Network Security: What are you waiting for?

Contact:dtatone@richtersecurity.com

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Network Security: What are you waiting for?
by Daniel Tatone (moosemand@edgeeffect.com
)
Mon May 07 2001
The field of computer Security is basically one big horror story after
another. Major attacks are continuously being identified on the media:
In early 2000,Yahoo, eBay, and CNN were victims of denial of service attacks
launched by “Mafiaboy”
CNN – October 27th, 2000: Hackers have broken into Microsoft's computer
network in what the company has described as "a deplorable act of industrial
espionage."
Trend Micro – May 18, 2000: Major Virus Outbreak Alert from Trend Micro –
VBS_LOVELETTER Hits Users Worldwide The “love bug” caused billions of
dollars of damage worldwide.
With the advent of high-speed Internet access, and the massive underground
“hacker” community that has developed in cyberspace, organizations and
companies put their image (websites) and their data (confidential
information) at high risk when establishing a connection to the Internet
that is not securely implemented.
Attrition.org reported a record 1542 website defacements for the month of
April 2001, mostly due to the “Cyber-War” currently on the go between China
and the United States. That more than quadruples the number of defacements
in April 2000, and is up 570% from the reported defacements in April 1999.
Do you see a trend?
Internet Security breaches are on the rise, and most companies are virtually
unaware of the trend or are portraying the “Ostrich Syndrome” (sticking
their heads in the sand) and avoiding the issue altogether, thinking: “that
won’t happen to me, why would someone want to attack me—my presence on the
Internet is minimal”. But from a Hacker\’s perspective it is easier to
attack a small/medium size business who has a mistakenly connected their
backbone directly onto the Internet with no firewall or means of access
control rather than a government agency or large firm (the “big boys” like
Microsoft or Cisco) who have invested a large amount of resources in
securing their infrastructure. Once a small/medium business has been
compromised the attacker could then launch attacks anonymously against the
“Big boys” from there.
There are principally three types of attackers: The first we will discuss is
the Amateur Hacker also known as a “cracker”. Crackers have developed an
underground community often comprised of young individuals in their teens
known as “Script Kiddies”. These Script Kiddies pride themselves on their
web defacements, denial of service attacks (as seen against Yahoo and eBay
in January 2000) and system breaches. They usually do not understand the
technical details behind the attacks that they perform; they rather collect
and rely on already made hacker tools and scripts to perform their system
breaches. They usually sign their “Hacker Alias” or “Hacker Group” on the
website they deface, greet their fellow hackers, dismiss their “rivals” in
the hacker community and occasionally post a political message. Often the
messages left on the defaced site include comments to the administrator of
the site, indicating that no “real” damage has been inflicted on the system
and a backup of the original web page is available. By not actually deleting
any information they assume it is merely a prank showing their “hacking”
ability. However, what they do not realize is that the defacement costs the
victim companies unavailability and downtime, lead