Zombie Apocalypse

~~Read more at http://johnhighwaters.com

Get your guns and drive away but a Zombie Apocalypse is coming in your way!
 Well not really, you are safe for now, however your computer is far from being safe. Hackers are attacking millions of computer and abusing their computing power for they own malicious purposes, attacking websites and terrorizing the internet world.

I once covered the first virus ever made and the evolution of the computer viruses, if you haven’t read it go check it out now here “*WARNING* This post my be infected”.
So first, what is a zombie?

Zombie – fictional creature, typically depicted as mindless, reanimated corpse with a hunger for human flesh. -Wikipedia

 There are some similarities between a fictional zombie, computer viruses might don’t feed on human flesh but it makes your computer sometimes even slower than a corpse and makes your computer mindless much like a fictional zombie.

How being a zombie affects my computer and how the hackers can abuse it? (E.g: why would I care?)
When your computer becomes a zombie you lose control over it. No, it’s not skynet but the computing power of your computer is being controlled fully by the hacker. Zombie attacks are considered pretty basic, you just overload a webzombie-156055_640site until it crashes which has no real damage but making your computer slower and being quite a hassle to a website. Sometimes they hacker would even use its zombies to do illegal actions, like drawing small amounts of cash from several banks accounts at the same time, that’s how  he could move a large amount of money without being detected. Being a zombie is not the worst thing which could happen to your computer, if the hacker is pretty active at the worst case, it would slow your computer, much like a worm virus which all it does is spread itself. It wouldn’t have a major effect on the everyday usage of the computer and the “rules of the zombies”, the hacker can’t access out private information, however this kind of virus and attack are indeed a huge problem, giving a regular hacker a force of 100, 500, 1000 or even sometimes 10,000 computers is simply dangerous. He could shutdown every website he wishes, even government websites, and not only one, all of them at once. He could offer his services to terror organizations which could make the most of this ability. There is no end to where they could stop, and even a minor shutdown would get some headlines and cause panic all over the world which at the end will hurt one of the most important and fragile buildings, the world economy.

So I get it, its important not being a zombie but how could I protect myself and prevent an infection and how can I know if I’m a zombie right now?
The first guideline of being safe on the internet is to download things only from a safe and trustworthy source. Making a zombie network is pretty basic and doesn’t requires much knowledge  for the basic attacks. Most viruses you catch are viruses you get when you chose to download content of the internet. Making a system which downloads a file to your system without you knowing is incredibly hard and usually would be used for more profitable viruses rather than making you a zombie.
 Nowadays, every basic antivirus software and firewall should detect any uunauthorized program which is trying to access the internet, some could still operate if the  leech on open ports however a full system scan should be able to detect it. Just run a full reboot scan and it should detect it.

There isn’t really much to worry about, you are most likely alright, and if not the chances that your computing power is being used to plan the next terror strike are pretty damn low. There are enough organizations which seek and destroy zombie networks for us and prevent out computing power from being abused on a massive scale, just watch what you are downloading and clicking and you should be alright.

It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it

 George Washington

It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.
 Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_washington.html#I21f8eWoqFLQImoK.99

It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it.
 Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/george_washington.html#I21f8eWoqFLQImoK.99

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