As you spend more & more time remaining indoors due to lockdowns, you rely heavily on making online purchases & conducting online businesses. It may result in malicious attacks on your cybersecurity. Moreover, these online frauds are capitalizing on the tension speculating around the world over the outbreak of COVID-19. Therefore taking extra precautions is of paramount importance to safeguard your online profile.

So, hop on board as we suggest utilizing the following strategies that can help you to defend yourself against online frauds-

1. Remain Up-to-date

Relying on online shops to make purchases or banking online to conduct financial transactions has become common during these quarantine days.

That said, a potential risk also arises. The cybercriminals capitalize on this confusion to manipulate regulatory instructions of your financial transactions.

If you are not aware of these facts, you can easily fall to their prey. That’s why it is imperative to stay up to date with the news of your financial institutions, banks, and also about financial trends, investment strategies, and of course information related to the latest financial scams.

One particular site for news about the trendiest investment and scams is Nobsimreviews.com. You can check out their blogs as they cover all the latest bits of news about what is happening in the world of investment.

Also Read: How to Protect Your Company With a Cybersecurity Service

2. Stop Opening Strange Mails

Scamming with fake emails is the most common way of online fraud. Yet, many experts fall to these traps.

The first & foremost step you can take is by not opening any email you don’t know. In most cases, these emails contain malware that poses a potential threat to your device.

You need to download the attachment to open the mail. By doing so, your hard drive downloads & installs malware on your device without you even knowing it.

To stop this from happening, all you have to do is just ignore the mail. There are some other signs also to identify malware. These emails don’t have any institutional address; instead, they have personal names. You can look up the domain name to determine authenticity.

3. Avoid Clicking Fraudulent Links

It is one of the most effective ways to fall prey to online phishing sites. One of the most leading attractions of recent times is enjoying a free subscription to some reputed streaming sites, namely, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney++, Hot star, Apple+, etc.

People get tempted easily by this opportunity & click on the given link. But instead, they find themselves on a spam site.

You may get the links from your close friends or your Facebook friends, whom you may not know very well. Before clicking on the link,  call your friends or acquaintance and ask about the link.

You can identify a strange link by seeing typos in it. No matter what you do, please don’t click on the link unless you are sure about its authenticity. 

You can also take help by copying & pasting the link on a reputable link checker to ensure its validity.

Also Read: Mega-Hacking: Billions of Internet Devices at Risk

4. Change Passwords Frequently

People still set their passwords by a simple 123456 or “password”. Hackers rely on a lot of different techniques and software to get your password.

It would help if you refrain from using your pet’s name, kid’s name, or birthdays as passwords. These are easy to crack.

Besides, the malicious programs that the hackers use try every password combination & leave you vulnerable.

Use a password, which is easy for you to remember, but will be difficult for the others to crack. In this regard, please don’t write the passwords somewhere that is easily accessible or store them on your phone. Instead, you can try using password-manager based applications.

Those applications generate unique passwords for you with upper case, lower case, special symbols, etc. Therefore, you won’t necessarily need to remember the passwords every time you log in somewhere.

Please change passwords several times a year. 

5. Make a Habit of Using Two Factor Authentication

The two-factor authentication is a new addition to cybersecurity protection. In this process, you can’t directly log into your account by typing the password.

Instead, you will get a secret OTP code in the phone number you have predominantly selected as your secondary contact source.

You can also set the option to receive emails instead of OTP codes. There will be a link provided in the email & by clicking on that link, you will be able to access your account.

Often you will be asked one or two security questions to make sure it is you.

Although you will need a few extra seconds to log in, it’s a relatively safer approach.

6. Avoid Public Wi-Fi Facilities

Try not to use public Wi-Fi because they are not secured at all. Using available Wi-Fi makes your data vulnerable, as predatory actions can be carried out. Anyone can access your data if you use unsecured public Wi-Fi.

That’s why try not to do online shopping using unsecured wifi. Your credit card info and password can be accessible by anyone.

If you must use it, try using it through a Top rated VPN. Your data will be wholly encrypted & will be harder to access.

7. Never Share Personal Credentials

You may receive sudden cold calls asking about your personal info, credit card number, password, and social security numbers.

Never share your credentials with anyone, let alone the OTPs. Find out who’s asking, then move forward.

Even if you get a slight hunch, ask them to send an official email for your info. Contact with the respected authority immediately to judge the validity.

8. Avoid Inquiring Pop-Up Advertisements

Pop-Up advertisements can be another source of online fraud. While browsing, you may come across some pop-up ads that contain fancy offers.

The offer may include a handsome return with a minor investment within a short period or a trip to a fancy place. All of these offers are tempting enough to persuade anyone.

But again be skeptical and verify the information before pressing any of the “agree” or “sign-up” buttons.

Also Read: The Cybersecurity Risks of Automotive Cloud Computing

Final Thoughts

Online scammers use all sorts of different tactics every now & then. In most cases, they ask you to put your email address, credit/debit card info to sign up for a free trailer. Always be skeptical about what you see online. Follow the above tips to avoid all sorts of online frauds.

The post 8 Essential Tips to Prevent Online Frauds & Scams appeared first on TodayTechMedia.

Called Ripple20 , the 19 zero-day vulnerabilities affect Treck’s low-level TCP / IP software library . If an attacker takes advantage of the failure, they can gain full control of a device without even user interaction.

Also Read: Websites Allows You to Avoid Ads by Adding a Point in the URL

Ripple20: 19 Vulnerabilities, and 2 of Them With a 10 of Danger

The Israeli company that has discovered the vulnerabilities, JSOF, claims that the affected devices are found everywhere, including homes, industries, hospitals, data centers, transportation, nuclear power plants, oil, etc. With this, it is possible to steal data from a printer, cause a machine to fail, change the flow of a pipe so that it explodes, etc.

Thus, an attacker can enter without leaving any trace. In total, there are four critical vulnerabilities with CVSS scores of more than 9 (two of them, CVE-2020-11896 and CVE-2020-11897 with a 10 ), and which allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code on devices in a manner remote. CVE-2020-11896 consists of sending modified packets through IPv6, while CVE-2020-11897 does it through IPv6. The other 15 vulnerabilities have CVSS notes ranging from 3.1 to 8.2, allowing from DoS attack to remote code execution. In the following video you can see how they use one of the vulnerabilities to shutdown a UPS remotely.

Some vulnerabilities have already been patched by Treck and other vendors over the years due to code and configuration changes. However, this also causes more problems, as there are variants of the vulnerabilities that have not yet been identified, and will not be identified any time soon. Currently released patches are available as of Treck 6.0.1.67 or higher.

Millions of Devices Will Run Out of Patch

The researchers have contacted the affected manufacturers, among which we find companies such as HP, Schneider Electric, Intel, Rockwell Automation, Caterpillar or Baxter. Most have recognized the vulnerabilities, and the rest are still analyzing it before communicating it to the public. Disclosure of these vulnerabilities has been delayed twice by Covid-19, extending the grace period from 90 to 120 days. However, some companies seemed more concerned with not having their image damaged than with patching vulnerabilities.

Since many devices will not receive patches, the researchers recommend minimizing the Internet exposure of these devices, or directly ensuring that they do not have an Internet connection. Another option is to isolate them from the main network of the company or home, being able to use for example a WiFi guest network for these devices. They also recommend using VPN.

Also Read: New Malware Steals Information From Your PC Even If You Don’t Have Internet

The post Mega-Hacking: Billions of Internet Devices at Risk appeared first on TodayTechMedia.