Can my computer be hacked if it's off?
Hi, everyone. Leo Notenboom here for Askleo.com.
Here's the question. "In general
can a PC with no remote software be hacked if it is powered off?
The power supply in the Internet cable are still connected to the PC.
In my discussions with others, 50 percent say yes, 50 percent say no.
An Internet search was also divided in response with no agreement."
Honestly, I'm not surprised that there's disagreement.
I'm a little surprised that it's 50/50.
But when you think about it,
who agrees about anything online, especially when it comes to technology?
The bottom line, from my perspective,
is that it is extremely unlikely, it's possible.
Let's face it, there are no yes or no answers anymore.
Everything is possible.
But the stars have to align just right in order for it to happen to you.
And it's extremely unlikely that it will.
So there are two conditions that have to be met in order for a powered off
computer to be able to be turned back on again and hacked.
The first is that a specific feature called Wake on LAN is enabled.
That's it's intended for businesses, for large installations.
And the intent is that by sending a specially formed packet of information
on the network, the computer can be instructed to turn itself on.
Now, of course, that does imply that the computer isn't
completely off, and that's actually not uncommon these days.
When you shut down windows, when you turn off your computer,
but you leave the computer plugged into the wall,
it generally still has a few things that have a little bit of power.
If we Wake on LAN is turned on,
that's one of those things that might very well be paying attention to.
But even if it is,
let's say that the computer magically turns itself back on again.
There's one other condition that must be met and that is your security must be bad.
In other words, we're concerned about our computers being hacked when they're on.
That implies that we've got our security software in place.
We've got firewalls in place.
We've got whatever all of that is still in place, whether the computer's on or off.
If you don't have your security software
set up properly, if you don't have your firewall set up in place,
then if the computer manages to get turned on, well, yeah, you're at risk,
but you're at risk then just because you're using the computer when it's on.
So the two things that you really need
to watch for are make sure that we wake on LAN is turned off.
It's usually a bias or UTFI setting
because it's a very low level hardware kind of thing.
And then do what you should be doing all along.
Make sure that your security software is present and up to date.
Make sure you're behind a firewall.
Make sure everything else is up to date.
Make sure you're using the Internet safely.
It's really not that big a deal.
Now, there is one caveat I do want to throw out here that.
Kind of bites a lot of people, but in different ways, it's happened to me.
Stand by.
It's not that uncommon
for a computer that you put into standby to come out of stand by by itself.
There's a variety of reasons I don't even grasp them all.
It's one of those things where it could be, you know,
when the battery gets low and it's about to go into hibernate,
it's going to turn itself on so that it can go into hibernation.
Maybe there's something else that wakes it up.
We get reports of machines turning back on from standby all the time.
I've run into it myself when a laptop in my backpack, I pull it out and it's warm.
It's incredibly warm because standby,
it turned itself back on again and started heating up in that closed environment.
So.
Be aware with your computer, if you run into your computer
automatically coming back from standby without your having instructed it to.
That might be a case. Personally I avoid
standby for this and several other
reasons, but that's something else to be aware of.
So that's the bottom line, right?
Wake on LAN needs to be enabled, and normally it isn't
aAnd it's easy to turn off. And your security has to be poor.
Otherwise, it's extremely unlikely that you can hack a turned off computer
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I'm Leo Notenboom.
This is Askleo.com.Thanks for watching.