There are no zombies - even though photos from Ashampoo's last Christmas party may suggest otherwise. But the term zombies also describes PCs that are infected with malware and waiting to be remotely controlled. If a cyber criminal manages to infect thousands of machines, he'll own a so-called botnet and will have the means to create a lot of chaos - and make a lot of money. Often, computer owners notice little to nothing of this hostile takeover and that's part of the plan. The longer infections remain undetected, the longer affected machines can be used for murky business. Read on to learn what botnets are, how they're created and what you can do about them.
When I was little, we got a whopping 3 different TV channels and they signed off after midnight. My grandmother's TV was black and white and when the weather was bad you'd hardly be able to see the ball during soccer matches. Every now and then an amazing Hollywood flick was on and we all gathered in front of the box in awe. What sounds like a relic from the past was little more than 40 years ago. And it may serve to explain why the entertainment industry was initially leaping forward while much of the latest technology has yet to catch on with customers.
Every time a year ends, we're treated to the "top 10" from various categories. What were the most often used baby names, which car models sold best, who had the most followers on Twitter? A snore fest. One piece of news, however, woke me up from my winter slumber. A collection of 1 billion stolen data sets was analyzed to find the most popular passwords. Would it just be a case of same old, same old or had there been a learning process? What I found seemed like an invitation to unwanted visitors
In 2010, Apple guru Steve Jobs was not amused. In an open letter, he vigorously panned the Flash software and announced that from now on, Apple would no longer tolerate Flash on their devices. This created quite a stir and Flash was believed to disappear rather quickly. What Flash is? Animations, movies or sophisticated ads - Flash is often behind it. Do you like browser games? They're also frequently Flash-based and so are many security issues, many of them even make it into the news. Getting rid of Flash would change the face of the Internet. What Jobs didn't achieve - banning Flash from the computer world - is now seemingly becoming a reality. Another giant has stepped onto the scene and vowed to do away with Flash and this time it might actually happen.
As a child, I loved Knight Rider (it's OK to laugh), the suntanned hotshot Michael Knight and his wonderful car. K.I.T.T. was equipped with artificial intelligence while my dad's car could only signal when it was out of oil and sometimes, it even "forgot" this feature. We've come a long way since then, engineers are now working on self-driving vehicles and modern cars, stuffed with sensors, are more like driving computers. But what was originally intended for better comfort and safety is turning into a security problem.
