Advisories & Alerts

Happy Tuesday, York University! Hope you didn't get fooled yesterday! Today's topic is one that is relevant to the vast majority of us- smartphones. While these miniature computers are capable of more processing than normal computers could twenty years ago, this makes them vulnerable to hacking attacks, just like PCs. Combined with a smartphone's portability […]

Voice calls over the internet have become almost ubiquitous with software such as Skype, Discord, and even Facebook Messenger supporting it. Before all of those, however, Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, was the first method of voice communication across the internet. There are some dangers inherent to VoIP usage, however, and we're going to […]

Hope you're having a great Friday, York! To continue from our last post, let's talk about online auctions. Websites like eBay allow us to host auctions on any item we wish in the digital space, but with this practice come risks as well. Unknown sellers: Anyone can set up an auction online. Only bid on auctions […]

Hey York! Today we'll be talking about a topic near and dear to many people's hearts these days: Online Shopping. While security has greatly improved over the past few decades in terms of online shopping, there still remain many risks, which can manifest in different forms of phishing or malware. So what are these risks […]

The practice of pharming takes time and effort on behalf of the scammer, but is very effective in collecting personal and sensitive information. While the practice is common, the term pharming is rarely talked about. What is pharming, and how do hackers use it to find personal information?   Scammers use pharming to gather large […]

Although the malware we are focusing on today is quite ubiquitous, it is likely you never heard of it. It's even possible your computer has already been infected. So how come it's so unknown? Botnets are a type of malware which does not always manifest in very obvious ways to users. This malware has self-propagating […]

Happy reading week, York University! While this week's scam is similar to extortion scams, it has some differences. Let's dive into this particular type of scam which has seen an uptick in recent years: the prize scam. Preying mainly on seniors and other groups who may be not as technologically savvy, prize scams are straightforward. […]

Welcome back! Just as family day weekend is starting, we're going to cover a couple other examples of extortion scams that exist online. If you'd like to read more, check out part 1! Denial of Service Attack: In this form of scam, scammers will flood a company's/user's website with requests, effectively shutting out visitors from the […]

Happy Valentine's Day, York University! In continuation of the previous post about ransomware, we're going to summarize another couple of ways hackers may try to get your information. Extortion scams all work on the same basis: Scaring or tricking the victim into giving money or personal information to the hacker. Ransomware, as we've discussed, limits […]