Hack attacks on home PCs increase
Intruder attacks are defined as anything from packet sniffers, which capture data from plain text email and other information as they travel over the network, to email viruses -- not just hacking attacks.
PCs running Windows are particularly vulnerable. Unprotected Windows networking shares are singled out as one weakness often found in home PCs, allowing hackers to place tools on large numbers of Windows-based computers attached to the Internet. Windows is also singled out for its option to "Hide file extensions for known file types", which is enabled by default, making it difficult for many people to spot extensions such as .vbs on files. Many email viruses -- such as Love Letter -- arrive as Visual Basic files with .vbs extensions.
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