Honeypots

Written by Richard Lowe


A honeypot is a special computer system set up forrepparttar specific purpose of attracting hackers. Generally, these servers will be placed inside a firewall (although they might be outside) and contain specific, known vulnerabilities which allow hackers to gain access. Once inside, a good honeypot contains an immense amount of seemingly attractive targets and information to attempt to causerepparttar 132063 hacker to spend time onrepparttar 132064 system. Whilerepparttar 132065 hacker is spending this time, he is being carefully observed and traced.

There are several reasons for creating honeypots.

- They are often simply a way to get hackers to expend time and energy on non-production systems. Because it appears torepparttar 132066 hacker that he's on a "real" system, there's a good likelihood that he may just stop looking aroundrepparttar 132067 rest ofrepparttar 132068 network. In other words he's already got what he came for.

- A honeypot is a great way to test security. Let's say you produced a new security product and you want to see if it's solid. You could set up a honeypot behind this product,repparttar 132069 "leak" it's existence to some hackers. Now sit back and see if they get through your defenses.

- Another reason for a honeypot is to attempt to get a hacker to stay long enough so that you can identify him.

- Asrepparttar 132070 hacker works his way throughrepparttar 132071 honeypot system, he will leave traces and his movements will be tracked. This can all be saved for use in criminal trials at a later date.

In my experience, a honeypot is an extremely useful part of security management. What I've seen others do is simple. Recycle some older computers, not really useful for production anymore, and install some "cool" applications and documents. Add some reasonable security with a few known holes, and make surerepparttar 132072 system makes itself known onrepparttar 132073 network.

Virus Hoaxes

Written by Richard Lowe


Have you ever gotten an email message like this?

BIGGGG TROUBLE !!!! DO NOT OPEN "WTC Survivor" It is a virus that will erase your whole "C" drive. It will come to you inrepparttar form of an E-Mail from a familiar person. I repeat a friend sent it to me, but called and warned me before I opened it. He was not so lucky and now he can't even start his computer! Forward this to everyone in your address book. I would rather receive this 25 times than not at all. If you receive an email called "WTC Survivor" do not open it. Delete it right away! This virus removes all dynamic link libraries (.dll files) from your computer.

Again,,, I urge all of you to make sure your virius scanners are up to date daily!!!!!! FG

Sounds very bad, doesn't it? My, what a horrible virus. It, and others like it, will eat your hard drive, destroy your email, infect every other machine on your network and listed in your address book, and even perhaps give you cookies and make your car break down!

This email and others like it are simply hoaxes? How do I know they are a hoax and not a real warning? Here's how it works. A virus propagates (reproduces) by automatically sending itself to all ofrepparttar 132061 addresses in your address book. This is a fairly complex piece of code, requiring a little knowledge onrepparttar 132062 part ofrepparttar 132063 person who createdrepparttar 132064 virus.

Well, instead of writing code to propagate something, why not ask some gullible people to do it for you? That's what these hoaxes are all about -repparttar 132065 "virus" isrepparttar 132066 email message andrepparttar 132067 delivery system is human being.

Why will people do this? Sometimes it's just for a laugh, and sometimes it's for more insidious reasons. Someone could send out a message which claimed that any message from AOL contained a virus, for example, in an effort to make AOL look bad.

Here is one ofrepparttar 132068 first hoaxes known to have been sent out acrossrepparttar 132069 internet. It went out in 1988.

SUBJ: Really Nasty Virus AREA: GENERAL (1)

I've just discovered probablyrepparttar 132070 world's worst computer virus yet. I had just finished a late night session of BBS'ing and file treading when I exited Telix 3 and attempted to run pkxarc to unarcrepparttar 132071 software I had downloaded. Next thing I knew my hard disk was seeking all over and it was apparently writing random sectors. Thank god for strong coffee and a recent backup. Everything was back to normal, so I calledrepparttar 132072 BBS again and downloaded a file. When I went to use ddir to list repparttar 132073 directory, my hard disk was getting trashed again. I

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