Video Activity

Drive-by Downloads

Video Transcript

I and welcome to lesson 1.6 of the End User Cyber Fundamentals course. This lesson will be focused on understanding drive by downloads. You will learn what a drive by download is and how you can protect yourself. So what is a drive by download? Drive by. Downloads are very dangerous as you do not have to accept or click anything for malicious software to be downloaded, and you will not even know it. Most people do not even know about drive by downloads. They think the only way you can get malware is by clicking on a link or open an attachment. In reality, all you have to do is visit a malicious website or infected website.

Unfortunately, you may be on your favorite financial site and not even know that hackers embedded a malicious component. In 2019 the New York Times website became a victim and was unintentionally hosting. Now where in the form off Malbert rising. We will talk more about Malvo ties ing in the next lesson. Drive by downloads. Take advantage off the lack of security on your computer or mobile device.

If you're Patches, operating system or APS are out of dates, you can be vulnerable to drive by downloads as they exploit thes weaknesses. How you can protect yourself Often you software quickly and constantly. When a software developer releases an update, cybercriminals will rush to reverse engineer it and target Internet users who have not applied the update. Configure your operating systems, browsers and all applications that offer it to update automatically disabled Java Java script and flash. Put trusted sites that require any of these on a white list.

Do not use an admin or privileged account for your daily computer activity whenever you browse the Internet. Using a privileged account, drive by downloads and other malicious software can install itself without your permission. Keep two separate accounts on your computer. Use a non privileged account for common day to day work and all online activities. The majority of the time you spend on your computer does not require you toe. Have admin access. If you need to install software as an example, you can either log in with the admin account or you will be prompted for admin credentials as required by the operating system.

Using your computer without administrative rights greatly reduces both the risk of a malicious software download and the potential damage should one succeed. Do an annual digital spring cleaning and review your computer for all unused or rarely use software and plug ins. This will greatly decrease vulnerabilities on your device and reduce the risk of an infection or an attack. Install security software such as antivirus, anti malware, ad blocker and always use a firewall. This could help against malware infections and can potentially protect you against hackers. Do drive by downloads Require user interaction? No, they do not drive by downloads.

Take advantage of the lack of security on your computer or mobile device. If you're Patches, operating system or APS are out of date, you can be vulnerable to drive by downloads as they exploit thes weaknesses. In this lesson, we learned what drive by downloads are. We also talked about what you can do to protect yourself. Thank you, and I will see you in the next lesson.

Intermediate
Intermediate
Course link:
End User Cyber Fundamentals
This End User Cyber Fundamentals course covers Internet risks such as typosquatting, website spoofing, drive-by downloads, Malvertising, and how to protect yourself using security best practices.
Instructed by
Instructor
Lisa Martino

I have been in IT and Security for 30+ years and have worked everything from Data Center Operations, Help Desk, Network Engineering, Security Engineering to Security Awareness, Governance, Information Security incident and breach management, etc.