Gelisim News

Attention! your social media accounts may be hacked

While the information technologies that have already been an indispensable element of daily life facilitate the life on the one hand, it also goes on creating substantial security vulnerability on the other. While it is indicated by the specialists that the passage from a physical environment to the cyber environment are frequently observed in criminal acts together with the rapid development of technology, it has been the social media platforms where this was experienced most prevalently.

Dr. Serkan Gönen, who is a Computer Engineer and Academic Member, emphasized that it was especially taken advantage of the weaknesses of people in cyber-attacks, realized out of the social media, and mentioned about a few different methods for the protection from those kinds of cyber-attacks:

“DO NOT CLICK ON LINKS, SENT UNDER THE TOPICS SUCH AS SICK CHILD, ANIMAL RIGHTS, UPDATING AND SO ON!”

A great proportion of attacks, realized at the social media environments that have a substantial size of market are carried out of the social engineering applications by taking advantage of the sentimental aspects of the users. The Academic Member Dr. Serkan Gönen of the Istanbul Gelişim University, who indicated that it has been started to witness the incidents such as hacking of social media accounts, publication beyond the knowledge of the user and asking for ransom for the return of the account very frequently further added as follows: “First of all, at the end of clicking on the links, sent with the titles of especially updatings, violence to women, animal rights, sick child and so  on, the links goes to an address belonging to the attacker before all else and causes the seizure of the passwords belonging to the users. Then link is redirected to the legal page so that the users cannot be aware of the attack in various numbers of attacks and by this means, the users may be caused to think about the fact that they might enter a wrong password.”

Mr. Gönen, who indicated that it was necessary for the users to pay attention to the matter for the protection from the social engineering attacks, also emphasised that the search engines were not reliable and secure either.

‘’PREFER LONG AND STRONG PASSWORDS’’

It is necessary not to click on the links having come out of social media or through internet and to go into the official website of the organization or institution related thereto where the link comes from and check out the content on absolute basis.
‘’It is necessary to enter only in the reliable websites into the address line out of the search engine at issue, and secondly, however, to use especially strong passwords, mainly corporate accounts, and at the same time, to prefer different passwords as much as possible for all accounts. You should prefer recallable passwords bearing at least 12 characters.”

The Academic Member Dr. Serkan Gönen, who underlined that it might be possible to be protected from various numbers of cyber-attacks by taking those of warnings into consideration and applying the same, emphasized the importance of taking advantage of the technology that has become an integral part of our lives by taking correct and proper measures in that context.