Cyber Arsenals

The web has spawned many cyber crime groups since 2002. It involves no physical aggression and victims of cyber crimes only notice their victimization only when it's too late. With no geographical boundaries, cyber thieves can con their way to up to $100 billion a year globally, according to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation.

To protect yourself from these crimes, here is a list of weapons these cyber criminals commonly use:

Pump and Dump

This is where criminals uses false and misleading financial statements and spread them through email campaigns. The objective of this is to boost the value of chop stocks (cheap stocks) artificially. Then, these overpriced stocks are sold causing the price of the stocks to plummet and investors to lose money.

Phishing

The most common weapon used to obtain sensitive information through emails and fake websites by masquerading as legitimate organizations. As of late, hackers hack into banks' sites so as to generate a pop up window while victims are logged on to the genuine website.

Spear Phising

As with phising, it uses the same concept but it is aimed to an organization's employees. Pretending to be the employer, they request personal information through email.

Malware

Short for malicious software, it is used to break into or damage a computer system without the owner's permission. It can be infected by just visiting a 'contaminated' website. Examples of malwares are Trojan horses, spywares and worms.

Botnets

Zombie computers (malware infected computers) can be compromised and used by robots to extract data across thousands of other computers through a hacker's effort to spread malware.

About the Author:

Ash Tan is a regular writer for a wide range of subjects. He also writes on mission tv stands and large tv stands.

Author: Gary Goh