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This article presents tips on using the Internet and avoiding e-mail attacks. According to the author, it is advisable to assume any message as malicious. Next, use a new found paranoia to examine messages critically. Even messages that appear to come from firms where a user has an account, may not be real. Before clicking a link or taking any action requested in a message, determine for certain that the message is genuine. Return addresses, embedded links, and images can deceive. Look for dire warnings and other classic con techniques, undoubtedly accompanied by a link to a bogus Web site where the user will be asked to enter personal information. As a clue, the phishing message may be delivered to an e-mail address that the user don't use with that company or institution. The author emphasized that if a user get a message at an address he or she never registered with, the e-mail is fake. Intuition and a suspicious nature are a good start, but to separate real messages from bogus ones, the user also need to decipher their Web addresses. Another clue is the string of numbers following the URL prefix http://. It should be remembered that every Web site resides at a specific Internet Protocol address. INSET: Nvu Brings Free Web Authoring to the Firefox Browser.

The article reports on the network-based monitoring systems, which will detect and block outbound traffic containing sensitive data. The problem is not just the content within e-mail messages, but the explosion of alternative communication mechanisms that employees are using, including instant messaging, blogs, File Transfer Protocol transfer, Web mail and message boards. Network-based content monitoring and control tools take a broad-brush approach, examining all crosses the network unlike security tools that protect specific applications such as e-mail or instant messaging. INSET: Block That Swap.

The article discusses the concerns among some security experts that denial-of-service (DoS) attacks could be launched against core routers and switches which were raised upon the disclosure in April 2004 of two serious flaws in widely used Internet technologies. One of the vulnerabilities involves Cisco Systems' implementation of the Simple Network Management Protocol in its Internetworking Operating System. The flaw could allow remote attackers to cause vulnerable systems to repeatedly restart when processing specific SNMP requests, eventually leading to DoS conditions. According to Amit Yoran, director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's National Cyber Security Division, the flaw is particularly dangerous because it affects a wide range of Cisco's routers and switches and is very easy to exploit. Meanwhile, a US-CERT advisory warned of a critical flaw in the Internet's core Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). The flaw allows remote attackers to create DoS conditions against TCP connections, with sustained attacks capable of disrupting portions of the Internet, the advisory stated. The flaw was disclosed by Great Britain's National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre and involved a long-known weakness in TCP that allows attackers to constantly reset routers by guessing a unique 32-bit number needed for the process.

Discusses the application of Internet Protocol security (IPsec) for client/server information technology infrastructure. Application of IPsec for virtual private network; Implications of the proliferation of Web-based technology; Computer devices affected by the application of Secure Sockets Layer protocol.

The article discusses the two computer security problems which threaten the entire Internet. The easy one to fix is in Cisco routers and switches; Cisco has a patch that blocks the problem. The other vulnerability is with the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), the TCP in TCP/IP. Put simply, the TCP vulnerability makes it possible for an attacker to shut down a TCP session after guessing a random number. It could be used to shut down communication between two routers on an Internet backbone. That, in turn, could knock out whole chunks of the Internet until the routers recover and rebuild their routing tables. There are several fixes for this such as IPsec, RFC 1948, and RFC 2385. Some use encryption. But they all require trade-offs. With regards to the TCP flaw, the Internet backbone is largely at risk because the routers running it don't have the computing power to run encryption-based protocols like IPsec, which could block not only number-guessing attacks but many other threats as well. The authors says that what it would take to roll in faster hardware for all of the Internet's backbone routers is just money. The author concludes that if money is not appropriated for this problem, then there's no one else to blame when some number-guessing attacker brings down the Internet.