Exploring the Internet

91.113-021Instructor: P Krolak

P. D. & M.S. Krolak Copyright 2005

The Internet and Security

Class Announcements

• Class Notes are available on my blog.

• Scavenger Hunt is Due Tonight!

• You should have at least 8 blog entries before tonight for your final.

• If you missed a class, please submit a make up blog based upon the instructions in my blog.

Follow Up from Last Class

Source:

The Dark Side of the Internet

Viruses, Worms, and Trojan Horses

• A virus is a computer program that is program that can hide itself in the files of a computer. Once in the computer it will replicate itself and infect more files in a manner similar to a biological virus.

• Viruses can destroy the data files and corrupt the disk, in extreme cases actually cause hardware failures.

Worms

Worm -- A program that rapidly replicates and sends messages over a network to create a denial of serve by flooding with the network with useless messages.

Trojan Horses

• Trojan Horse -- A program that seems desirable to bring into the user's environment but has a hidden piece of code that carries out some actions on the user's computer.

• These actions range from harmless messages to destruction of user files, denial of service, or stealing personal data.

• Lately hackers have taken over thousands of computers to launch attacks on other sites.

Spam

Spam is electronic junk that like the fatty canned meat of the same name clogs our internet communication lines at an alarming rate, gobbles up storage, and at best irritates users, costs the ISPs and others a fortune to prevent and/or to remove. At its worst spam is used by scammers, hackers, and others to market and prey on literally millions of users at a very low cost.

Spam

• What is Spam?Junk email – unwanted, resource robbing, and often contains viruses, worms,

and scams.• Why is it an increasing problem?

Spam is the fastest growing component of messages on the Internet that consumes bandwidth, storage, and angers the user. ISPs and some consumer groups are attempting to shut down the worst offenders.

• What can be done about it?– Closing down ISP that permit email relaying.– Apply filters and tools to remove it. – Lobby for federal legislation to create civil and criminal penalties for those

who send Spam. – A recently passed law is being used to prosecute commercial spammers.

Why Estimate the Cost of Spam?

• Important for policy reasons to know severity of problem –helps in assigning priority to issue;

• To determine which economic actors have to bear costs – alsoimportant in focussing on solutions;

• Spam imposes negative externality on society (similar topollution in the manufacturing economy): economic damageand cost borne by third parties resulting in an overall loss ofwelfare for society;

• If costs of spam are unacceptable then have to put in placemechanisms to change behaviour of producers of spam;

• Market itself does not provide mechanism to correct for costsinflicted by spam. If economic solutions are used to combatspam, cost data can help determine prices applied to reduce oreliminate spam;

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/47/5/26618988.pdf

Impact on Consumers

• E-mail has value to recipient which varies with the content;• Each e-mail entails the same receiving/processing cost for consumer. For spam

the value of the e-mail is negative and to this must be added the processing cost;

• If the amount of spam received is extremely high it could theoretically outweigh the positive value of receiving e-mail;

• Costs to consumers for processing mail are declining as consumers switch to broadband from dial-up (where timebased Internet access charges exist) and because of quicker download times;

• But increase in volume of spam likely to result in net increase in costs;

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/47/5/26618988.pdf

Overall Cost: Some Estimates

• Reduced use of an efficient and cheap means of communications among economic actors – slows down growth of e-commerce and development of digital economy.

Total economic impact of spam – estimates vary:• Global cost “conservatively” estimated at estimated at €10 Billion (European

Commission Study 2001);• Ferris Research (Jan. 2003) estimated that spam cost US companies $8.9

billion dollars in 2002. The same study estimated the cost of spam in Europe as US$2.5 billion.

• UNCTAD (2003): $20 billion;• Cost to Hong Kong economy $1.3 billion (HKISPA 2004);

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/47/5/26618988.pdf

Spyware

• Spyware – software that gathers information about a person or computer without permission or knowledge.

• Once loaded unto a computer sends data back to the site that launched them.

• Can be very dangerous and used in identity theft and other forms of fraud.

• Can make your computer appear to be slow and unresponsive.

