Don't fall prey to these tricks

This mail applies to all PC users (both Linux and Windows)

These days hackers, worldwide, are playing mainly 2 tricks to steal your passwords and other sensitive info pertaining to, say, your online banking account.

1. Through a bogus mail from an imposter, which will appear exactly like one from the correct source, say, icicibank.com. In the mail the malicious author would advise you to login to your bank account within next 24 hours and confirm your details failing which your account may be suspended (or some thing similar). The mail will also provide you with a link where you are required to click in order to carry out the instructions.

Now the link will take you to a site which will appear exactly like the true one. You enter your login id and password. Now you understand the rest...

2. This one is slightly more fool proof. In this trick the hacker will, through some kind of malicious scripting/spyware etc alter your hosts file.

Those who know about the significance of the hosts file require no further explanation. For those who know little about it, the next paragraph explains it briefly

Actually the friendly names of computers and domains (example agni, linserv, www.yahoo.com) etc are resolved by either a hosts file in your computer (first) or a DNS (domain name server) (second). This file is located as /etc/hosts in Linux systems and c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc in windows 2000/XP, c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc in Windows NT, C:\windows in Windows 9x/ME.

Now when you type http(s)://www.icicibank.com you are taken to a fraudulent site which emulates that of the bank. You put your login Id and password. Obviously authentication will fail and you are immediately redirected to the correct site (by virtue of hacker's programming). Now you think that by mistake you put the wrong password in the first attempt, so just retry it and you are inside the actual bank's site.

Now I gave the example of a banking site. But the trick is for many other things. May be your mail account so as to get more info about you...

Please note that Linux users too, who have a habit of working as root, can fall prey to both these tricks. For the Linux users only 2 points are sufficient:

1. It is a very good practice to create a user (non administrative) and work as user instead of administrator.

2. Be sure to be protected from viruses and worms. Always keep an up-to-date antivirus installed and configured for real time scanning.

Also please update Ad-aware definitions either through web update (set proxy info as vsnlproxy port 3128) or through:

ftp://ftp.cc.iitk.ac.in/pub/windows/Internet/BrowserSecurity/reflist.exe (this method has the advantage of updating the file sites.txt which is responsible for popup blocking)

4. If you work as a user on windows NT/2000/XP then you do not have to worry about hosts file. But if you are working as an administrator, or you have windows 9x/ME, please inspect your hosts file for any suspicious entry. If in doubt you can completely delete your hosts file. Some people, though, advocate for putting the correct entries for sensitive sites in our hosts file.