Vulnerable Computer Networks

As more and more people use Internet for pleasure, more and more criminals use it to break into remote computers to steal information, plant viruses, or simply change user names and passwords. In any case, many online computer networks are vulnerable to outside hacker attacks. This can target home computers, as well as corporate networks (Koerner 20). Most of the time intrusions occur because security is low and not well maintained due to incompetent security administrators (Koerner 54).

PC security is never 100 percent effective (Dugdale 292). As the Internet gets faster and faster, network administrators want their networks to be as fast as possible so access to them is not sluggish. Actually, some security software can slow down a network as much as 20 percent (Koerner 20 Web’s bad week). Administrators want the network or Internet site up as soon as possible. Koerner states that most of the time security is in the back of the administrator’s mind (20).

”You can’t just buy a product and think you are magically secure,” stated Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security (Koerner 20 Web’s bad week). Author of Mastering Network Security, Chris Benton, says, “It’s easier for an ad

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If these Internet companies were prepared for these inherit risk of attacks on the Internet, then these sites should have been down for no more than 20 minutes (20).

A survey conducted by the Computer Security Institute and the FBI's Computer Crime Squad showed that 75 percent of 563 companies lost more than $100 million from computer break-ins (Gould 39+).

Denial of Service attacks were used against popular websites such as Yahoo!, eBay, e*Trade, buy.

As long as there are banks, there will be bank robbers. ” If it had not been for unskilled security administrators, hackers would not have been able to gain remote access to these machines and plant files on them. As in the case of Denial of Service attacks, emergency connections can be used until the attacks end, or until the problem is resolved (Koerner 55). ” It seems like most security administrators are unable to solve problems themselves. Precautions such as using passwords that are longer and more difficult to guess (Francis 77), using filters, and keeping logs to know who is doing what and when. Fearing unwanted publicity, only 17 percent said they would report it to authorities (39+). com to discover and relieve the attack (19). com in February of 2000 (Koerner 19 Web’s bad week). There were so many zombies pouring out bogus data, that tracking one machine would be impossible (19). This will keep online computer networks vulnerable to more outside hacker attacks. As long as there are cars, there will be carjackers. Close monitoring of logs (De Angelis 90), analyzing connections made can all play an important role in keeping private data private.

Approximate Word count = 1058
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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