Search

The article discusses BRAP forensics, or forensics that is centered around use of an Internet browser. Whereas traditional computer forensics may seek to recover data from storage media or track a computer user's activity by examining a log file, BRAP combines and goes beyond these by means of cookies, caches, and URL histories created by the browser. A BRAP analysis can uncover a variety of personal information such as what sites a person has visited, what data have been accessed, and what kind of media they may have been stored on. In the author's view BRAP forensics presents a challenge to safeguarding personal privacy.

The article focuses on the security models for the technology. The author believes that information technology (IT) security has been the focused of attention due to the increased invasion of viruses, password crackers, worms and other types of exploits and malware. Relative to this, he notes that various security models have been suggested such as the security in depth (SID), faith-based security and security through obscurity. On the other hand, he argues that security models are often out of date and tend to be obtuse.

The article discusses a system for detecting the presence of credit card information on magnetic strips. Police in Nevada were puzzled to find criminals carrying large numbers of hotel keys. It turned out that thieves had transferred stolen credit card information onto the keys' magnetic strips in order to circumvent Nevada law that forbids a person to be in possession of more than two credit cards in another person's name. The author describes the CardSleuth system that can detect the presence of such anomalous data on a magnetic strip, without actually reading and recording the data.

The article focuses on digital security models available for general information security. There are several kinds recommended by professionals including time-based security, principal of least privilege, defense-in-depth, baseline security, perimeter hardening, intrusion detection and intrusion prevention. Time-based security uses time as the measure of risk. The principle of least privilege depends on the degree of control a user has. The "Better-Than-Nothing" Security Practices (BTNSP) model is given as an example of a security prototype. Information is given for BTNSP online.

The article discusses methods to conceal electronic data on computer networks. Covert channeling techniques, including protocol bending, which involves the use of a network protocol for some unintended purpose by embedding data in packets in unexpected places, and packet crafting, which uses options fields in packets to convey applications-layer covert data, as well as physical data hiding, which hides "dark," secret, data among "light" data that is intended to be seen, are analyzed by the author.

The article discusses computer fraud in the era of global digitization. Computer and network technology allows white collar criminals to operate more efficiently and with less risk across a global area. Digital fraud consisting of embezzlement, and violation of intellectual property laws do far more economic damage than physical crimes, though they often go unreported. The author details one of the major entry sources to digital fraud: the creation of fungible identification documents through identity theft.

This article focuses on phishing scams deployed in such a way that they stand a chance of success against a reasonably intelligent and enlightened end user. The author defines phishing as an attach using both social engineering and technical subterfuge to steal consumers' personal identity data and financial account credentials. The requirements of an effective phishing require that the scams looks real, present themselves to a target-of-opportunity, satisfy the reasonableness condition, cause the unwary to suspend disbelief, and clean up after the catch.

The article presents information related to the identification and defense against port-related vulnerabilities in computer systems. It is now well documented that some of the greatest security vulnerabilities to computer software are a result of inattention to current service packs, hot fixes, and patches. Things are actually much worse when one adds in all of the present and future malware for which no betraying signature or operational characteristics have as yet been discovered. This problem deserves consideration regardless of the network security precautions. The relevance of IANA registration has declined over time as more Internet vendors wandered off on their own. Any rationale there might be for port assignments is not obvious. The trade-off between usability and security appears whenever a software company seeks hegemony in its market. Nowhere was this more evident than in pre-XP Windows releases that came with virtually every feature enabled. Microsoft in general, and the Windows OS in particular, receives continuous media criticism over security vulnerabilities--some deserved, some not.

