CompuClever Blog

A Personal Encounter with Ashley Madison

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What are the consequences to piracy that involves millions of users and personal information? We look at both the overall effect of the greatest hack in modern day as well as how it came to our attention through someone seeking our support and professional guidance. We offer here testimony and strategy.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past few months, you must have heard about the Ashley Madison account hack. This was where hackers released the entire user database of names, email addresses, billing information, and account details of 38 million users tied to the site. Some described the historical hack episode as an extinction-level event for privacy.

Jeff Yang, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, asked this simple but stern question in his CNN-syndicated commentary – Ashley Madison hack: privacy becomes extinct. Comparing the incident to the prehistoric planet-wide catastrophe that wiped out the Jurassic World, Yang declared that the data hack of the Toronto-based infidelity website was “an extinction-level event for privacy”.

Attack Aftermath

We were shocked when we first learned that hackers managed to steal close to 40 million users’ records from Ashley Madison, which made claims shortly after the incident that its members remained anonymous. Continue reading...

Vigilance and Silence

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In a previous article discussing whether we really need to compromise PC performance in exchange for security, we presented the CompuClever Photon technology – an innovative feature that adapts security protection to the uniqueness of your PC. Photon makes CompuClever Antivirus light and fast, imposing almost no overhead to system resources. But how should an antivirus react to a true threat when it detects an intrusion? We are often presented with popups and reminders, like the one shown below, that most of us, even including those who work in the IT industry, don’t know how to respond to, which may result in taking the wrong action.

CompuClever Antivirus PLUS works differently and better than this. It is essentially a silent security solution that only communicates useful information in language you can understand, keeping you informed and, keeping you in the driver seat. This is achieved through the combination of two features: Autopilot and Profiles.

Introducing Autopilot and Profiles

What makes CompuClever Antivirus’ user-centric approach possible is the Autopilot and Profiles features, which work hand-in-hand to deliver silent security 24/7.

Autopilot

Autopilot makes the best security decisions for users, without user interaction, while eliminating notifications and popups. When Autopilot is switched on and CompuClever Antivirus detects any type of threats, it will automatically block it. Continue reading...

Protection vs. Speed

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Does antivirus software slow down PCs? The answer is a definite Yes; but, a conditional one depending on which security software you’ve chosen to run on your PC. According to an extensive endurance test, performed by AV-Test.org, the evidence of PC performance impacted by antivirus software was more than convincing. An antivirus solution that does a mediocre job on reducing its impact on PC performance slows down your PC by taking too much resource like CPU, hard disc, and RAM. As a result, you were forced to make a compromise for speed in exchange for security.

But, is it really necessary to choose between protection and speed? A well designed antivirus program should impose minimum or no impact to PC performance while still delivering the best protection against malware and online threats. This is how CompuClever Antivirus was designed and made. Let’s dive into some details.

CompuClever Photon technology

The core technology is called “Photon” and it makes CompuClever Antivirus the lightest antivirus ever. It is an innovative antivirus technology that takes the weight of the system and accelerates scanning speed by gradually adapting to each user’s PC.

How it works

Built with the same type of artificial intelligence technology used by the robotic industry, Photon goes through the following cycle to adapt to your PC:

  1. Fingerprinting: performed early in the installation a unique “fingerprint” was built for your system.
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Stay Safely Connected

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Email and social networking are two primary means of communicating and stay connected with family and friends. Through social network sites and emails, you share updates, post photos, and reveal things that are sometimes very personal about you.  Examples include where you live, which company you work for, whom you are related to, when and where you are going on holiday, what food you like, what music you listen to, whom you have just met, etc. By piecing these bits of information together, it becomes easy for anyone to learn more about you. And that’s also how cyber criminals find out information they want from you. Personal identity theft and online scams are two primary threats that target email and social networking users.

Identity theft

A recent study conducted by Bitdefender, a leading European security technology provider, discovered that more than a quarter of a million email addresses, usernames, and passwords can be found easily through social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, personal blog postings, chat forums, and download sites. Surprisingly, 87% of these compromised credentials still provided valid access to personal email and social networking accounts. What’s more astonishing was that 75% of the people in this study use the same password for all their accounts.

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Surf with Confidence

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Unlike shark attacks, cyber-attacks are numerous, sophisticated, and ever-changing. Many cyber criminals who have managed to evade law enforcement are not only resourceful but also considered experts. To a certain extent they are even innovative. Compelled by the sinister desire of luring more victims while remaining undetected, hackers diligently invent new techniques and schemes to exploit systems of users who are even security-conscious.

Jaw-dropping

The cases presented below are a couple of example of classical cyber-attacks that are conniving, stealthy, and almost ingenious.

  • Case 1: While surfing the web at home, the user of a hacked PC was prompted to create new accounts in order to use her own Wireless Access Points (WAP). Not knowing what was happening behind the scenes, the victim would use a common username or email address along with a password that was used for several other online accounts.  The result: the hackers gained complete and unblocked access to her email, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or even online banking site.
  • Case 2: On the premises of a Starbucks coffee shop, hackers positioned a Wi-Fi hotspot and disguise it so that it appears to belong to Starbucks. Attackers then redirect victims to frequently used websites that were actually modified or fake to capture login credentials or deploy keylogging malware to harvest personal identity information.
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