Home » Business » QUARANTINE HACKER – Dangers of teleworking: these symptoms alert that your device is being hacked

QUARANTINE HACKER – Dangers of teleworking: these symptoms alert that your device is being hacked

Offices have moved into homes and many companies have realized that they were not prepared for teleworking.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced this unprecedented situation and many workers have to carry out their daily tasks from home, with the risks that this entails at the level of cybersecurity.

Criminals do not miss this situation and companies like Trend Micro have warned of a “significant increase” in attack attempts and malicious routines directed at remote systems and connected devices in the first quarter of 2020, compared to the same prior year period.

Cyber ​​criminals have been employing known techniques and attacks on common entry points to access users’ home networks and devices. From exhausting default passwords and checking for unpatched vulnerabilities, to searching for open ports and services, and installing backdoors, these malicious agents have dramatically increased their deployments in the past four months.

Experts warn that the use of home networks and devices to telework makes companies more vulnerable to attacks and, to reverse this situation, they explain that there are revealing symptoms that non-technical employees can check to determine if their devices have been hacked or infected with ‘malware’.

BATTERY OR DATA USE MAY GIVE TRACKS

Some computer attacks are practically invisible to the average user. However, others leave a trail that can help detect them. These common signs of infection and intrusion of ‘malware’ would be slower performance of the terminal, battery drain or increased data consumption, among others.

Thus, Trend Micro experts indicate that the symptoms of a hack on a desktop or laptop computer may be underperforming; the drop in quality or incorrect operation of the web pages that are frequently visited; blocking more “spam” emails; the increase in the activity of the Network; or sending unknown emails to contacts.

In the case of ‘smartphones’ or tablets, the clues are as follows: faster battery drain; presence of ‘apps’ that the user has not installed; increase in pop-ups; increased data consumption; * service interruptions (such as the inability to make phone calls or send or receive messages); or changes in the usual functions (such as an unexpected on and off), among others.

Another of the main access points for cybercriminals is connected devices (Internet of Things), which are increasingly present in the homes of Spaniards. In this regard, in addition to battery depletion and increased Network activity, experts recommend users to monitor whether devices wake up when they do not request it or if they stop syncing correctly or restart unexpectedly.

GOOD PRACTICES TO AVOID BEING HACKED

Cyber ​​criminals constantly change or improve their techniques to infect and attack a growing variety of smart and mobile devices. Therefore, in addition to detecting possible symptoms that alert to the hack, Trend Micro gives a series of tips to prevent these attacks from occurring and may compromise the personal data of users or companies that work for them.

Thus, as a starting point, they recommend changing all the default passwords and the ‘router’ and ‘endpoints’ settings, as well as avoiding connecting to public or unsecured WiFi. Additionally, to securely telecommute, they urge you to use a virtual private network (VPN) when connecting to company servers and internal pages.

As for the mobile phone, experts recommend keeping both the operating system and applications up-to-date and resorting to legitimate ‘marketplaces’ to download them. They also encourage disabling Bluetooth when not in use and deleting all unknown ‘apps’.

In the case of detecting that the phone is compromised, it is important to inform friends and family to ignore suspicious messages and, as a last resort, to back up important data and restore the device.

Trend Micro continues to monitor all Covid-19 related attacks and malicious routines that can compromise both businesses and devices. Therefore, it also recommends multilayer protection to prevent users from accessing malicious domains that may provide malware.

Teleworking is here to stay and companies are going to have to adapt to forced marches to this new reality, paying special attention to issues related to their cybersecurity.

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