WHAT IS EMAIL BOMBARDMENT?

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An email bombing is an attack on your inbox that involves sending massive amounts of messages to it. Sometimes these messages are incomprehensible. But more often, they will be confirmation emails for newsletters and subscriptions. Thus, in the latter case, the attacker uses a script to search for forums and newsletters on the internet. Then they sign up for an account with your email address. Each will send you a confirmation email, asking you to confirm your address. Also, this process is repeated on as many unprotected sites as the script can find. The term Email Bombing or Email Bombing; it can also refer to flooding an email server with too many emails. In an attempt to overwhelm the server and disable it. But that's not the goal here; it would be a challenge to cut down on the modern email accounts used. Meanwhile, Google or Microsoft email servers, anyway. So instead of a denial of service (DOS) attack; against the email servers you are using. Also, the flood of messages
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IS YOUR ANTIVIRUS WORKING PROPERLY?

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is your antivirus working properly?

 

Whether it is Windows Defender, or any other third-party antivirus, such as Kaspersky, Protegent360 or Bitdefender, this type of security software is essential when connecting to the Internet. Thanks to the antivirus we can be protected against threats that are hidden in the network. When we install an AV in our computer, it begins to protect our PC and, in addition, it is responsible for updating itself automatically several times a day. If everything goes well, we do not have to touch the antivirus again, we will always be protected. However, as time goes by, a question may arise: Is It Really Protecting Our PC?

One of the ways in which we can check if our antivirus is really protecting us as it should be would be by really putting ourselves in danger. And the truth, this is better avoided. For what it could happen.

Luckily, there are ways to check if our antivirus is working correctly, and in addition to knowing how we should act when it detects a threat, without taking risk. This is made possible by agreements made by two well-known security organizations. On the one hand EICAR, European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research, and on the other AMTSO, The Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization. These organizations intend to help us check if our antivirus is working and is capable of protecting us from all kinds of threats.

How to Test Our Antivirus against "Fake Viruses"

What these two organizations offer us are ' fake viruses '. These viruses are found within the antivirus databases. For this reason, when the files reach the computer, they set off the antivirus alarm (if it is working) and it acts as if it were a dangerous virus. However, if the security software didn't work, we wouldn't be in danger either. Fake viruses are harmless.

The different tests that the AMTSO platform allows us to perform are:

Detects Manually Downloaded Malware:  It allows us to check if our antivirus is capable of detecting possible malware downloaded by ourselves.

Detects Drive-By Downloads of Malware: It allows to measure the efficiency of the antivirus with automatic downloads, those that we have not requested.

Detect Compressed Malware: It downloads a compressed file with the fake virus inside. It allows us to measure the precision and speed with which it detects these threats.

Detects Potentially Unwanted Applications (PUAS): It allows you to check if our antimalware detects and blocks potentially unwanted programs.

Detects Phishing Pages: It try to load pages registered as phishing to see if the antivirus blocks them.

Is Connected To A Cloud-Based Lookup System: Check if our security software uses the cloud to protect our PC. The signature of this file is not in the database itself, it must be detected by an AI in the cloud.

In each section we can see a description of what it does, how it works and what we have to do. If the antivirus has to jump automatically, it will. If we have to press a button, we will press it and see its behavior.

We remember, once again, that all these tests are harmless. Neither viruses do anything on our computer, nor can the websites be used with malicious intentions.

Other Ways to Check the Security of Our Antivirus

In addition to the AMTSO tests, which are reliable, complete and very accurate, there are other ways to analyze our antivirus and check if it really works and protects us.

The following test, for example, tries to connect remotely to our computer and check the ports that we have open. Very useful, for example, to check the configuration of our router and the security of the firewall.

If what we are concerned about is ransomware, thanks to the following tool we will be able to test our antivirus against this type of malware. This is a "fake ransomware", that is, it only simulates its operation, and at no time does it endanger our data. So, these tests will help you in to know if your antivirus is working or not and do you have to change your antivirus software for better security and protection.

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