Named
after uncivilized barbarians of Roman times, vandalism is willful or
malicious destruction, injury, disfigurement or defacement of any
public or private property. Today
that includes invading and damaging personal computers.
Computer
vandals have been called hackers (or crackers) and their actions are
criminal. As one
anonymous writer put it, “Internet is a great tool to extend your
possibilities and your knowledge, but as in real life not only good
things are happening there. Unfortunately,
like in real life, virtual life features all kinds of crime and fraud.
There are lots of thieves, swindlers and other criminals on the
Internet.”
Hackers
or crackers? The bad guys break into other people’s computer systems for
malicious reasons. These aren’t the hackers, says Eric Raymond.
According to him,
| There
is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and
networking wizards that traces its history back through
decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the
earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture
originated the term `hacker'. Hackers built the Internet.
Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today.
Hackers run Usenet. Hackers
make the World Wide Web work.
There
is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers,
but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get
a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone
system. Real hackers call these people `crackers' and want
nothing to do with them.
The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers
break them.
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Remember
the Trojan Horse? Bad guys hid inside it until they could get into the
city to do their evil deed. A Trojan computer program is similar.
It’s a program that performs an unauthorized function, hidden inside
an authorized program. It
does something other than it claims to do, usually something
malicious, and it is intended by the author to do whatever it does.
Two
kinds of crackers regularly try to get into your computers.
The first is the vandal who wants to break into your computer
for personal reasons, and the second is the professional Web master
who wants to keep track of what you're doing or run ads on your
system.
What
personal reasons do people have for wanting to break into others'
computers? Sometimes,
they're just kids testing a hacking program they picked up from the
Internet. Lots of those
programs, like "Back Orifice," are readily available.
Sometimes these kids want to see if they can find some adult pictures
on your computer. Local
service providers may try to filter out adult sites, but they can't
stop adolescent hackers from locating what may be stored on others'
PC's.
S
ome
hackers are more insidious. They
want to get into your PC
to steal files with sensitive personal or business information, or
they want to steal passwords so that they can access the Internet on
your account. Both of
these results can be costly. Hackers can also view anything you happen
to have in your computer, including plans, diaries, photographs,
addresses and phone numbers, pin numbers, diary entries or creative
ideas.
Sometimes
these hackers want to infect your computer with a virus that will
damage your PC or files and programs.
One visit to AntiOnline
will reveal how destructive these viruses can be.
Make
sure that you have a good anti-virus program. I personally like Norton
AntiVirus the best. It’s
available for $50 (19 BD). McAfee
is also an excellent virus protector that I used for years until it
let me down once by missing a virus that Norton would have caught. The
McAffee VirusScan 6.0 is available from CNet
for $32 (BD 12). Keep in
mind that even the best anti-virus program won't protect you against
new viruses unless you keep it updated.
Norton
updates its virus "definition" files automatically, and as
soon as a new virus hits the Net.
McAfee also provides regular updates.
Not only should you update your virus protection regularly, you
should also subscribe to one of the free newsletters that will inform
you of new viruses.
To
keep hackers out, download the free firewall program called Zone
Alarm by Zone Labs.
It will make your computer invisible to hackers.
It will also record attempts by hackers to invade your
computer. This is especially necessary if you have an ADSL broadband
connection where your IP address remains the same, making it easy for
hackers to find unless you use a firewall that will make your computer
invisible to outsiders. Both McAfee and Norton also have personal firewall programs;
but ZoneAlarm is excellent and it’s free.
The
second type of hacker is the professional collecting information on
people's buying habits or on how they use their PC's.
They've developed programs that get placed in your computer
when you visit a Web site. These
programs then start recording and relaying information back to the
source. They also pop up
windows advertising products or services as well as Web sites.
An ad for a casino, for example, will keep popping up when you
access different sites on the Internet.
Visit the
Scumware site
to see which applications are delivering advertising in this fashion.
To clean these out, you need AdAware
by Lavasoft. The program is free and easy to install.
It will scan your computer for offenders that you can
eliminate.
Email
has become an increasing source of security problems.
Outlook express has been particularly hard hit because of
"holes" that needed plugged to keep damaging material out.
However,
any mailer that can carry attachments, including the free mail
services like hotmail, yahoo and email, poses a risk to users who open
attachments. The only way
to avoid this problem is to NEVER OPEN ATTACHMENTS.
Even attachments from friends can be suspect if the friends
don't have an up-to-date anti-virus program.
Update
ALL the latest security patches.
It’s important to keep your patches current since holes, back
doors, and bugs are the most popular avenues for hacker attacks.
Gibson
Research Corporation has devoted itself to helping computer
users test
their security. Visit
their Web site and take the "leak Test."
It's free, and will let you know just how vulnerable your
computer is to attack.
It
takes someone who can think like a hacker to defend against a cracker.
Worms (not the kind that birds eat), security holes, virus
carrying email attachments, Trojan horses (not the one from historical
Troy) were all terms that I knew nothing about a few years ago.
But
when a local cracker broke into my system and ran up a 600 BD Inet
bill, I couldn't just sit and let it happen again.
I had to learn what hackers do and how they think.
I visited every Web site that I could learn from.
I asked specialists who had learned to be hackers.
They warned me of the dangers of downloading programs from
hackers’ sites.
Should
you decide to do what I did, a word of caution:
beware of what damage can be done to your PC by vandals lurking
in the dark. Don't access
a hacker's site from a PC that has any sensitive information on it.
Don't give your email address to anyone you don't know.
Have a program like Tauscan
installed to check against back door invaders, and change your
passwords immediately after to leave the site, shut your computer down
and reboot.
If
you need an email address to get into a site or to download a program
from a site, sign up for one on Hotmail or Yahoo or Mail or one of the
other free email sites. Give your real name to the email site but use an alias for
your new email account.
Online
chat also has its dangers. Unless
you're careful about who and what you give access to, you could easily
become a victim of a carefully wrought script sent by one of the
sickos who hang out in various chat rooms just waiting for a new
victim. These scripts can
carry viruses and Trojan horses to make your computing life miserable.
If
all of this makes you feel a bit paranoid, think about Francis
Quarles’ advice: “Let the fear of danger
be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the
danger.”
Finally,
a complement to that thought and to my message comes from H. Stanley
Judd’s observation that “The
ultimate security is your understanding of reality.”
