Introduction
Nowadays, you can not only become a criminal by robbing the gas station at the corner, but with committing a crime on the internet. This may seem ridiculous for most people, but it is true. Most persons don’t even know that the internet is a pretty dangerous area. If you upload your personal data, like government id, social security number, driver’s license, passport details, it will, most probably, in danger. The only websites that these details are not in danger are the biggest ones on the whole internet, like PayPal, where they use special security protocols to keep your personal and business information safe.
The Dangers of the Internet
A hacker can easily acquire your details since most of them are pretty smart, and can use more functions on their computers than a normal end user. The most dangerous thing about a professional hacker is that he or she can breach into any site without raising a minimal suspicion by the website owners, and can steal your data. There’s a saying: “Knowledge is power”. This is one of my personal favorite quotes. In this world, the more you know, the more you can do, the more money you can make, you have power. However, with having this kind of power, you can be pretty dangerous to the society, especially for the government. A hacker can acquire your details for the good, you can’t know that for sure, but still, he or she is committing a crime, stealing your personal details.
If your passport details got stolen is a pretty bad thing, however, it could be worse. When your credit or debit card details get stolen, then you will be in a huge mess. First of all, you won’t know the time when they steal your payment details since they do it pretty smartly. I won’t tell you how they are precisely doing it since I don’t know much about the details, I only know the sketch of the process. They fool you by making you sign up for a website, or by hacking in a database, and so on. After that, they will acquire your details and process them into a file for safe storing. Two things can happen later on: they use your personal information for their own purposes, or they sell them somewhere (black market, forgeries, etc.) to someone else to use it.
How can they get money from your stolen credit card? They only have your number and your 3 digit code on the back of your card. That “only” word is standing for something, however, it is more than enough for a good hacker to acquire your identity information and to make an online purchase on the internet. The best hackers can clone your credit card and use it in an ATM machine to withdraw money from it. Fortunately for people living in the EU, this only works in the US, since, in Europe, people can only withdraw money from ATMs with PIN codes.
Microsoft’s Security Flaw
Windows hasn’t been the safest operating system. Maybe, the best world for it is: the most dangerous. However, it is not a surprise since it is one of the most widely used operating systems in the whole world. Microsoft has been updating Windows heavily, releasing big updates for the system, however, what they always forget is that the operating system is pretty dangerous to use. They hardly release any security updates for the OS though.
The security flaw that we are talking about in this article is the one that has been discovered in 1997 by a researcher, Aaron Spangler. This issue is called the “SMB redirect”, which exposes our system to malware on the internet. Cylance, a security firm, has reported that this issue has not been patched, since then and this flaw is still working for hackers in Windows 8.1. Maybe it will be still there in Windows 10, however, it is unconfirmed.
It would be pretty good if Microsoft could fix this issue since it will not only make users feel more secure in the company’s operating system, but it will make the software better. If I were Microsoft’s CEO, I would highly encourage the development of a huge security update.
