All hacking is not dangerous. Some hackers simply do it because they can. They do not want to cause major disruption to your system, they do it because to their way of thinking its fun.
In a recent poll carried out involving those in the age group of 19 and under; the most common type of hacking activity was attempting to crack passwords of known acquaintances.
In general this type of hacking was done for harmless pleasure although extremely annoying for the victim, financial damage, was not the aim.
Rootkit viruses are a different animal. In general these are extremely malicious hackers, trying to cause as much damage to your system as possible. The criminal fraternity are using online fraud in a greater degree than ever before.
The reason for this is plain to see; home PCs are now being used for all types of online money transactions, the internet is used by plenty of people who really have little idea about online security.
As such, criminals will try to exploit the vulnerable. They are mainly doing this with rootkit Trojans.
Anti virus is of course hugely important, but in the case of rootkits; once you have unwittingly installed them on your system, anti-virus simply does not pick up them up.
In using rootkit Trojans, plenty of options are available to these criminals. The reason that rootkits are used is that not only do they hide Trojan activity, but the attacker has a right of passage into your system and can return at will.
The Trojan activity can involve a great number of annoying features:- browser redirection to malicious and fake sites. But the danger lies in the data that is in your private files such as passwords or private documents that can be read or altered by the attacker.
Keystroke logging is also a danger; imagine logging into your bank account, typing in your bank details and passwords, only to find that this information has been sent directly to the attacker, who could be anywhere in the world.
One of the main sources of redirect viruses is pirated software.
Looking at a company such as Microsoft they continually provide patches in updates, these are available for their licensed users.
On a smaller scale when downloading software from a legitimate source, the same thing happens; if any vulnerability is found in their software, patches and updates are provided.
In the case of pirated software these vulnerabilities are seized on by hackers and exploited.
The bottom line is when you download free software, that you should be paying for, you could be giving away a key into your system; perhaps the provider is under the impression that everyone should have free software, or maybe it's the start of an attack of your system. This is one of the risks that you take with illegal software. In general these criminals give you the software for free, with the intent of gaining your personal information; it really is not worth it. If you really want the software I suggest you go and buy it, as it could actually work out to be a much safer option.
Luke Clayhill is a writer who specializes in redirect viruses
Click here for more information on manual removal http://www.googleredirectvirus.net/manually.html
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