Cyber Hackers Can Mess With ((FREE))

Want to see a demonstration? Check out this video from 2020 in which cybersecurity researchers hack into a Jeep Cherokee without any physical access to the vehicle. They could access the Jeep's entertainment system, mess with its brakes, steering, and transmission while a WIRED senior writer was driving it on the highway.

Cyber Hackers Can Mess With

Most of these attacks are usually carried out using social engineering tricks where the hacker finds a way to access a car's system with a malicious USB device. Once inside, hackers can install malware and leverage resources paired with the vehicle.

Hackers can exploit the USB ports to mess with the car's firmware and make the driving experience difficult or dangerous for you. Therefore, it's advised you use a USB anti-data hacker charging adapter instead of a simple data cable.

Many cyberattacks begin by actors sending malicious codes and data packets to a target vehicle. You can avoid these attacks by installing an embedded firewall that can block unauthorized communication with the car's onboard computers.

Luckily, state independence with voting practices and decentralization of electorate data serves as a buffer against DDoS volleys. A cybercriminal would need to flood multiple polling stations for an effective DDoS attack, which become inefficient. However, a strike against a computer where regional votes are tabulated could delay election reporting.

When thieves want to steal treasures surrounded by sensors and alarms, they sometimes resort to cutting the power, disrupting the flow of electricity to those expensive security systems. It turns out that hackers can pull off a similar trick: breaking the security mechanisms of Intel chips by messing with their power supply, and exposing their most sensitive secrets.

When you visit an HTTPS-protected website, your browser doesn't exchange data with the webserver until it has ensured that the site's digital certificate is valid. That prevents hackers with the ability to monitor or modify data passing between you and the site from obtaining authentication cookies or executing malicious code on the visiting device.

Common sense says that you should always protect sensitive information from cybercriminals. That means guarding your credit card details, bank account information, and social security number against hackers who could use them for nefarious schemes. You probably already know that, but what you may be less clear on is where contact info like your cell phone number and email come in. After all, what can someone do with your email address?

Anyone who uses a computer connected to the Internet is susceptible to the threats that computer hackers and online predators pose. These online villains typically use phishing scams, spam email or instant messages and bogus websites to deliver dangerous malware to your computer and compromise your computer security.

Computer hackers can also try to access your computer and private information directly if you are not protected by a firewall. They can monitor your conversations or peruse the back-end of your personal website. Usually disguised with a bogus identity, predators can lure you into revealing sensitive personal and financial information, or much worse.

Monitoring your network activity and taking the time to properly configure your router and Wi-Fi security with the strongest security settings will reduce the risk of a cybercriminal being able to breach your defenses and steal your personal information.

