Your laptop could come under attack at NATO

If you're going to be spending time downtown while the Chicago NATO Summit, road closings, train delays and protesters may not be your only hassles. Security experts say your laptop and smartphone may be targeted by attackers or borrowed by free-loaders.

In addition, Internet, wireless voice and even electrical outages are possible, and workers and residents should back up their devices.

Exponential increase in malware targeting smartphone

He said he has seen "an exponential increase" in "malware" targeting smartphone and tablets.

Anyone who gains access to a person's wireless device knows the person's location when he is carrying the device, said Kellermann, a former member of the president's Commission on Cybersecurity who spoke to a cloud computing conference in Chicago last week.

Smart-phone users should lock out their Wi-Fi hot spots so outsiders cannot jump on, said Karl Volkman, chief research officer at SRV Network Inc. in Chicago.

An FBI alert issued previously this month cautioned that cybercriminals are targeting people when they set up their laptops to connect with a hotel's Internet service. The hotel guest gets a pop-up window on his laptop asking him to update a certain software product, and instead, gets malware, according to the FBI alert. Experts recommend not clicking on those updates.

The NATO event

Certain companies - especially those with ties to the NATO event, financial institutions and defense contractors - are no doubt being eyed for "denial of service" attacks, a popular way for cybercriminals to overwhelm a computer or a network server by inundating it with "garbage" communications in order to shut it down, said Michael Lee, a principal consultant with SWC Innovation Partners, an Oak Brook research solutions provider.

Downtown and NATO Summit zone workers as well should prepare for intended or accidental shutoffs of electricity, wireless voice and Internet communications, Lee said.