Eleven years ago, Weird Al Yankovic inked a catchy tune for his “Straight Outta Linwood” album called “Virus Alert,” which in his own humorous, albeit warped, way, offered up a warning about the perils of opening emails from individuals you don’t know or with attachments you aren’t expecting.
Even before 2006, computer users worldwide had been served up a wide helping of computer viruses, and despite advances in technology since then, the danger remains high; all you need to do is look at last fall’s extremely high-profile email hack attack, which had a definite impact on voters and their decision at the ballot box.
Is this week’s Google Drive phishing attack in the same ballfields as allegations of Russian interference in the United States’ 2016 presidential election? In some ways, it pales; in others, it may easily eclipse what happened in the waning days of the campaign.
Phishing is the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers. In the May 3 Google Drive situation, the attack seemed to focus primarily on education emails and their servers; teachers across the School District of Palm Beach County and other educational systems nationwide reported an influx of questionable emails indicating that “(enter coworker name here) has shared a document on Google Docs with you.”
If you clicked the link, it asked for some access permissions to individuals’ Gmail account (which actual Google Docs links would not need), and then spammed everyone in their contacts with a link to a Google Docs file. They, in turn, email everyone in their contacts, and so on. All of them seemed to include the email address “hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh@mailinator.com.”
(If, by chance, you received this email and clicked on the link, here’s what you need to do, if you have’t already done so: (1) Go to your Gmail account’s permissions settings at https://myaccount.google.com/permissions; (2) Remove permissions for “Google Docs,” the name of the phishing scam.)
What’s of concern to area residents is many teachers across the district have incorporated Google Drive into their daily lives, including accepting and sending assignments electronically. This is the world in which we live, where the technology we have at our fingertips now controls how we live and work, not the other way around.
Cybersecurity concerns are not new. In a survey of 24 federal agencies, the General Accounting Office found between 2006 and 2015, the number of cyberattacks climbed 1,300 percent - from 5,500 to over 77,000 a year. This week’s attack was not an outlier. Nor is there any guarantee of absolute protection; even the best anti-virus packages can be overrun by intelligent creators of viruses and other cybercrime. All we can do is keep our protections active and updated, and hope we don’t get caught in the virus trap. And just to be a bit safer, change your email password. It can’t hurt.
