So much of our world is now dependent on Internet to keep things flowing. I still think it's a great tool as Internet has broken down international barriers. I have met many wonderful people through this medium.

While difficulties I have been experiencing over last couple of days are probably coincidental, I remember a point last year when this wasn't case. It wasn't caused by hackers, or Australia's "extension cord" being cut by a Japanese trawler (again).

It was sun....seriously...solar flares.

A solar flare is an explosion on Sun that happens when energy stored within it is suddenly released. Flares produce a burst of radiation across entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to x-rays and gamma-rays - it's a radiation smorgasboard!

The frequency of these flares is tied in with Sun's eleven year cycle. When flares peak, radiation forty billion times greater than an atomic bomb, weighing from 1-10 billion tonnes and travelling at approximately 1-2 million mph is flung into solar system. When solar cycle is at a minimum, active regions are small and rare. Few solar flares are detected. These multiply as Sun approaches most active part of its cycle. The Sun reached its maximum, from what I understand, late last year.

This is not without reason. As more and more companies and services come online, risk and potential damage of security breaches increases. As number of appealing targets grows, so does number of hackers. The number of poorly administered servers on Internet is staggering. Blatant security holes, bugs from old software that system administrators have failed to update, and compromised file systems are scattered all over world.

One weak server on Internet is a danger to all servers; if a hacker can attack and take over one system, he or she can use it as a base to launch attacks on other systems. The most important thing for hacker is hiding their trail. The more systems hackers can conquer, harder it becomes to trace them. It is very important that everyone on Internet spend some time shoring up their systems.

It is a simple fact of life that robbery, decryption, and embezzlement exists in our societies. It is only natural that this human trait will carry over to cyberspace. The Internet is a dangerous place. Just as it isn't always perfectly safe to go to ATM machine alone at night, it isn't always perfectly safe to send a credit card number electronically. How safe transaction actually is depends on amount of time and effort we (both customer and vendor) spend protecting ourselves.

We have lot of naive Internet users who think all thy have to do is get connected to Internet, get an e-mail address, and all is wonderful Â… The people who are selling Internet are basically selling vacation land with beachfront property, and lot of people are buying it. They think it's a great investment. But when they show up, it's got alligators, it's underwater, and there's yellow fever. Any user of Internet can be a victim of crime.

A lot of people are breaking into lot of systems. They are looking for information. An obvious symptom of intrusion is a change in login time showing your computer use when you were nowhere near your computer. Or, you might notice that a broad array of your files have been tampered with. Perhaps system's memory space has been changed or somebody is sending e-mails on your behalf by using e-mail address.