but also it can affect our behavior and performance! One of experiments was related to stereotype that women are not as good in math as men. Both women and men were taking math exam sitting in one room. Women showed worse results than men. That happened, because women were worried about this stereotype (often unconsciously), so they have to put double efforts to perform under this pressure. But when before test participants were told that in this particular test everyone (men and women) do equally all the time, women get same good results as men! Same situation was with IQ test for white and black participants. Black got lower results when were told that this is a test to measure intelligence...

Words: 502 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Stereotype Threats

...Stereotype threats are related to mathematics, it specially affects men and women. There are two different terms that affect the outcome of performance, stereotype threat and stereotype lift. Stereotype threat is the threat that other peoples judgments about a certain groups performance will cause that group to perform in a way that confirms the negative stereotype that’s believed about that group. Stereotype lift is causes the individual to perform much better than those exposed to negative stereotypes about other groups. Stereotype threat affects math performance. Identify how and in what ways does it affect the performance because of the expectations for a women’s poor performance in math. It’s hypothesis that women will perform worse in...

Words: 965 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Achievement Gap

...One of the major issues I have observed is the “achievement gap”. Most educators define the achievement gap as the difference in performance between low-income and minority students compared to that of their peers. Traditionally African-American students lag behind their white peers. In “The Black-White Achievement Gap, why closing it is the greatest civil rights”, former Education Secretary Rod Paige and his sister, Elaine Witty argue that education is the new civil rights. Instead of fighting for issues traditionally associated with civil rights, African American leaders should advocate for the children. Leaders can bring forth change by building public awareness and using their powers to bring necessary change. Rod Paige believes we can narrow the gap by a concerted effort of committed leadership and community involvement. Like leadership, environment also plays a significant role in narrowing the achievement gap. From 2001 – 2007 the Century Foundation tracked two sets of low-income students in Montgomery County Maryland: one group was assigned to higher-income schools and the other was not. Although the lower income students received more funding, the students assigned to the higher-income students were able to cut the achievement gap by almost a third in reading and half in math. The researcher of the study, Heather Schwartz, cited environmental reasons such as a stable set of teachers, less disruptions in the classroom, and more engaged students as reasons for the...

Words: 634 - Pages: 3

Free Essay

Dangerous Stereotypes for Women

...Dangerous Stereotypes for Women To understand stereotype, you should define what it is. As Cambridge Dictionaries says, stereotype is a fixed idea that people have about what someone or something is like. No one chooses to be stereotyped or categorized under a specific title, and no one wants to be the victim of an unfair judgment. Despite those opinions, people make judgments on people they barely know. Stereotypes usually lead to incorrect predictions about a person or group. The use of stereotypes to judge another human being can cause serious harm to others. According to traditional stereotypes, men are strong and dominant. Whereas females are weak and submissive. Gender stereotypes disadvantage and discriminate against women in many places. Thus, this paper focuses on three negative stereotypes about women in the workplace, at school, and in society that could cause serious harm to them. Negative gender stereotype, especially being dependent or no self-confidence, impact women in the workplaces. According to the article ‘Media Portrayal of Women and Social Change’, “women are often stereotypically portrayed as playing lesser beings, dependent roles or sexual objects.” This means it is more appropriate for women to stay at home doing housework and caring for children than getting a job. When women are offered employment jobs, they are not given good jobs because men believe that they could not handle traditionally masculine work. Men think that women are not...

Words: 861 - Pages: 4

Free Essay

Unit 19 P1

...The society that we live in, may be seen as fair by some and unfair by others. It is said that society is at most unfair point throughout history. The authors of The Spirit Level, states that society has come to a point where there is more inequality than ever. In 1921, the life expectancy for men was 4 years less than that of women; this number had risen to 5.5 years in the 1990s. This is one of the many ways that society may be deemed as unequal. There is however many different ways as to how why and how a person may be treated less favourably than other people. Within society, an aspect of inequality is labelling. Labelling is process where someone holds a certain belief over another individual. Within sociology labelling is a way of controlling the behaviour of an individual. For example, in a school a teacher may label a student as a failure if the student is someone who cannot complete their homework due to other commitments or not having the facility to do so. Due to the label that the teacher has against the student, the attitude that the teacher will show the student would lead the student to failure. This is self-fulfilling prophecy. Self-fulfilling prophecy that the individual, who has been labelled, adapts their attitude and follows the attitude of the label. When a positive label is associated to an individual such as ‘she is an overachiever’ this is known as the Halo effect. Stereotyping is another form of inequality within society. Stereotyping and...

