Glancing at her emails in early August, junior Daphne Liu’s eyes caught the subject line of an email from one of her friends, junior Dasha Gousseva: “Top Ten Things to do Before School Starts.”
Intrigued by the headline, Liu opened the email and clicked the link, but was then brought to a web page reading, “Link not available this time.” Thinking nothing of it at the time, Liu forgot about the incident until roughly a week later, when she began receiving messages from friends regarding weird emails she had supposedly sent. She also received 132 emails herself from the server, letting her know that some of the emails sent by the virus never went through.
“I was irritated because viruses are hard to get rid of,” Liu said. “I also had to put in more time to apologize to some people. It was more of a hassle to clean everything up.”
At around the same time, junior Jaime An didn’t realize her email was hacked until she received messages from concerned friends about whether the link the virus sent them, which advertised weight loss or dieting, was trustworthy.
“I felt nervous [and] I was frantically hoping that people didn't open the links because that usually leads to more hacking for their account,” An said. “I was so confused because my password is quite secure.”
An and Liu were victims of viruses that, once activated from a link, send out emails to all of an account’s contacts. The emails sent by these viruses have a variety of subjects, such as “surveyed,” “Personalized?” “interviewed,” “expert” and “beautiful,” to entice the recipients into opening the emails.
Luckily, since only their emails were hacked, neither An nor Liu has experienced any issues with their computers.
However, other people who are hacked can be less lucky. According to the LiveScience website, activated viruses can manipulate computer programs to run the virus’s code.
This allows other malware to plague computers with slower performance, system crashes, data loss and pop-up ads, ultimately deteriorating their hardware and software. With some types of malware, hackers can monitor one’s computer activity and steal personal information.
For example, current trends in email viruses include phishing, a practice in which hackers may gain access to individual’s computer by using ransomware. This form of malware locks users out of their computers until they pay a ransom fee, but even if the money is paid, some never regain access to their computer. The use of ransomware has increased 5.5 times over this past year, according to KasperSky Lab.
With a growing number of attacks comes importance for users to be wary while on their computers, as a computer virus’s ability to be widespread and adapt as time goes on is just like that of the common cold, according to an article in USA Today.
“The ability to attack is certainly outpacing the ability to defend [computer viruses],” Lillian Ablon, a security researcher at the Rand Corporation, said in an interview with The New York Times. “We’re constantly playing this cat and mouse game, but ultimately companies just patch and pray.”
Although there is no certain way to prevent hackers and viruses from gaining access to private computers, computer science and math teacher Judi Heher advises people to not click on suspicious links and to keep strong and updated passwords.
“If you’re ever in doubt, email that person back and say, ‘Hey, did you send me this file? Is it safe?’” Heher said. “You’re not always going to be completely safe, but you’ll be safer.”
