Each of us is vulnerable to cyber-invasion. It could happen at any time. The battle may already have been waged, and many of us don’t even know it. Hackers may be tapping into your computer at this very moment, or even your company network, not just to leave a virus, but to hijack its operating capacity. Yet relatively few users are taking security precautions to prevent these insidious attacks.

While the most apparent fear for consumers is identity theft, hackers can disrupt the lives of individual PC owners in other ways, says Brian Boam, owner of Network Consulting Services, Inc., a Bountiful-based network security provider. And while identity theft will likely cause the most stress to the consumer, that doesn’t mean that other hacker invasions are without repercussions. They may be just a bit easier to remedy with the appropriate tools.

Zombies and Viruses

Among the most glaring concerns for computer security are “zombie computers,” those personal computers that have lost computing power to technological hijackers. Because computer operators generally don’t use their machines to full capacity, most owners remain blissfully unaware that hackers have slipped in and stolen power for their own use. When the MyDoom virus attacked the Lindon-based SCO Group earlier this year, hackers used a worldwide network of personal computers to bottleneck and cripple SCO’s web site. The computers belonged to average consumers and were exploited by MyDoom, which retained control of segments of the computers’ capacity even after the initial virus had been expelled.          

Such threats arise when victims of lesser attacks unwittingly combine to disable an Internet Service Provider or to bottleneck an Internet site. Clever hackers need only attack a small segment of computers to disrupt all users interfacing with the affected computers’ servers.

Jeff Nichols, owner of Invisus, a Provo-based computer security provider for small businesses and home offices, suggests that consumers adopt more than simple anti-virus protections. Invisus is among those with a security solution that combines products from different vendors and ensures compatibility.

Consumers shouldn’t believe they are immune, says Nichols. Hackers are no longer attacking computers one by one. They now have the tools to invade home-based computers millions at a time, he insists. The average consumer’s computer is probably hacked daily and scanned several times a day by hacker tools. 

“To sit back and say, ‘Well it hasn’t happened to me’ is like Salt Lake City saying, ‘Well, we’re not going to do anything about Homeland Security because nobody has flown an airplane into the Church Office Building,’” Nichols says. “These people are amassing incredible armies of personal computers that are going to be used for something, whether it is an attack against SCO or against Wall Street.” 

Nichols contends that for consumers to turn their backs on this phenomenon is like inviting “a digital 9/11.”

The problem, according to Boam, is that technologies have developed faster than society’s ability to discern the misuses of those technologies: “People have an inherent trust for other people in the world.” Subsequently, people don’t believe that hacking occurs as often as it does and that it is, more often than not, undetectable.

Convincing people that they need security for their computers is difficult if they have not had a security problem in the past. But when it becomes apparent that hackers have been active in an organization’s systems, that company begins to search frantically for a service to secure their network.

Threat from Within

According to Boam, the biggest problem in computer security isn’t outside threats, however, but naďve users on the inside: “See, the problem is that people don’t think about viruses, Trojans, and all these problems that are out there right now, because they think, ‘Well, I don’t really walk in those circles.’ Then they get on their computer and browse the Internet and find a new freeware version of something. And so it is ignorance. They are smack dab in the middle of it, and they just don’t know it.” 

An effective and early precaution for companies seeking to improve security is to take away local administrative privileges. In so doing, the administrator has ultimate authority over what goes on a computer without having to tend to each unit separately.

As for individual users, it is important to practice common sense on the Internet. People continue to download attachments when the nature of the attachment is unclear, or the sender is unknown. Virus activity is also prevalent on file sharing and pornography sites, which provide hackers with a hotbed of potential victims.

PC hijackings and spyware are among the latest means being used by hackers to disrupt systems, but even these attacks can be prevented if people secure their computers prior to an invasion rather than afterward. “The tools to avoid this stuff exist right now,” Boam says. “Everybody wants the cure, but nobody wants the prevention.