RAM Scraping Attack

Categories: Tech

These things are just mean. They're the A-List of hacker attempts to control your computer, create chaos in the world and rerun TV episodes of Pinky and The Brain.

Okay, first: RAM: "random access memory." But basically, think of it as one of the two ways in which computers store data. There's the cloud, and there are hard drives, and ancient, scuzzy drives, the kind that rotate like an LP player to find data. That's not RAM. That's hard drive space. RAM is the "I need it now!" space that houses data which is sort of interstitial. Like, think: stuff you've typed on your screen, but hasn't yet had the benefit of a return key. Or documents you've opened and are monkeying with, but are sitting there, stored in the D-RAM of your little local computer.

So what else is probably accessible up there? Yeah, your password. Your cookie info. Your predilection for certain, um, "art film" websites. In a scraping attack, a hacker copies and pastes that information from your D-RAM onto her hard drive, and you likely don't even realize it until, well...bad things happen to good people all the time.

How do you prevent these? Eh, you don't. If a world-class hacker wants to get at your data, little will stop them. You can put firewalls and VPNs and change your passwords often and make life difficult for them. But in the scheme of all the things that most world-class hackers can do with their time, you have to ask yourself, "Am I that interesting or powerful that they actually care about scraping my RAM?" And when you answer, "No," you can go back to your regularly scheduled programming.

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Finance: What are Phishing Scams?8 Views

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Finance a la shmoop what are phishing scams? all right you know when you're out [Woman on fishing boat with Dad]

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on the lake with dad just the two of you trying to haul in some trout when one of

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the fish pulls a fast one on you and hangs one of these things on your line [Fishing line with boot attached]

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yeah total scam we're telling you you cannot trust anything that breathes

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through the side of its face anymore these days really okay so that's a not

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quite a phishing scam although the general idea is similar it's someone

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trying to make you believe something that isn't exactly true with a phishing

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scam the venue switches from the great outdoors to cyberspace never gotten an [A wooden hut appears]

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email from a Nigerian prince who's temporarily down on his luck and if

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you'll just wire him three hundred bucks in cash immediately well immeasurable

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riches await you it sounds like a little good to be true there right yeah and it [Man gives thumbs up in room]

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is well usually that Nigerian prince is an overweight balding guy named Jerry

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living in his mom's basement in a suburb just outside of Cleveland he'd love

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nothing more than to hook a sucker you and take that 300 bucks [Jerry on his computer]

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off your hands but many times the scam is much more intricate than that often

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its identity thieves who are trying to con you into releasing private

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information such as your social security number or credit card information mm-hmm

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that's out there well they might try to convince you that

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their Amazon support or your bank or your long-lost uncle Yusuf who just [Person flicking through e-mails]

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needs a few personal details before he can FedEx you your large inheritance

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don't fall for any of it anytime you're randomly asked to divulge any sensitive

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information or pop a wad of cash in an envelope stop for a second and ask

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yourself whatever you might be well a fish and then ask yourself whether you'd [Cash burning]

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like all your hard-earned money to be sauteed or flame-broiled good stuff...

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)