Hackers Attack Every 39 Seconds

According to new research coming from the University of Maryland, hackers attack computers almost twice every minute. The study, which investigated how exactly hackers crack computers, confirms those regularly issued warnings about password vulnerability.

Experts advise longer passwords, regularly changed and not based on users' biographies, that mix letters and numerals and are hard to guess.

“Our data provide quantifiable evidence that attacks are happening all the time to computers with Internet connections,” study author Michel Cukier of the University of Maryland said. “The computers in our study were attacked, on average, 2,244 times a day.” University of Mayland studied how the Hackers are attacking the computers and what they found was astounding, that the hackers attack computers every 39 seconds. They set up four Linux based computers connected to the internet with weak security and monitored how many attacks they were getting. They said they found they were attacked, an average of 2,244 times a day. The hackers were attacking random computers with the form of a script that chooses the computer indiscriminately. Once it targets the computer it types common user names root, admin, guest and so on and passwords 123, 123456 etc., The study’s findings, presented at the 37th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, support the continual warnings of security experts to never use identical or related usernames and passwords. Once they gain entry into the computer, they change passwords, change or check current hardware and software configuration and download and install new programs. Thus make this computer as one of their botnets, a collection of hacked computers which can be used to spam messages to everyone, or for identity theft and attacks on other newer computers. To avoid all this, the experts say use different user names at different sites and also longer passwords alpha numeric characters and change the passwords often. I use AI Roboform to create long passwords with alpha numeric characters and upper or lower cases. It is very effective, even I don't remember the passwords. I make it remember by entering the master passwords. Also, I change the passwords often. So, if you are not doing it please do so, and also have a good Firewall system. How do you cope up with these attacks?