Windows OS Is Still a Favorite among Hackers, Protect Your PC Now

Overview: Windows OS Is Still a Favorite among Hackers

At this year’s Black Hat USA conference, more than 300 hackers are polled and a core question is asked: what do hackers see as their easiest point of entry? Actually, it is the question at the heart of a new survey asking hundreds of white hats about their favored system targets in 2018.

According to Thycotic, nearly 50% of surveyed hackers, most identified as white hat hackers, said that they had attacked Windows-based systems more than any other systems in the past year.

Among the respondents, 26.7% of hackers said they most frequently infiltrated Windows 10, followed by Windows 8 (22.4%). And hackers exploiting vulnerabilities in the Linux is only 18% while just 5% of hackers said Mac OS was their most often-used or easiest attack vector.

One security expert said, this is a threat to enterprises and users and system update is not a foolproof defense.

Joseph Carson, Thycotic’s chief security scientist stated: “I believe what is significant here is that not only is [Windows] the most targeted OS, but hackers have confirmed they have also successfully compromised the operating system as well”.

Hackers Always Attack Microsoft OS via Different Ways

According to the study, respondents demonstrated that they find to compromise (GPOs) Group Policy Objects is easy and these GPOs are often used to centralize Windows domain-connected environments’ the management, configuration, and security.

Carson also said that the problem with GPOs is that they are widely used in organizations so as to push configuration policies to endpoints that include security configurations. However, many known exploits allow cybercriminals to easily bypass these security controls along with very distributed environments.

Most of the systems are only connected to the enterprise network termly to get policy updates. However, due to so many exploits, enterprises shouldn’t only rely on GPOs to ensure the security.

In addition, survey participants reported that most companies fail when implementing least privilege access policies while only a quarter of companies get a success in implementing them.

Some persons configure passwords for their PCs, however, it is poorly protected since hackers can easily seize credentials allowing them to elevate privileges and seize administrative control.

Some hackers indicated that the fastest technique for gaining access is social engineering. Besides, using identity theft to gain network access is also a way to attack Microsoft OS. And malware or stolen endpoints are also used by hackers for gaining access to PCs.

What’s more, OS and applications vulnerabilities are also a major problem since almost 20% of respondents are able to exploit unpatched systems.

How to Protect Yourself from Hackers Attack

Windows OS is still a favorite among hackers. Well then, how can you ensure the PC safety?

Now a legacy traditional way to network security is no longer suited to today’s circumstance. And so, businesses must take different measures to reduce risk and increase network security awareness. And they can apply multi-factor authentication and use a strong Privileged Access Management solution to protect privileged access.

In addition, PC backup is very important for businesses and personal users to keep the computers safe. MiniTool ShadowMaker, the professional free backup software, can help you easily back up disk, partition, system, and files to safeguard the PC from data loss after a hacker attack. Besides, this software supports automatic backup, incremental and differential backup, which can protect your PC well.