Information Warfare - War is not over yet!
In the past few decades, people all over the world have been all too eager to embrace the technological revolution. One in every 4 Australian homes now owns a least one computer. But few people have stopped to realize that in accepting these changes so readily, we have opened a virtual Pandora's box. Our homes are an open book to hackers, our credit card numbers available to cyber-thieves and the stock market is a virtual playground for hacktivists on the World Wide Web. The human race has fought its fair share of wars over the years, but now, as we venture into the new millennium, we are faced with a whole new battle V a battle in which biological warfare has been replaced with computer viruses, spies with Trojan programs that allow the user to see into his "enemy's" base and nuclear weapons with email-bombs. But our enemies belong to no particular country or religious group. Rather, they are faceless and nameless. They are the hackers, the hacktivists and the cyber-thieves and they fight not for land, resources or freedom, but rather for information.Information warfare (IW) refers to both the offensive and defensive use of information and computers in an effort to observe, alter or destroy the information of another, while p
Trojans are programs designed by hackers to gain access to other people's computers and take control. Therefore, with such a program you can modify, destroy or create anything in their computer. Just like viruses, there are many Trojan programs. One, in particular, called the "Sub-7" is designed to crack people's passwords, by combining all possible characters, thus gaining access to a remote computer. Most of these attacks go unnoticed. This raises a number of privacy issues and is of particular concern for security agencies. A recent security investigation of the Department of Defence in the USA revealed that only 4% of hostile attacks were detected by defensive systems and only 27% of these were reported. One of the most widely used weapons in this information war is the computer virus. A virus, in technological terms, is a fragment of code with the ability to replicate itself into another program. Upon activation of this infected program, the virus spreads to other programs, just like a contagious biological virus. A virus in the computer acts to occupy the storage space, eventually preventing the storage of any new information. In this world there are many different viruses, each capable of inflicting a large amount of damage to personal computers and large corporate servers alike. Viruses can be activated manually or automatically. Most of which, however, are activated by the user, ignorant of its presence. But how does a virus find its way onto your computer in the first place? Just like real viruses, computer viruses need a vector, or a mode of transport from one ¥host' to another. When you are receiving an email, for example, viruses may be attached. Once the email is opened, the virus can be activated, infiltrating your computer and often sending itself
Some common words found in the essay are:
Wide Web, Defence USA, Trojans Trojans, , Amazoncom Ebaycom, Web Unfortunately, credit card, wide web, world wide web, world wide, World Wide, computer viruses, virus onto computer, virus virus, defensive systems, hackers credit, majority internet, virus onto, hackers credit card, email virus,
Approximate Word count = 1199
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
