The recent whistleblower report which revealed that Chinese hackers had gained full control of 1,295 high value computer terminals around the world, including five in Maltese territory, serves as a reminder to us all to not be complacent.

The hacking network, termed GhostNet, is believed to be a network of cyber spies based in China. The report points the finger at China, but the International Warfare Monitor says that there is no concrete evidence to this effect, and that independent hacking groups could also have been involved.

Yet, it was the Tibetans who first began to suspect that something was amiss and when their computers were investigated by the experts who compiled the reports, a multitude of infections were found.

The Trojan virus which allowed the hackers to gain full control of computers was spread in a seemingly innocuous manner when an email account receives a message from the address [email protected] which contains a Trojan embedded in a Word document.

Once a person simply left clicks on the document, which looks legitimate, then all hell breaks loose. To put it simply, what seems to have happened is that the Chinese network targeted the Tibetans in exile for spying, but once the emails were forwarded, then the Trojan took on a life of its own.

What this teaches us all is that we should be far more careful in what we open in our mail boxes. Malicious hacking and malware is the scourge of the modern IT oriented world. The scams are endless, Nigerians claiming to be heirs to fortunes, US soldiers who have looted money and need a safe deposit, emails such as this claiming to be in solidarity with world causes and even malware purporting to be anti-virus software.

There are a few safety measures one can take and this obviously includes keeping your operating software up to date, complemented by effective and up to date real time scanning software. Another is that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. A third one to look out for is pop-ups that have a double cancel (x) box in the top right hand corner... always click on the outermost (x) or to be even safer right click on the popup in the box in the tray at the bottom of the screen and close it that way.

Other tips include having a secure password made up of a combination of letters and numbers. This has been found to be far more secure than simple passwords such as the names of offspring, pets, sports teams and the like. Hacking has filtered into every sphere of the IT world and we have such things as key loggers which, if inadvertently downloaded, can lift passwords to bank accounts, high profile computer games, business servers and email servers.

As mentioned, people should have a secure password and if you feel that your account has been compromised in any way, take the machine to a specialist and change your passwords once the PC has been formatted and/or wiped.

Many businesses and home owners suffer severe disruption if their computers are attacked and it causes loss of productivity and, in the worst case, loss of funds. We cannot be naive enough to think that we can simply surf the net and use all its related applications and not take any precautions. Virus scanning software is not enough. Many of these infections require the human element of clicking on something to make something happen. More awareness needs to be raised – the stories we hear abroad about people losing their homes and life savings could happen here also if people are not more careful.