|
Best Security Software.com |
|
|||
History of Internet SecurityThe Story Behind the Great Internet Sabotage
History of Internet Security: International Espionage
In 1986, some of the outsiders found a hole in the ARPANET fence. They wiggled their way into the NET like a sperm into an egg and copied information from United States government and military computers. Bummer. This was bad because the outsiders were not from the U.S. Double bummer. You can read more about this in Cliff Stoll's 1989 book "The Cuckoo's Egg" where he recounts a fascinating two year adventure helping the government track down the thieves. The same year, a Pakistani programmer and his brother wrote the "Brain" virus that affected IBM PC systems. This was another boot sector virus but unfortunately there was no poem to read. It just wrote some silly message on the disk. The brothers claimed that the virus was just a way to protect some software they'd written and that it wasn't meant to harm anyone. And, indeed, it gave their address and phone number so the infected user could call them for a fix. You could say they got a few calls--they had to shut off the phone. Today they operate a company called Limited Brain, uh, I mean, Brain Limited.
History of Internet Security: The Morris Worm
In 1988, the first computer worm was born. So cute and cuddly at two nanometers, seven micrograms, and little cherub worm cheeks. But alas, no beautiful butterfly was destined to emerge from the evil cocoon. Not funny, huh? Oh well, I try. A student at Cornell University wrote a program that connected to another computer, found a hole in the system, and copied itself to that computer and in doing so, cemented his place in the history of Internet security. Well, that wouldn't have been so bad except that there were now two of them. Then both of them connected to other computers and copied themselves. And then there were four. Then those four connected to yet four other computers, copied themselves, and then there were eight. Then those eight copied themselves and there were sixteen and then those sixteen copied themselves and there were----what? Oh, I should stop because you get it? OK but I can't help it. I have to tell you that it didn't take very long before there were over 8,000 computers infected. But you knew that since you stopped me. That was about 10% of the whole ARPANET at the time! So, let us muse: ARPANET was designed to keep working even if part of it was broken. But now it's broken and it isn't working so well. So, a bunch of sites disconnect to save themselves from infection. But ARPANET itself is the main communication channel so now there are less sites to share information. Therefore the solution doesn't get communicated as quickly and it takes longer to fix the problem. Makes me giggle. The history of Internet security is rife with wisdom: In the Bible, Jesus warns the disciples that a little leaven, or yeast, affects the whole loaf of bread. The love children should have read that more carefully. Of course, then we might not have the Internet, millions of online businesses, instant global communication, massive information repositories, and various anatomical enlargement opportunities. Oh well, since we do... So, what should be done? That's easy: create another government agency! FIRST, or the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (cool, huh?) began its life to help deal with the increasing network attacks. It's really an "organization", not a government agency. For really boring technical reading, you can find them at http://www.first.org.
|
Security Tip Of The Week 
|
|||
|
Sign up for 
|
||||
|
.
Home |
Return from History of Internet Security Part 2 to Internet Security Information
Return to top |
||||
|
|
||||