General Security

Articles Index

Horrible, No-Good, Nasty, Worst-Ever Virus
A joke hoax email message that pokes fun at the spam chain letter hoaxes that go around and how gullible users are when they open attachments and follow the directions of such messages

What Is In a Name?
Hacker purists constantly get upset about the mis-use of the term hacker. Many words are adopted to mean more than they were specifically intended- Bandaid is used instead of self-sticking bandage; Q-Tip is used instead of cotton-tipped swab. Hacker has been adopted into the mainstream vocabulary to mean any sort of cyber-criminal and its here to stay

To Disclose or Not To Disclose
The Department of Homeland Security wants to ensure companies that their information will be kept secret if they disclose details of cyber-attacks and security incidents. Senator Feinstein introduced a bill that would require companies to share such information. Is disclosure good or bad? For whom is it good or bad?

Counter-Hacking: The Sequel
Senator Hatch wants to destroy computers found to be downloading illegal software. The RIAA and MPAA have lobbied state and federal governments for years to block illegal MP3's and allow them to counter-hack violators.

Virus Writing 101
The University of Calgary is offering a hotly debated course on malware and viruses. Part of the class will actually teach the students how to create their own viruses. Many in the security community fear this will just create the next generation of malicious code developers and is not necessary to teach defense and security.

Security Through Obscurity
Many profess security through obscurity and protest the sharing of hacker tools and techniques through classes or through books such as Hacking Exposed, Hack Attacks Revealed and the like. This article shares my point of view on why security through obscurity is the wrong way to go

Counter-Hacking: Savior or Vigilante?
An article on counter-hacking or counter-attacking when an infected device hits your computer. Is it legal or ethical to respond? Is it vigilantism? There are many questions yet to be answered on how to handle devices that are insecure and show no signs of fixing themselves anytime soon

VPN's: IPSec vs. SSL
VPN's: IPSec vs. SSL is an article comparing and contrasting internet protocol security (IPSec) virtual private networks (VPN) with secure sockets layer (SSL) VPN's from your About.com Guide for Internet / Network Security, Tony Bradley

Are You Breaking The Law?
Article on state Super-DMCA laws lobbied by the MPAA and how they may be mis-interpreted to make firewalls, NAT, VPN's, encryption and other security measures illegal

April Fool's Day Computer Pranks
An article about the many jokes and pranks people pull on each other's computers on April Fool's Day each year.

Creating Secure Passwords
Article on password security. Passwords need to be long enough and complicated enough to protect you, but not so complicated you forget them. Also, due to password cracking algorithms and the format of the encrypted password hash, sometimes a shorter password can be better than a longer password

False Sense of Security
Home users are migrating to broadband, 24/7 connections to the Internet without the basic knowledge and skills necessary to protect themselves and the rest of the Internet from the security risks that exist on their computer. This false sense of security is bad for everyone.

Security Basics For Home Computing
a short article describing basic computer and network security steps for home users and small office home office (SOHO) users

Netsecurity New Year's Resolutions
Your About.com Guide for Internet / Network Security, Tony Bradley, has put together a Top 10 list of New Year's resolutions you can use to help you and your computer have a better year in 2006

Intuit Apologizes For "TurboHacks"
Intuit apologizes for product activation and spyware in the flagship Turbotax income tax preparation software program. H&R Block capitalized on the customer backlash to sell more copies of its program- TaxCut

Interview with Eric Cole
This is an interview with Eric Cole by your About.com Guide, Tony Bradley, Eric Cole is the author of Hiding In Plain Sight and Hackers Beware. He is currently chief scientist for The Sytex Group's Information Warfare Center. Eric Cole spent more than five years working in information security for the CIA.

Hacking Exposed Chat Session
On June 12, 2003 two of the authors of Hacking Exposed, George Kurtz and Stuart McClure, joined us at the About.com Internet / Network Security chat room to talk about their books and information security- this is the transcript of that chat session

Protect Yourself From Spyware
A quick, down and dirty hit list of the 5 easy steps you can take to protect your computer system or network from being infiltrated by spyware and adware

Port Knocking
Port knocking is all the rage these days. As with almost anything in computers- what can be used to provide a convenience or feature can also be turned against you. Both good guys and bad guys are discovering new ways to use port knocking.

Hackers Use Patches To Develop Exploits
Hackers use patches to develop exploits. They wait and reverse engineer patches in order to determine what vulnerabilities are fixed and how they are fixed so they can then figure out how to exploit them.

Zero-Day Exploit of CHM Vulnerability in Internet Explorer
Microsoft Internet Explorer has been reported prone to an unspecified vulnerability when handling CHM files. There is zero-day exploit code in the wild, but not actively spreading at this time. The CHM exploit is exploitable to provide automatic delivery and execution of an arbitrary executable. This would occur when malicious web content is rendered in Internet Explorer.

Personal Firewall Day
January 15th, 2004 has been declared Personal Firewall Day by a handful of software and security companies including Microsoft, TruSecure, Zone Labs and more.

Execution Protection Technology
Microsoft, AMD and Intel are rolling out Execution Protection technology which will help to reduce or elimnate buffer overflows and overruns as a security threat

Encryption on the Rise
A brief article on the efforts of the RIAA to halt the swapping of illegal MP3 music files and the effect it has had on network security- namely that more users are adopting encryption schemes to try to 'hide' from the RIAA.

National Strategy to Protect Lobbyists
A brief article about the Bush administration's National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace and how the current version, watered down by lobbying interests and unfunded to actually accomplish anyhting, does virtually nothing to protect the critical infrastructure or public Internet

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