The article presents information on security risks of WiFi connectivity. While many users may know that WiFi is vulnerable to hacking, far fewer know why. The genesis of the wireless insecurity problem was the 802.11 standard. The vulnerabilities were built into the protocols. Nowhere is this more evident than in the bungled implementation of the RC4 symmetric, stream cipher algorithm in the implementation of Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP). The WEP implementation of RC4 is flawed in several ways. It should be noted that even if the implementation of RC4 was corrected, WEP would still be vulnerable to replay attacks, checksum forging, message integrity check forging, and sundry authentication attacks resulting from the fact that both the plaintext challenge and cipher text response are broadcast. IEEE standard for IV selection was ambiguous, so many wireless vendors use sequential IV generators that begin with 00:00:00 and wrap with FF:FF:FF. Other WEP weaknesses that may be exploited include defective key-generation implementations. INSET: URL Pearls.

This article discusses the implications of the confidentiality, privacy, and security aspects of this legislation as it relates to IT within modern organizations, considering each piece of legislation in the order in which it was implemented. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (GLB) began life as the Financial Modernization Act of 1999. As the title implies, it deals with regulations regarding the scope and interrelationships of key financial industries: insurance, securities, and banking. Though Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) predates GLB by approximately three years, its implementation is so extensive that some of its provisions haven't yet been put in force. Operationally, HIPAA applies to electronic protected health information as it relates to covered entities. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 was the Congressional response to the corporate and accounting scandals that span the 15-year interval between the Salomon Brothers bond-trading scandal and the Enron and MCIWorldcom incidents. INSET: URL Pearls.

This article assesses the extent of the security risks involved in wireless networking technology by considering three possible scenarios demonstrating vulnerabilities. The Service Set ID (SSID) is a 32 byte or less network name of a service set. This name is used by other network devices to initiate a connection. Wireless Application Protocols (WAP) may be configured as "open" or "closed." In the open mode, the WAP broadcasts its SSID to the world, while in closed mode, it does not. A computer with a WiFi card set to SSID=ANY will attempt to authenticate with the open WAPs with the strongest signals. This is called association polling and is built into Windows XP by default when wireless is enabled. The goal of Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) was to bring some of the security available in wired networks to WiFi. Unfortunately, the designers bungled the job. WEP suffers from two fundamental deficiencies — it was poorly designed and it was poorly implemented. Other than that, it's fine. A key WEP vulnerability results from the implementation of the RC4 symmetric stream cipher algorithm. INSET: URL Pearls.

It is informed that wireless technologies may be categorized in a variety of ways depending on their function, frequencies, bandwidth, communication protocols involved, and level of sophistication. They are broadly classified into the following categories: Wireless Data Networks (WDN), Personal Area Networks, Wireless Local Area Networks, of which the newer Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks and Wireless Wide Area Networks are offshoots, and satellite networks. WDN is a cluster of technologies primarily related to, developed for, and marketed by vendors in the telephony and handheld market. WDN includes protocols such as the Cellular Digital Packet Data, an older 19.2Kbps wireless technology that is still in use in some police departments for network communication with patrol cars; General Packet Radio Service and Code Division Multiple Access 2000, which are multiuser, combined voice and data 2.5- generation technologies that exceed 100Kbps; and Wireless Application Protocol, which provides wireless support of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol suite and now provides native support of Hypertext Transfer Protocol and Hypertext Markup Language. INSET: URL PEARLS.

The article discusses the transformation in IT education made by the organization of computing and information technology (CIT). Issues of greatest interest to CIT professionals are: reasons underlying the trend; possible changes, accompanying the shift, in how CIT will he organized and administered in the future; and whether the objectives of academic units that are thus reorganizing themselves are being realized. This article draws upon survey data to provide an early view of what the evolving profession is trying to accomplish, and the extent to which it is succeeding. The first set of questions concerned the scale CIT unit operations. Their operating budgets range from a few hundred thousand dollars to over $75 million; their external finding ranges from none to $58 million; they have between 8,500 and 250,000 square feet of space. Another sense of scale is provided by the number of majors the colleges offer, and the number of credit hours the programs produce. The number of majors ranges from five to 4,200; the number of credit hours generated ranges from 140 to 55,435. Studies indicate that CIT schools are more prevalent than colleges.