Could Russian hackers make the lights go out in Huntsville?\r\n\r\n\r\n","content":"\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n Dr. Tommy Morris says Redstone Arsenal, businesses in the Huntsville area and even home networks are high-value targets.\r\n \r\n Michael Mercier \/ UAH\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n\r\nCould Russian hackers make the lights go out in Huntsville?\r\n\r\nThat\u2019s just one cybersecurity question that\u2019s top of mind in this national defense-oriented city, the home of Redstone Arsenal, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the imposition of United States sanctions.\r\n\r\nHuntsville is used to being one of Moscow\u2019s top nuclear warfare targets since the Cold War. In the current conflict it\u2019s possible Huntsville could be a direct Russian target, says a local expert who has been tracking Russia\u2019s cyberattacks against Ukraine, but not probable.\r\n\r\n\u201cRussia attacking U.S. critical infrastructure in a way that affects our society seems unlikely to me because we would know where the attack came from and we might respond in kind,\u201d says Dr. Tommy Morris, interim chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the Center for Cybersecurity Research and Education at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System.\r\n\r\n\u201cCyberattacks are not governed by mutually assured destruction like nuclear bombs. Nations use cybersecurity attacks because they are inexpensive and generally nobody dies,\u201d he says. \u201cIf a nation attacks critical infrastructure and causes loss of life, directly or indirectly, that would hopefully not be tolerated.\u201d\r\n\r\nYet Russia has the power to cyberattack, or more commonly those working independently with Russian encouragement do.\r\n\r\n\u201cHackers can make the lights go off,\u201d says Dr. Morris.\r\n\r\n\u201cRedstone Arsenal is a Federal Center of Excellence with a great deal of research and development, logistics and supply, intelligence and law enforcement activity,\u201d he says. \u201cThis makes Redstone Arsenal, businesses in the area and even our home networks high-value targets. Our home networks are targets because our family members work at Redstone or at local companies involved in the high-value target areas.\u201d\r\n\r\nSuspected Russian hackers have been tied to some of the largest attacks in the U.S. since 2020. The SolarWinds attack in 2020, for example, hit federal government agencies. Ransomware attacks shut down a major fuel pipeline and caused disruptions at JBS, one of the country\u2019s largest meat plant operators.\r\n\r\nUsually the hackers can't be openly linked\u00a0to the Russian government because\u00a0it could compromise intelligence\u00a0sources, but they operate with its consent and perhaps even its encouragement, and they seem to have an affinity for large U.S. systems.\r\n\r\nThe electrical grid isn\u2019t the only way Russian linked hackers might be able to play havoc, Dr. Morris says.\r\n\r\n\u201cOne attack that has grown in recent years is attacks on money transfers. Banks send money electronically with systems developed a relatively long time ago,\u201d he says.\r\n\r\n\u201cThese systems are vulnerable and criminals have been able to steal large amounts of money. Since many of the recent sanctions are financial in nature, Russia and their proxies could attempt to steal money by attacking these financial transfer systems.\u201d\r\n\r\nRansomware is the type of attack most likely to affect small business and individuals.\r\n\r\n\u201cCriminals run ransomware operations to encrypt any computer\u2019s data they can find,\u201d Dr. Morris says. \u201cThey charge ransom to give you your data back. Sometimes they have no intention of giving your data back.\u201d\r\n\r\nSuch attacks are disruptive at a minimum, he says, and could be a way for a country to attack another nation\u2019s individuals.\r\n\r\n\u201cAnother threat that is growing is attacks on cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, etc. wallets,\u201d he says. Wallets are the electronic storage areas for cryptocurrency owners.\r\n\r\n\u201cIf you are dabbling in cryptocurrency, be careful,\u201d Dr. Morris says. \u201cThis theft is extremely hard to trace and there are no protections such as you might get from a credit card company or from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for a bank account.\u201d\r\n\r\nProtecting yourself from cyberattack is mostly about using good cyber hygiene and not being an easy target, he says. Start off by using complex passwords and changing your passwords regularly. Don\u2019t use the same password for all accounts, and install a virus scanner on your computer and make sure it runs.\u00a0Don\u2019t click on links in emails.\r\n\r\nA tremendous amount of work and money has been directed at defending critical U.S. infrastructure from attack, Dr. Morris says. Those efforts include development of cybersecurity standards, deployment of solutions in many places and development a robust cybersecurity industry, as well as a robust incident response capability.\r\n\r\n\u201cHowever, we have far more computers than cybersecurity professionals to bring cybersecurity best practices to all corners of our networks,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause of a shortage of cybersecurity professionals many systems remain vulnerable to attack even though we know how to defend them.\u201d\r\n\r\nHackers penetrate systems in attacks like SolarWinds, or they use email attacks or social media attacks.\u00a0Lower-level Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems can make easy targets, though much has been done to strengthen the security in the last five years.\r\n\r\n\u201cSCADA systems are computers and networks that control electric power, water treatment and distribution, gas pipelines, factory automation and other critical infrastructure,\u201d Dr. Morris says. \u201cSolarWinds, email attacks and other penetrations allow attackers to look around and pivot to access high value targets they find inside networks. Once they are in, they can install back doors and come back with later attacks.\u201d\r\n\r\nOne example is an attack attributed to Russia against Ukraine at Christmas in 2015.\r\n\r\n\u201cAttackers sent an email with a MS Word document attached. The Word document included malware that installed a back door,\u201d says Dr. Morris. \u201cA spear phishing attack was used to send this bad email to employees of a Ukrainian electric utility.\u00a0When that email attachment was opened, it installed the back door. Attackers used the back door to turn off power to hundreds of thousands of customers over Christmas.\u201d\r\n\r\nIn the U.S., what other countries want to do inside SCADA systems is implant back doors and logic bombs.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey don\u2019t necessarily want to take out our critical infrastructure now,\u201d Dr. Morris says. \u201cBut, if we go to war or if they want to send us a message, they want to be able to attack later.\u201d\r\n\r\nU.S. technical advancement also makes the country vulnerable to cyberattacks.\r\n\r\n\u201cRussia has in the last 10 years launched many cyberattacks of many types against Ukraine,\u201d Dr. Morris says. \u201cUkraine has developed good cybersecurity response capabilities, in cooperation with cyber defenders worldwide.\u201d\r\n\r\nGenerally, Ukraine has bounced back from the worst attacks in a few days.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis is at least partially because their society is not as dependent on the internet as we are,\u201d Dr. Morris says. \u201cThe United States may not be so lucky.\u201d\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n Learn More\r\n \r\n Center for Cybersecurity Research and Education\r\n Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n Contact\r\n \r\n Dr. Tommy Morris\r\n 256.824.6576\r\n \r\n tommy.morris@uah.edu\r\n \r\n \r\n Jim Steele\r\n 256.824.2772\r\n \r\n jim.steele@uah.edu\r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n"}];if (!news.length) window.location.replace('//www.uah.edu/news/');return;jQuery('#breadcrumbs').show();jQuery('#news_content').show();$scope.model.news = [];angular.forEach(news, function(value, key) value.contacts = [];var $contact = jQuery('.signatures', value.content);value.thumbnail = jQuery(value.introduction).find('img:first').attr('src');if (!value.content) value.content = value.introduction;value.introduction = jQuery('').append(jQuery('img', value.introduction).remove().end()).html();value.title = value.title.trim();document.title = value.title;jQuery('.breadcrumb li:last-child').text(value.title);$scope.model.article = value;);$scope.news.related.query.match.category = $scope.model.article.category;$http.post('//www.uah.edu/api/search/', $scope.news.related).success(function(news, status) $scope.model.article.related = [];angular.forEach(news, function(value, key) if (value.id != $scope.model.article.id) value.title = value.title.trim();$scope.model.article.related.push(value););$http.post('//www.uah.edu/api/search/', $scope.news.hot).success(function(news, status) $scope.model.article.hot = [];angular.forEach(news, function(value, key) value.title = value.title.trim();$scope.model.article.hot.push(value););$scope.news.also.query.range.published.lt = $scope.model.article.published;$http.post('//www.uah.edu/api/search/', $scope.news.also).success(function(news, status) angular.forEach(news, function(value, key) value.title = value.title.trim();$scope.model.article.also = value;););););};}]);Could Russian hackers mess with Huntsville?FEB 28, 2022 Jim Steele Dr. Tommy Morris says Redstone Arsenal, businesses in the Huntsville area and even home networks are high-value targets. 041b061a72