How to protect yourself from online attacks

LAST week, a global cyber attack infected more than 450 000 computers in over 150 countries, crippling hospitals and telecoms companies and locking some out of their personal computers.

Hackers demanded money to free the data.

Although South Africa was spared the worst effects and the attack, known as WannaCry Ransomware, has been stopped, researchers warn of more attacks.

The Weekend Argus spoke to three of the country’s top researchers – Patrick Devine of Gijima, Aleksandar Valjarevic of LAWTrust and Bernard Ford of One Channel – on what can be done to protect computers and data.

Valjarevic said South Africa was particularly vulnerable because it had a better economy than most of Africa – more money for hackers to extort – and fewer cyber security protections than Europe or the US.

“This is a layered, multicomponent attack. If you want to stay safe, you need to take a layered approach.”

Update your systems: The latest attack utilised a vulnerability – a hole, essentially – in the Microsoft Windows operating system that the US National Security Agency initially found in 2013 and that a group called Shadow Brokers learned about when they illegally obtained NSA hacking tools in 2016.

Apparently alerted by the NSA, Microsoft sent out a patch for this hole in March.

The attack only affected those who failed to download the patch. Russia and China were hard hit because bootleg versions of Microsoft are common and Microsoft doesn’t update illegally obtained copies of its software.

Devine said most holes and vulnerabilities hackers manipulate are well-known to researchers and accounted for in updates from software companies. They only work because people fail to download these updates.

Backup your data: This attack is known as “ransomware” because it locks your computer and forces you to pay $300 (R3 984) to access it again. If your data is continually backed up, however, you can simply reboot, wipe your laptop clean and upload it from your backup.

There is a catch: some viruses can sneak into your backup drive and encrypt that data. Ford, however, said his company had recently developed software that would detect and stop the virus from entering the backup.

Encrypt, encrypt, encrypt: Valjarevic spoke from the ITWeb Cybersecurity Summit, where he was talking on the need for e-mail encryption. He said the virus spread in part because people opened emails that looked legitimate but actually contained malware.

If all e-mails are encrypted with a digital signature, it would be nearly impossible to make that mistake. It would also prevent hackers from stealing data from emails, which were otherwise unprotected after they left personal or company servers.

Encrypting your data would prevent it from being useful to any hacker who obtained it.

Don’t be stupid: Devine said many attacks happened because people made decisions they would never do in the real world, such as giving the PIN number to a random site or email. Other people downloaded attachments on spam emails or clicked links that install malware.