Words: 402 - Pages: 2

Free Essay

Stereotype Threat

...Stereotype threat affects many people in many different ways. Social Psychology defines Stereotype threat “is a disruptive concern, when facing a negative stereotype, that one will be evaluated based on a negative stereotype. Unlike self-fulfilling prophecies that hammer one’s self –concept, stereotype threat situations have immediate effects ” The effects of stereotype threat are advanced because of the self-fulfilling prophecies that many different races, sexes or even religions fall into the effects of. Stereotype threat plays amongst different groups, and the effects that may cause a different reaction otherwise if not being associated with that group, self -fulfilling prophecies can be the consequence. In some situations Stereotype threat can be a subconscious thought, but for some situations or people if they believe a stereotype and circum to it simply without even trying, that is the self -fulfilling prophecy that is placed on oneself. Stereotype threat can be implanted in us by certain words and attitudes that are associated with certain groups of people. It has been studied more over the years of the different ways that stereotype threat plays a role in certain groups and the consequences that it has. Research was originally centered on race and how it has caused underachievement among African Americans. In recent research it has been broadened to show this threat in many different areas that can affect almost all people in some way. Options that can be used to minimize...

Words: 1474 - Pages: 6

Free Essay

Blerp

...Brock Dickerson Instructor Elise Bui Psych 33205 11/4/2013 Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Stereotyping is prevalent all around us in the world, whether we want it to exist in us or not, it does. We all have beliefs and notions about people and groups and situations and places. One way these beliefs can be reinforced whether we realize it or not, is through a process called self-fulfilling prophecy. This concept is when we expect something to happen and because we are expecting a certain result, our behaviors are unconsciously striving to make that result occur. (Lecture 10/21) The expectation could even be false, but because the person or group of people believe that this result is going to occur, it eventually does occur because of their actions and behaviors. This concept can also be applied to social groups, for example; if a person is about to realize a negative stereotype for their social group they will strive to avoid it, but in thinking about this stereotype for so long and stressing over it so intensely, their social group actually forms that stereotype. I actually witness this concept at my workplace a lot. Sometimes we will have people transfer stores and this means a lot of people work with each other from different restaurants and sometimes a guy or gal will transfer to my store and a fellow employee will tell me, “Hey, this guy is a real jerk.” or, “This girl is real shy.” They plant this notion in my mind and now, without even realizing it, I am behaving differently...

Words: 353 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Second Chance

...Second Chance: Plot: A young man contemplating about what led him to the edge of the cliff. Characters: The main character is only known by his nick name Babs. He talks about his family and refers to his dad as Baba, (which is Arabic for dad). Conflict: A man with a conflicting mind contemplates and reflects on the past few years in his life that led him to the edge of the cliff, on his back, covered in blood, overwhelmed with regret, fear, and pain. There’s two ways off the ledge, either way, someone dies. Setting: This story takes place in both Chicago, Illinois in the winter of 2014, and in Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska in the summer of 2019. Point of View: The 1st person point of view of Babs. When death is lurking in your veins, your life presents itself to you through your dimming, and regretful eyes, in the way you lived. In life, every couple years or so, you reflect on yourself, seeing what and who you are versus what and who you wanted to be. I’ve never been where I should or wanted to be. I’ve made some mistakes, just like every other human being. What I’ve done in my short twenty four years of life on gods beautiful green earth has led me here. Lying on the edge of this cliff, with my neck and torso over this mountain top, blood slowly flowing up my shoulder and down my neck like a stream of interconnecting rivers; one river ending at my mouth forcing me to swallow my own blood, the others getting in my eyes and going throw my gaping nostrils gasping...

Words: 3233 - Pages: 13

Premium Essay

Writing Assignment

...often than not have similar IQ scores. However, they will still typically match closer to their adoptive parents than birth parents for the environmental influences. However, environmental influences tend to be less important over time. Heredity tends to be more of a factor for the development of intelligence than the environment. A stereotype threat is an idea that our behavior worsens when we are reminded of a negative stereotype about us. Because of stereotype threat, students are reminded of a negative stereotype and are often more likely to perform worse, especially if that stereotype is one that makes them feel inferior. You have the choice to ignore the stereotypes and prove those people and their stereotypes were wrong. However too often people allow the stereotype to get to their heads. They allow other people to let them play worse than they would have without the negative stereotypes floating around. Annie Duke was involved in a male dominant sport. She would sit down at the poker table with all other men, and take all the wrong things the men would say to her or about her. If anyone was was subject to stereotype threat it was her. In the podcast, she describes...

Words: 644 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Of Stereotype Threats In Thomas Steele's In The Air Between Us

...In Steele’s In the Air Between Us, he argues that stereotype threats make students underperform, no matter who they are. However, it is the students who take their schooling seriously who are the most affected. Also, the stereotype threat is not only towards minorities. These studies should lead us to reevaluate how we test our students to ensure they are not underperforming because of preconceived beliefs that they are not good enough. These studies also have implications for why the country’s most underperforming students do not have high test scores. This issue of stereotype threat is something that needs more attention to be brought to it. When students, even some of the best ones, are underperforming simply because society has taught them...

Words: 610 - Pages: 3