by Lizzy Cornwell

Created on: September 27, 2010   Last Updated: February 29, 2012

Everybody knows that hacker attacks can cause a lot of harm. Most of them are geared towards gaining access to your personal information and online banking accounts. The best thing to do is to avoid being attacked in the first place. But because prevention doesn't work 100% of the time, you need to know how to detect an attack right away and act immediately.

Hacker attacks can be pretty hard to detect. Fortunately, there are several things to watch out for. Here they are:

1.High outgoing traffic

Suspiciously high outgoing traffic for dial-up and ADSL is the first thing that should attract your attention, especially if you’re not uploading anything at the time. So, if you notice that your outgoing traffic is all of a sudden unusually high, it could mean that your computer has been compromised and used either to send spam or viruses to all your contacts.  Cable users, don’t fret – with cable it is quite normal to have the same amount of outgoing and incoming traffic.

2.Suspicious files

Look out for strange looking files in the root directories of your drives and/or too much disk activity. Usually hackers run a thorough scan of your system after they’ve successfully hacked into it. They do it to steal your personal information – like passwords, credit card details, PayPal account details etc. So, increased disk activity and suspicious files might be an indication that your system has either been hacked or is infected with malware.

3.Constant firewall alerts

If your personal firewall is reporting blocking large packets of data from the same IP address, that could mean that someone is probing your defences and is trying to break in. The good thing about it all is that if your firewall is blocking the attacks, then it most likely will continue doing so. Remember – having a personal firewall is essential if you want to keep your computer away from harm.

4.Trojans and other malware

A lot of hackers still rely on trojans and backdoors. So, if your anti-virus software starts finding a lot of those, try increasing protection, use an Internet security suite instead of a basic anti-virus. If you don’t want to purchase a security suite and prefer using free anti-virus and antimalware software, then download Malwarebytes – it can be installed alongside your anti-virus and will detect infections that are often missed by other software.

Hacker attacks, identity thefts, and other types of cybercrime are the bane of the modern age. That’s why it’s important to pay attention to even the slightest changes in your computer behavior and take preventive measures. Better to be safe than sorry.

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