Case Study: Signed Applets Analysis In the middle of 2005, Carlton Draught released an advertisement, called its "Big Ad." Visitors to the website www.bigad.com.au would be presented with a prompt from their browser about a signed Java applet that would then allow the visitor to view a video as it was streamed to their computers. The video was constructed in an "epic" style, meaning it looked very big, very expensive, and so very impressive. As such, after being online for only a day, the advertisement was viewed 162,000 times, and after two weeks the video had been viewed more than one million times, in at least 132 countries. An experiment, the subject of this case study, was conducted to assess the effect of human propagated malware that could be delivered from a website mirroring the Carlton Draught Big Ad site (Jakobsson & Ramzan).
User Risk In analyzing this case study, one question that is important to consider is what prompts users to open themselves up to the malware risks that can be offered by both the "Big Ad" and similar things. The way the researchers who ran the experiment initiated their goal of redirecting users was to create a mirror copy of the website at the address of www.bigad.com.au by downloading and assembling all of the files from the real website onto their own mirror site with a similar domain name of "verybigad.com," the circulating their fake websites name with the hope of word of mouth spreading it. The malware attack was simulated by
Malware in these days is no longer created by just curious hobbyists or amateur hackers, but by experienced internet criminals to help them achieve certain goals. These goals can include stealing
consumers are not passing along online videos for utilitarian purposes. They may pass along the online videos even if they do not care about the topics, these topics do not connect with them, or these videos are not very entertaining and useful to themselves. These findings may be explained by the fact that the most shared online viral ads are inspiring, funny, cute, cool, sexy, or shocking, instead of being useful, interesting, and relevant to lives of online video senders and recipients (Unruly Media, 2013)… (p. 915) This study also demonstrates that U.S. consumers’ online video sharing attitudes, intent, and behavior are determined by some important predictors in Palka, Pousttchi, & Wiedemann’s (2009) model of viral marketing, including perceived pleasure, subjective norm, and cost. These findings are enlightening to both academia and industry. (p.
“WHAT THE SHREK JUST HAPPENED, THE FINAL CHAPTER, COMING MAY 21”. Ads are everywhere. They are at local grocery stores, on light posts, highways, bill boards, in schools, church, neighborhoods, and even on the television. Ads are created to spark people’s interest and catch their attention. People’s eyes are always wandering around looking or reading signs and build boards while driving down a street, road, or freeway. Do they do it out of boredom or curiosity? One cannot tell so easily why it is that they watch or read something, it is either out of habit, interest, boredom, curiosity or even for fun. There are multiple ways to how people perceive and interpret different ads; negatively, positively, neutrally, or they just don’t care to even give it a thought, it is all based upon who the person is.
There are different ways on which brands can reach their customers and connect with them. Online Screen channels are becoming of main interest for brands to advertise in. From this, Youtube has become one of the main platforms on which brands decide to promote their content, not only because it is cost–effective, but because it can achieve a high impression by reaching a large audience. Different campaigns such as Volvo’s “The Epic Split”and Carrie’s Telekinetic café prank, prove the efficiency of such platform, and how different brands can take advantage of this to achieve viral marketing, such in the case of Bud Light’s Super Bowl “Up for whatever” campaign. The way in which the business approaches the consumer by taking advantage of
PC explains that he’s caught one of the 114,000 viruses, and advises Mac to stay away. Mac then states that he doesn’t get viruses. Still sneezing, PC says “I think I’m going to crash” then falls over. The advertisements’ target isn’t a tech savvy user who would recognize viruses. Instead Apple aims toward the average consumer, someone who probably has a PC and may be unfamiliar with Mac’s and their functions. The strategy is in this particular commercial highlights a specific problem that PC has. Upon doing this, Apple was able to make their audience question whether a PC was the right type of a computer to have. Apple also tried to present friendship between the two actors. They strategized “Mac” to be a friendlier, caring character, while “PC” at times does not always appreciate “Mac”. Viewers felt sympathy for the PC character but ultimately stuck to Mac because he always seemed to show affection no matter the situation. Overall, the strategies Apple used are able to apprehend the audience and keep them alert and interested throughout the
