Are Hackers Putting Your Business in Danger?

by Eric Pratt

With the Wiki Leaks drama of the past week it seems there is a lot of speculation circulating as regard to who's at risk, what can be done, and who to turn to for support. That's where QeH2 Business Solutions and IT Support comes in! With a host of Disaster Recovery, Internet Security, Network Security and protection for the small business.

With fear comes rash decisions however (exactly what hackers want). Look to avoid some of the many scares that are crippling businesses and causing them to over spend. For example, see this recent email I received from our tenant regarding just this issue, and QeH2 Partner Ian Holt's thoughts following...

WARNING: Internet usage and DoS attacks

With the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange the largest hacker group in the world right now (Known as "Anonymous") is doing major attacks on many financial institutions like Paypal and Mastercard and internet providers like Amazon. These attacks also known as DoS (Denial of Service) attacks are usually performed by sending out massive amounts of malware which hijacks people's machines and disseminates the attack from unknowing victims machines. Occasionally these malware include Trojans and worms which will damage your machine.

As an added precaution beyond normal virus and malware protection we want all of our customers to know about this and would ask that you limit internet usage over the next three days to curtail any hijacking of your equipment. By all means, do not stop using the internet altogether but please limit your usage as much as possible for the next three days. The government is fighting back against these hackers and the major companies are working on patches to block the malware dissemination but it will take time.

I sent this to my Partner and friend Ian, he replied with the following....

"This sounds like a hoax. It's not like there is a limited amount of internet to go around. If you try to access one of the websites they attack it will be slower, but your internet usage will not affect nor increase your ability to be attacked or hijacked.

The government does fight back against hackers, the FBI has 1 (that's ONE) cybercrime expert in the state of Colorado and he's woefully behind the times. Private companies being attacked will update their security policies and block offending traffic and may experience a few hours of downtime until they control their own sites.

Erroneous parts of this email include - The Paypal BLOG site was down, not paypal. Amazon is NOT an internet provider, they are an online retailer.

This whole thing reeks of cyberhoax."

Hopefully this proves as an example that you never know what to believe, especially given the various sources. Someone played a simple hoax here but the results can and will be lost productivity, etc. When a question comes up just contact your QeH2 IT Support Technician, that's what we're here for!