The article presents information on alternate data streams (ADS). The open-ended nature of ADSs makes them an extremely powerful Windows resource worthy of deeper exploration. One may make reasonable comparisons between the Macintosh Co. data and resource forks and the Microsoft Corp. primary and alternate data streams. In New Technology File System (NTFS) the primary data stream is called $DATA. A large number of ADSs may be associated with a single primary data stream. The author emphasize that ADSs are associated with and not attached to, primary data streams. The associations are maintained in the master file table (MFT) and managed by variety of application program interfaces (API). As a simple illustration, a right mouse click on any NTFS file and subsequent selection of the properties tab will recover ADS metadata through a standard Windows MFT API. ADSs may contain anything - text, images, sound and video files. The most interesting type of "anything" is binary executable. To understand ADS, one must investigate the way the Windows MFT record works. It is unfortunate in many ways, that the power of ADSs has yet to be realized.

This article discusses various issues related to the menace of Internet malicious software (malware), with specific reference to harms that it caused in the month of August 2003. According to vnunet.com, August 2003 has been the worst month on official record for malware. It is warned that the upward trend concerning the creation and distribution of malware is frightening. According to an estimate by Mi2g Ltd., damages of around $32.8 billion were suffered in August 2003 which represents the largest amount in the history of the Internet. It is highlighted that W32/Blaster is one of the dangerous malware. The article suggests that the best defense against malware is to practice eternal vigilance in this regard.

Discusses Internet forensics. Differences between computer and Internet forensics; Origin of Internet forensics based on forensic medicine; Network hacker activity.

The technique of anonymizing network traffic has existed for many years. In its most basic form, an `anonymizer' is the combination of software and some network appliance (server, router, gateway) that redirects network traffic in such a way that the primary functionality is preserved while all identifying characteristics of the traffic that might enable a network analyst to trace the traffic back to the original source are removed. The general practice of anonymization can be easily described by reference to a typical IP packet. In practice, anonymizing is associated with both Web and email network activity; although in the latter case the term 'remailer' is usually used to describe the process. However, in principle any network traffic, and any network protocol, can be anonymized. Anonymization is the business of obscuring the source and perhaps also the destination of network traffic. In this article, we've shown some of the best-known environments for anonymizing the Internet. Anonymizer.com's simple design makes it very popular. Crowds provides an entirely different approach by blending traffic into streams to make tracing difficult.

This article deals with Web caching. In the world of networks, caching is an important optimization tool, sharing this trait with replication and mirroring. Networks generate a lot of background chatter to keep the data moving along smoothly, and if it were not for these optimization tools, the volume of chatter would overwhelm the useful data and communication would come to a halt. Web caching, in its extreme form, routinely violates the principles modern societies routinely use to manage intellectual property up to and including over copyright infringement. Those people who oppose Web caching run the risk of being labeled cache busters. The defenders of intellectual property rights face formidable foes. The Web cache community seems to embrace the position there should be no expectation of proprietary ownership for anything placed on the Web. While the world recognizes a difference between perusing the intellectual property of others on the one hand, and making and distributing copies of it on the other, this distinction seems to have completely escaped the attention of the Internet cache protocol (ICP) creators. The optimization side of Web caching is indispensible to the successful deployment of the Internet. The intellectual property side is a disaster. The solution to the problem is the engagement of people who are sensitive to intellectual property issues, not just those interested in improving network efficiency, in a complete overhaul of the ICP.

The article focuses on personal security and underlying privacy issues. There is a genuine interest in the technical aspects underlying privacy and security issues relating to Internet use. The Web is all about a pair of Internet protocols Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that define, enable, and constrain web applications. HTTP is the application layer protocol that sits on top of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which, in turn, sits atop the Internet Protocol (IP). The collection of utilities relating to these protocols that reside between the physical communications layer of the Internet and the productivity tools that we use to get work done, for instance, Web browsers and email clients is called the TCI/IP protocol suite The HTTP part of this protocol suite is stateless. Under the typical scenario, this means that once an initial communication exchange between a client and a server is completed, the connection between them is dropped.

