How to Safeguard your Devices from being Hacked

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Ever wondered what you need to do to safeguard your device from being hacked? For many, being hacked is a myth, or the thought of ever encountering the wrath of hackers. This however doesn’t eradicate the fact that anyone with anything that runs on software can be hacked. The advancement in technology meant that tasks were simplified for humanity but it also meant the risk of losing data and vital information to hackers was heightened.

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Lately, privacy is an expensive commodity. Mark Zuckerberg covers his webcam and strongly advises anyone around him to do so. Big companies and corporations can access your information easily, data brokers collect and in turn collate all the crumbs you disperse as you scroll through the internet. This data is used by these corporations with the intention of selling you their services or commodities. In brief, they look to commercialize their access to your data as effectively as they can. It is predicted that 2022 is bound to be the biggest year ever for data breaches.

Read Also: 7 Apple Privacy Features that iPhone Users Need to Know

While all this is unpleasant, it is not as bad as being hacked. See these companies have and know your information but it is because you leave traces as you peruse the world wide web. The pain of being hacked is it is usually done with malicious intent. This article seeks to help you know how to safeguard your devices from being hacked, but first, let’s see how you can know there are attempts to, or you have been hacked.

Contents

How to know your device has been hacked

  • Frequent and inappropriate pop-up windows, encouraging you to visit unusual sites, or download an antivirus or other software
  • Constant redirections to queer websites
  • Initiated calls or messages
  • Changes to your home page
  • Mass emails being sent from your account
  • Frequent crashes
  • Unknown programs that startup when you start your computer
  • Programs automatically connect to the Internet
  • Requests for password change
  • Abnormal data usage and in some cases high battery drainage

Tricks hackers use to access your information

While statistics show that 95% of hacking breaches are due to human error, hackers do go an extra step to gain access to devices and private information. You might wonder, what trick do these hackers use? Let’s explain these below.

Bait and Switch attack – This is a trick from the age of black hat SEO in which hackers use pop-up notifications, ads, and links to make trick users into visiting malicious sites that are owned by hackers.

Key logger – This is a form of malware or hardware that keeps track of and records your keystrokes as you type. It takes the information and sends it to a hacker using a command-and-control (C&C) server.

Trojans – The name Trojan was derived from a Greek mythology legend. The Trojan horse refers to a wooden horse that was used by the Greek soldiers during the Trojan war to enter Try and eventually win the war. The Trojan horse virus works the same way. It downloads onto a computer disguised as a legitimate program. The delivery method typically sees an attacker use social engineering to hide malicious code within legitimate software to try and gain users’ system access with their software.

Safeguard your Devices from being Hacked

Explained below are some of the ways you can safeguard your devices from being hacked

Using Anti-Malware software

Malware is a combination of two words, malicious and software. It is a program made to intentionally harm a computer system or network. The term encompasses viruses, worms, ransomware, and spyware. Antimalware is a software program specially created to protect information systems and devices from being affected by malicious software. these programs scan a system to detect and remove malware.

Examples of ant-malware include Malwarebytes, Avast, and Kaspersky.

How Anti-malware works

The mode of operation of anti-malware is similar to how vaccines work in the human body. Just like how the vaccines contain weakened versions of the harmful organisms they look to eradicate, anti-malware software works by using signatures from a database that contains digital footprints of known malware. The anti-malware scans and searches a computer system for these footprints and once they are detected, they are either quarantined or permanently deleted.

Hackers however learned how to bypass this by changing a thing or two within the code of the malware so that the footprint within the anti-malware fails to correlate with the malware. This led to the development of heuristics. These work by analyzing the behavior of a program rather than its code. If a program acts out or misbehaves it is tagged as malicious.

Avoiding spyware

Don’t let the word confuse you. Spyware is not in any way related to undercover operations. Spyware is used by advertisers. It is sometimes referred to as adware. It works by sending pop-up ads and redirecting you to websites that are selling something. Some versions of spyware track your online activities, websites you visit, and even what keys you type. This includes passwords, bank card information, and other private forms of information. Hackers and attackers use this sometimes to malice computer systems and networks.

How to avoid spyware

  • Don’t click on links within pop-up windows 
  • Choose “no” when asked unexpected questions 
  • Be wary of free downloadable software 
  • Don’t follow email links claiming to offer anti-spyware or anti-virus software 

Use of complex passwords

Select a password that’s hard to guess, it is recommended that you use a minimum of eight characters having a combination of letters, numbers, both upper and lowercase, symbols, and special characters) when forming a password for your device. When you use an easy password, it can easily be located in the dictionary and hence used as a method of brute force attack.

Below are some simple steps you can take to generate a good password

  • Generating it through Password generators like Lastpass.
  • Enhancing it by changing words into phrases or swapping the word order.
  • ‘Un-dictionary’ your password to prevent a Dictionary attack
  • Test the strength of your password using tools like How secure is my password.

Use a Secure wireless network

Yes, Wi-Fi networks can be hacked. Wifi hacking involves cracking the security protocols of a wireless network. This gives the cracker or hacker access and observes all the data that is shared via the said network. This includes passwords, stored passwords and keystrokes, websites with IP addresses, login information, and generally any information processed over the network.

Signs that your router has been hacked

  • You can’t log into your router network
  • Unrecognized devices on your network
  • All browsers lead to one site
  • Slow internet speeds

How to secure your router

Below are steps you can take to secure your router and prevent hackers from accessing your information

  • Turn on automatic updates since this prevents hackers from accessing your router using unpatched flaws in the old firmware.
  • Use a secure password.
  • Schedule routine reboots as this clears system memory and refreshes connections.
  • Never click on strange links.

Ignore spam

Spam is a term used to refer to irrelevant or unsolicited messages sent over the internet, typically to a large number of users, for the purposes of advertising, phishing, spreading malware, etc

Do not accept email messages from unknown parties and never open links or attachments accompanying them, inbox spam filters to catch conspicuous spam.

Wrap Up: Hackers are unpredictable, however, outsmarting them includes taking the above safety measures. If you want to protect your business account, click here.