IM (Instant Messaging) - man, we thought we had it made in the shade when we stumbled over this unique way to communicate! Outside of talking person-to-person on the phone, IM was the next best thing. Texting talk was endless and cost was nonexistent. Well, those were the good old days of yore – you know, those days of glorious innocence.
Just as we were getting oh so comfortable, happily IMing away to each other, then came the cloak-and-dagger entrance of the treacherous “IM villains”. With their ominous arrival, the party abruptly ended. It seemed like overnight, our instant messaging (IM) turned into instant mercenaries, and the carnage was strewn all over the Internet.
First, it was one by one, then the numbers increased and starting growing exponentially, as friends began receiving, and inadvertently sending, viruses, worms, and Trojan horses. Then it went from bad to worse, as report after report surfaced describing the grisly results of innocent victims losing their identity because these villains had accessed their personal and confidential information. Truly this was the darkest of times for all IMer friends – regardless of the IM service we were texting on.
How could this have happened? And more importantly, how can we protect ourselves?
Well, I found out that these villainous hackers had accessed a nifty little program originally designed to benefit us, and twisted it to intercept our conversations traveling across the internet. They now have a profitable tool to use that intercepts our data packets and sends us a virus, and duplicates it by sending the same ugly bug to everyone on our Buddy List.
Once a hacker has gained access to our Buddy List, they trick our friends into thinking WE, (a trusted source), are sending them a file to download. Then when our friends innocently download the file, these villains can then access their computers as well, and use the personal and confidential information gathered to line their own pockets. How it affected businesses whose employees used IM to communicate…well, I will just let your imagination take over from there…because the hackers let theirs do the same.
A lot of us were thinking that we had nothing to worry about because we had anti-virus software on our computers, and that provided the protection we needed. Wrong!
Anti-virus software is not designed to protect our data packets traveling across the internet. There are still no anti-virus applications that directly monitor IM traffic. This is due to the difficulty in finding IM traffic as it is often embedded inside http packets. And what is worse yet is that Forrester’s, Root stated that “In 2005 and 2006, we expect IM to get hit with some serious attacks…”
But, don’t despair! I have discovered a cure!
In fact, I discovered the best of both worlds. What I have found is a computer phone (in “techy” terms known as VoIP – voice over internet protocol) that is optimally secure. One of the many - continued below ...