In this article ,the author discusses the emergence of the "code red worm," the computer virus into cyber space. The author refers to the U.S. FBI's report to measure the potential threat of the Code Red worm to the Internet Community. According to the case summary, the Code Red worm and mutations of the worm pose a continued and serious threat to Internet users. Immediate action is required to combat this threat. On July 19, the Code Red worm infected more than 250,000 systems in just nine hours. The worm scans the Internet, identifies vulnerable systems, and infects these systems by installing itself. Code Red began as just another piece of malicious software. The article contains the data related to the global spread of this virus. According to the author, to say that Code Red represented a serious threat is an understatement. The fact that a security hole as simple as the one described in this article allowed the infection of hundreds of thousands of Internet computers betrays a fundamental flaw in the way one handle the standards for data exchange. INSET: Links to Understanding the Code Red Worm..

The article discusses that cookies can be beneficial in electronic commerce but can invade personal privacy. The modern Websites' medium is defined, enabled, and constrained by a pair of Internet protocols, HTTP and HTML. HTTP is a platform-independent, client/server protocol defined for any packet-switched digital network that supports the lower-level Transmission Control Protocol /Internet Protocol suite. HTTP is an application layer protocol that sits directly a top Transmission Control Protocol, which in turn sits atop Internet Protocol. HTTP is rather unique, in that it is stateless. Once the transaction cycle is complete, the connection between client and server is disconnected. HTTP needs transaction persistence. The persistence would take the form of depositing digital information on the client's hard disk. This persistent state object came to be known as cookies. In any case, the technical description of a cookie is a piece of transaction state information left on the client before the HTTP transaction cycle is concluded. Included in this state Cookies are virtually unlimited in the range of information they can store. When such information gets stored in cookies, it is most likely the result of an end user unwisely volunteering this information in the first place. INSET: Berghel's URL Pearls..

The article assumes that in the future, information will be only available in the cyberspace. The distribution of digital information on physical media is just not efficient. People shouldn't have to carry information, stow it, package it, move it, lift it. CD-ROMs, DVD, and all sundry variations thereof are nearing the end of their life cycles because they are inherently inconvenient. The digital networks made cybermutations of written artifacts inevitable, and any particular cyber-mutation-instance of a written artifact is likely to be irrelevant in the long run. By 2100, current view of electronic publications as copyrightable artifacts will be viewed primarily as a historical allegiance to a pre-participatory, non-interactive. Electronic publishing will be the ongoing process. A useful metaphor for cyber-publishing is multiple layers of moving, orthogonal filmstrips in various stages of completion. Each filmstrip represents an ongoing publishing activity or thought sequence. A new world order in electronic publishing will soon be there. It will be dynamic, interactive and participatory. It will necessarily extend beyond hyper-publishing, because of the latter's version-centricity, the fact that it is self-limiting by not focusing on bringing the information producers and consumers together in time, and the prescriptive nature of the nonlinear document traversal it is built upon. The next millennium will embrace something like the cyber-publishing model described here as the dominant venue for information exchange.

This article focuses on the conception and usability of "disintermediation" in present day competitive business world and specially through the Internet. Disintermediation has been defined as the withdrawal of funds from banks and savings institutions in order to invest them in government securities, commercial paper, etc. paying higher rates of interest. The author emphasizes on the usability of this in e-commerce in the form of symbiotic disintermediation. He considers both positive and negative aspect of its implication but also clarified with some data that the positive consequences are much greater than the negative one. He describes two principles of symbiotic disintermediation, first of which suggests that when the advantage of the disintermediation is predicated upon parsimony, economies of scale, or the novel use of a publicly accessible technology infrastructure, one cannot create formidable barriers to effective competition. The second principle suggests that an instance of symbiotic disintermediation can only reach stability and maintain viability if the value added is proprietary, inherently unique, difficult to replicate, or legally protected.