Internet Scams

• Scams over the Internet unlike the fraud and similar crime can be difficult to detect, prosecute, and prevent.

• Email can be used to reach 250 million with a simple program and a CD-ROM with the email addresses.

• Example - The African businessman who offers to split a large sum of money if he can only electronically wire it to your checking account. He also requires a fee wired to his account to bribe fellow country men. Your fee and your bank account are immediately seen to vanish.

• See http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/10/31/ftc.web.scams/

Phishing

What is Phishing?– Using email or web sites to look like authentic

corporate communications and web sites to trick people into giving personal and financial information.

– FBI sees this a fast growing form of fraud and can lead to theft of identity.

See http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/Crimes/Delivered/internet.htm

Identity Theft

• Identity Theft – the acquiring of personal and financial information about a person for criminal purposes.

• Your Social Security Number, credit card numbers, and passwords on your machine can be used to gain information about you from the web sources. Once the information is gained it is used to change large amounts for plane tickets, etc. The person can also assume your identity for fraud and terrorism.

• It can take up to 18 months and thousands of dollars to restore your credit.

See http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/15965.html

Protecting Yourself on the Internet

• Firewalls (both HDW and SFW)

• Anti-Virus & Anti-Spyware

• Never open an attachment that you were not expecting. If in doubt call the person.

• Always backup the critical data

What is computer security?

computer security

n.

1. The systematic methods and procedures employed to protect information assets on computer systems to protect against intentional and unintentional use, modification, deletion, manipulation, access, or corruption.

What is malware?

• malware (mal´wãr) (n.) Short for malicious software, software designed specifically to damage or disrupt a system, such as a virus or a Trojan horse.

Source:: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/m/malware.html

Internet and Security

The Internet is a paradox like almost everything in modern society. It offers many benefits yet it also opens us to a variety of evils.

As we explore the Internet we must also protect ourselves from evil

• First we must make sure our computer is secure or at least that we make difficult for trespassers and other evil doers to enter it and attack it.

• Second we must secure our browsers and email system.

• Third we must protect our network portal and our communications.

• Finally we must prepare to be attacked and have a plan for minimizing the damage.

An Electronic Pearl Harbor

“It may even be unclear what constitutes an act of war. If U.S. satellites suddenly go blind and the telephone network on the eastern seaboard goes down, it is possible that the United States could not even identify the enemy. Its strategic stockpile of weapons would be of little use. There would be no big factory to bomb -- only a person somewhere writing software. The possibility of an electronic Pearl Harbor has sparked a debate on how to counter the threat.”

Source: “Bits, bytes, and diplomacy” Walter Wriston (Foreign Affairs, Sept-Oct 1997 v76 n5 p172(11)

What is a virus?

Virus

n.

1. A self-replicating software program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

What is a Trojan Horse?Trojan horsen.1. A malicious program that is disguised as legitimate software.

Trojan horses can erase or overwrite data on a computer, corrupt files in a subtle way, spread other malware, set up networks of zombi computers in order to launch DDoS attacks or send spam, spy on the user of a computer and covertly reporting data like browsing habits to other people, log keystrokes to steal information such as passwords and credit card numbers, phish for bank or other account details, which can be used for criminal activities, or install a backdoor on a computer system.

Source: www.wikipedia.org

What’s a Wabbit?

wabbitn.1. A program that replicates itself on a computer but does not touch other documents or executables. It is not spread through the Internet. It makes so many copies of a program that the computer cannot even start the program that would allow the user to terminate the wabbit program.

Malware Detection

• Norton Anti-Virus

• McAfee Anti-Virus

• Panda Software

What is spyware?

spywaren.1. a broad category of malicious software intended to intercept or take partial control of a computer's operation without the user's informed consent. Unlike viruses, it does not usually self-replicate. Spyware is designed to exploit infected computers for the commercial gain of third parties. Typical tactics furthering this goal include delivery of unsolicited pop-up advertisements; theft of personal information (including financial information such as credit card numbers); monitoring of web-browsing activity for marketing purposes; or routing of HTTP requests to advertising sites.

