196: DDoS Cyber Attack and the Next Way You'll Get Hacked

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The morning of October 21st I tried to connect to Twitter to see the latest news and my computer kept saying it couldn't find the server.

I went to Facebook and nothing was trending over there. I Googled it and found out about the attack. I turned on the TV and there was nothing, as if it was blacked out - maybe to keep everyone calm?

It scared the heck out of me because I knew if it attacked a few sites, the whole internet could possibly go down. I checked my bank, it was still working online.

I could only imagine how upset some Paypal customers were, my friend being one of them. She went apoplectic.

The cyberattack of October 21, 2016 was notable for many reasons.

1. "It attacked the DDoS or A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources. They target a wide variety of important resources, from banks to news websites, and present a major challenge to making sure people can publish and access important information." -DigitalAttackMap.com

They go on to say: "Attackers build networks of infected computers, known as 'botnets', by spreading malicious software through emails, websites and social media. Once infected, these machines can be controlled remotely, without their owners' knowledge, and used like an army to launch an attack against any target. Some botnets are millions of machines strong."

"Botnets can generate huge floods of traffic to overwhelm a target. These floods can be generated in multiple ways, such as sending more connection requests than a server can handle, or having computers send the victim huge amounts of random data to use up the target's bandwidth. Some attacks are so big they can max out a country's international cable capacity."

2. It effected many large websites such as Twitter, Paypal, Amazon, Reddit and Pinterest among others and cost businesses over $100 million in lost revenues. This is important because we take for granted our ability to read news, shop, communicate and bank online. While the waves of attacks kept these websites down, I realized how difficult it would be to communicate if we had a full-on attack or Electro-Magnetic Pulse that would take down the grid, which actually got me thinking of communication devices that would work if it all went down. The one that kept coming up was a ham radio. This is one of the only things that will work in case of emergency. Ham radios require a short education to use and the passing of a quick test, but otherwise seem easy to operate.

3. Research about what kind of hacking could occur next led me to find out that we have vulnerabilities in our apps on our phone. I'm going to read an article to you and leave you the link to it on my website at www.lindapjones.com at podcast #196.

Just to give you a short summary before I read the article, it mentions that apps on our phone, even the blackjack app, may have malware that can cause a phone virus.

Here's the article: http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/new-way-you-ll-get-hacked-through-banking-app-your-n651571

The conclusion is that we need to add an anti-virus app to our phones to protect them. That's why I added the free McAfee anti-virus app to my phone. It backs up contacts, photos, etc. and allows you to locate your phone if lost, all while protecting your information.

It's CaptureCam emails you the photo and location of anyone who tries too many times to unlock your vault with the wrong PIN.

I hope this protects you from getting hacked from your banking app on your phone.

Get my "11 Quick Financial Tips to Boost Your Wealth" at www.lindapjones.com.