Computer privacy is lost in the proliferation of technology's omnipresent accessibility. In the article, the author discusses the widespread use of Social Security Numbers (SSN) as primary keys within university administration, municipal and state government, and a good percentage of utility and communication companies. He explains to sundry administrative folks just how dangerous the practice of using SSN as primary keys and authenticators in their databases is, how it exposes employees and citizens to unnecessary risk. The article suggests that if credit isn't involved, there's never a reason to give out an SSN. The two themes, the history of misuse of SSN on the one hand, and the evolution of privacy concerns with respect to the Internet and Web on the other, intersect at identity theft. This may prove to be one of the most negative consequences of the Web. Identity theft and sundry-related computer crimes ported over to the Internet may become an unparalleled, destabilizing force for 21st century society to deal with.

The article emphasizes the importance of accurate technology forecasting and attempt to give some explanation of why people have so few industry and academic leaders who are really good at it. The information age, and, most importantly, the Internet, has changed the rules of the forecasting game forever. The author has suggested that the information needs of modern organizations are so variegated and complex that executive positions should be created just for science and technology oversight. In information-intensive industries and academia, the appropriate model might be to create an executive position for strategic planning. The placement of skilled and successful technologists in the organizational power loop is essential to successful strategic planning. The success of an organization depends on a blend between job description and skill set. The central theme throughout the article is that the skills of technology executives are first and foremost technology-related.

The article focuses on likely problems companies might face in case of unpreparednes for the Y2K. An occasional blackout could result if a noncompliant computer in the grid gets confused about the date. Valid credit cards may be rejected as out of date. Small bank ATMs may only work with a fraction of the supported debit and credit cards. Air Traffic Control problems may arise in the smaller, local airports spawning missed connections for the passengers and load-scheduling problems for air- port hubs. In Sweden, airport police were unable to issue one-year temporary passports after midnight, December 31, 1998. Computers refused to accept a termination date beyond December 31, 1999. Palace Produce sued Tec America Inc. because their system was incapable of handling credit cards with a certain expiration date. They won their case and were awarded $250,000 in damages. Newspapers, magazines and the World Wide Web are replete with similar stories. And there is every expectation these sorts of incidents will continue for the immediate future. Also, consider accounting and spreadsheet software that seem to take on a mind of their own when it comes to manual and automated attempts to reset to correct dates.

The article outlines some of the fundamental issues connected with the addition of value to electronic publications. It will be increasingly important for successful publishers to add value to publications over and above the original content. While the term electronic publishing takes on a variety of different meanings in different settings, one core principle holds true across all domains, electronic publication involves the distribution of digital documents. In its simplest form, electronic publishing may amount to little more than a porting of printed information over to the digital networks via scanning, OCR technology and so forth. However, electronic publishing will redefine itself in the light of available computer and network technologies. Electronic publishing will evolve as developers and researchers are inspired to take more extensive advantage of computing and network technology and slowly but inexorably move away from the notion that the paramount value of a document is its content.

The article focuses on how the concept of the World Wide Web was conceived and how it developed and led to the so called Mosaic War, which was the hot topic of techie conversation a few years ago. The term hearkens back to the kinder and simpler era of Web antiquity. Like "navigator/browser," "helper app" and "X-windows," the term signifies a bygone era-the Web gilded age every software developer believed they had a chance at market dominance and Web surfing was a favorite pastime. It might be useful at this point to see if one can identify winners and losers in this Mosaic War of old, especially if one could then anticipate the outcome of remaining hostilities. The Web was conceived by Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in 1989 as a shared information space supporting collaborative work. Berners-Lee defined HTTP and HTML at that time. As a proof of concept prototype, he developed the first Web client navigator-browser phone book database. By 1992, the interest in the Web was sufficient to produce four additional browsers-Erwise, Midas and Viola for X Windows and Cello for Windows. The following year, Marc Andreessen of the National Center for Supercomputer Application wrote Mosaic for X Windows which soon became the browser standard against which all others would be compared. Andreessen went on to cofound Netscape Communications Corp. in 1994. That's when the Mosaic War began.