As of 2005, spyware affects only computers running Microsoft Windows. There have been no reported observations of spyware for Mac OS X, Linux, or other platforms

Source: www.wikipedia.org

How to prevent / detect spyware

• Adaware– www.lavasoft

• WebRoot’s SpySweeper– www.WebRoot.com

• Spy Bot• Spyware Doctor• HijackThis• Microsoft Anti Spyware Beta

– http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

What are cookies?

cookiesn.1. Small data files written to your hard drive by some Web sites when you view them in your browser. These data files contain information the site can use to track such things as passwords, lists of pages you've visited, and the date when you last looked at a certain page.

Source: http://www.cnet.com/Resources/Info/Glossary/Terms/cookie.html

What are Denial of Service (DOS) Attacks?

DoS attack Short for denial-of-service attack, a type of attack

on a network that is designed to bring the network to its knees by flooding it with useless traffic. Many DoS attacks, such as the Ping of Death and Teardrop attacks, exploit limitations in the TCP/IP protocols. For all known DoS attacks, there are software fixes that system administrators can install to limit the damage caused by the attacks. But, like viruses, new DoS attacks are constantly being dreamed up by hackers.

Source: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/D/DoS_attack.html

What are worms?

worm

n.

1. A self-replicating piece of code that uses security lapses to travel from machine to machine, placing copies of itself everywhere and then using those newly compromised machines as bases to attack further systems.

Source: www.nndb.com

Early Viruses

• Brain Virus from Pakistan (1986)– First PC virus– Affected only certain types of floppy drives

• Dark Avenger.1800 virus (1989)– Written in Sophia, Bulgaria.– Posed the first international virus threat.– Used anti-virus software to spread.

• Michelangelo (1992)– 5 million systems were predicted to be affected.– Only 10,000 systems were ever infected.– A boon for anti-virus software companies.

Source: http://www.research.ibm.com/antivirus/timeline.htm

Who are hackers?

hacker

n.

1. A computer expert

2. A person that intentionally circumvents computer security systems (more often used by the media)

John Draper (a.k.a Cap’n Crunch)

• Used a Cap’n Crunch toy whistle to make unlimited free payphone calls.

• The whistle, unbeknownst to General Mills (the manufacturer of Cap’n Crunch) created a 2600 Hz tone.

• This frequency was the same used by phone technicians to test payphones and make free phone calls.

Ian Murphy

• Changed the internal clocks at AT&T.

• Impact: Phone bills were universally incorrect. Late night discounts were given to daytime users and late night users were subject to high bills.

• First hacker to go to jail.• Inspired the movie,

Sneakers

Robert Morris

• Son of chief scientist at the National Security Agency (NSA)

• In 1988, he wrote the first worm that was released to the public.

• He claimed he was trying to determine the size of the Internet.

• Affected 6,000 systems• 3 yrs probation• 400 hours of community

service• Fined $10,400.

Source: www.nndb.com

Vladimir Levin

• Hacked Citibank

• Stole $10 – 12 million

• Arrested in 1995.

• Fought extradition for two years

• 3 yrs in prison

• Had to return $240,015 to Citibank

Kevin Mitnick

• Hacked– PACBell– The Pentagon

Adrian Lamo

• Homeless hacker who only performs intrusion analysis for free for large companies.

• Hacked into – MCI WorldCom– New York Times Co.– Microsoft– AOL Time Warner– CSC– NBC

• NYT pressed charges against him.

• 1 year home probation.

Simple Protection against Hackers

• Simplest security – Username and Password– Statistic about password frequency– Passwords should contain letters, numbers and other

assorted symbols.• Use

– @ instead of a– $ instead of s– 3 instead of E– & instead of et– 1 or ! instead of i– 1 instead of l (depending on if you use ! instead of i)– Ex. Instead of using the password “mainstreet” use “m@1n$tr3&”

Protecting Yourself on the Internet

• Firewalls (both HDW and SFW)

• Use daily updated Anti-Virus & Anti-Spyware

• Never open an attachment that you were not expecting. If in doubt call the person.

• Always backup the critical data

Social Engineering