REMOVE THE PROGRAMS HACKERS LOVE

Bin your Bittorrent tools

“Security is our highest priority” said Bittorrent Sync, following a report by researchers (hackers, actually) who revealed the tool’s numerous security vulnerabilities ( www.snipca.com/17844). Sorry, Bittorrent Sync – your priority is not security, it’s file-sharing.

Bittorrent Sync is just one of many ‘client’ programs that let people share data as “torrents”, anonymously and for free, using the Bittorrent platform ( www. bittorrent.com). Other popular clients include utorrent and Vuze. None is illegal, and they can be very helpful for sharing enormous files with friends and family, and syncing data between devices.

Less ethically (and more commonly), torrents are used to share copyrighted material for free. If someone gets hold of a preview version of the latest Hollywood blockbuster and distributes it as a torrent, thousands of grateful users will download it for free. If you’re a hacker, you might want to stick a malicious file in there too and sit back as people happily download it.

It gets worse. In August, researchers from City University London explained how a single hacker could launch DDOS (‘distributed denial of service’) attacks by spreading malware via Bittorrent users’ computers, with the aim of shutting down entire servers; banks and news websites are common targets. You can read the report as a PDF at www.snipca. com/17846). For a simpler but no less dramatic insight, see DDOS attacks as they happen on the Digital Attack Map ( www.digital attackmap.com).

To avoid becoming a DDOS pawn – and taking a big hit on your bandwidth, and your PC’S health and privacy – get rid of your Bittorrent tools now. Never download any freebie uploaded by an anonymous source without at least running it through malware-checking site Virustotal ( www.virustotal.com). Windows 10 includes a screen-recording tool, but at the moment it’s pretty basic. For good screen-recording software, you have to pay through the nose, ears and dropped jaw: Camtasia Studio costs £237 ( www.snipca.com/17879).

The best free third-party alternative is Camstudio. It’s open-source, easy to use and has decent features, but don’t touch it with a bargepole. Whether it’s actually malicious is debatable – some sites think so (Removeviruspc.com, www.snipca.com/17858); some think it’s