Malware, or “malicious software”, has taken different forms and names for years. Spyware and viruses are just a few of the common titles attributed to this devastating means of cyber attack, the main purpose of which is to ultimately compromise a rival's computer infrastructure. State-sponsored attacks have typically been perpetrated by means of malware. Spear-phishing is one particularly popular means of malware, where by a target is fooled into opening a corrupted email or file, only to unwittingly download a compromising piece of malware onto their computer (XX). Once this malware is installed, control of the computer is placed in the hands of the hacker, allowing them to hack other networks while proving impossible to track down (XX18). China has been a prime culprit for spear-phishing attacks, often following current events to target respective dignitaries. For instance, the 2010 G20 Summit saw thousands of spear-phishing campaigns against officials, with email titles labelled in relation to the Summit itself (XX). Countless departments, institutions, and governments have fallen victim to spear-phishing campaigns, at the count of millions of dollars and priceless information
A computer virus is a malware program that, when executed copies itself into other data files, computer programs, or the boot sector of the hard drive with 95% of viruses doing no more than that. (1)(2). A virus might attach itself to a program such as a word document program. Each time the word document program runs, the virus runs too and it has the chance to reproduce by attaching to other programs. (3) Nowadays, it is extremely important to be aware of viruses because they can cause very dangerous consequences such as identity theft and fraud. When people generally think about computer viruses, they normally think about an attack on a computer system, however, they may not be aware of how common computer viruses are. It can be beneficial to know a few of the different types of viruses, the kind of damage they can cause and methods to protect yourself from them. In this essay, we will be covering when computer viruses first made an appearance and contrasting this to how they are like now on social media. Also, we will be covering how they work and what can be done to prevent the growing risks of computer viruses on social media.
Computer viruses have been around just about as long as the personal computer has existed. With the advent of the Internet, the ability of viruses to rapidly spread has increased substantially. Despite this increase in capability to infect large numbers of computers across international borders, the definition of a computer virus has not substantially changed over
This type of marketing is called viral as it allows the message to spread like a virus. Some examples of this are the Carlton Draught ‘it’s a big beer’ ad, which premiered on the Internet and now has had over 3 million views. Social networking activities driven by sites such a YouTube and Facebook have also had an important impact of the effectiveness of viral marketing, for example the Carlton ‘it’s a big beer’ ad can be viewed on YouTube.
For any Internet user, it’s fairly easy to see advertisements undoubtedly plaster the Internet. Many websites depend on online advertising as a main source of revenue to help keep their websites afloat. In a study entitled “ “ by Jesse Holcomb and Amy Mitchell, the two detail the role of advertising for news media, particularly on the Internet news media sources. “Advertising . . . accounts for the majority of known news revenue—a little over two-thirds” (Holcomb, Mitchell 2). When one considers that “as an industry, news in the U.S. generates roughly $63 billion to $65 billion in annual revenue”, two thirds is a colossal margin (Holcomb, Mitchell
Main crime use: This crimeware's current focus is downloading an adware BHO (browser helper object) onto a compromised system.
Two of the common known attacks on computing systems are the deployment of computer viruses and malware.
Lawton, G. (2008). Is it finally time to worry about mobile malware? Computer, 41(5), 12-14.
Just like a biological virus, a computer virus is able to infect and ruin lives. This malicious software constitutes more than just simple viruses but also includes other types of software including worms, Trojan horses, and ransomware. Malware has been around since the late 1980’s. Originally, people became hackers to gain notoriety online, but today, it has become more of a business. Cyber attacks originate from all around the world, and it is not just individual people that benefit from it. In two decades, numerous cyber crime syndicates have been created, and states all over the world sponsor hacker groups. Over the past twenty-five years, malware has become less about checking the integrity of computer security and gaining notoriety in the underground cyber society, and it has become more of a chaos creating, money making business that many people and institutions take part in.