The second part of the book focuses
much more on what the threats are of these viral security attacks. People
underestimate the threats of these viral attacks, just because they are viral.
In today’s society, everything is online. Someone who can break through the
firewall of a business or country, “could compromise nuclear reactors,
electrical grids, transportation networks, pipelines – you name it” (Bowden,
49). The threats are just as real as an
actual war. Even though the hacker is not holding a gun, he could be holding
transportation codes allowing a tram to derail. I believe people do not understand
how complex these security hacks can be. While some are as simple as a key
tracker, meaning the virus tracks the key inputs in order to gain information
like usernames and passwords, they can be as complex as causing physical harm
to people. When talking about causing physical harm to people because of a
computer, is the part of a computer virus I believe is overlooked. Once the
virus enters into the computer, the virus is able to spread easily from one
computer to another. For example, inside the windows operating system there is
a feature called the Dynamic – Link Library. What this is designed to do is
easily allow people to exchange data from one computer to another. What can
also be sent through the computers is the virus. While the feature is designed
to help the consumer, it can also hurt the consumer by spreading the virus through
their other computers. This brought up another question to my mind. Should we
be having these technologies being put into our computers? While this
technology makes it very easy to send files, clearly it is not secure. Email
has viruses attached but at least they know where the email is coming from when
they open the attachment. Apple took a very interesting approach to help keep
the computer safe from viruses. What apple requires is when sending a file from
one computer to another is a passcode to send the file. While hackers are able
to get around this, it takes much more effort and time to program, creating
many less viruses able to attack the computer.
This book seems really interesting. Its kind of like what we were talking about in class today with hackers, hacking the computer system on an airplane. But that seems way to complicated. Does your book give examples of secure systems that are almost impossible to hack? Does it explain how difficult it is to hack something like a computer program? It seems like these file sharing programs make it easier to hack a computer, but it is still a very difficult task.
ReplyDeleteMark talked a lot about how computer viruses have come to age over the years. He focuses a lot of time on how computers have become easier to spread viruses across one another. Computers are much more difficult to hack now because of the stricter security within the operating system. Computers though, are much more manageable in being able to access the computer remotely once the virus is made through email, or an online website download. File sharing programs themselves do not necessarily make computers easier to hack, just much easier to infect multiple computers at one time. The book does talk about how complex these programs are the hackers create, but at the same time to computer programmers it is as though the program and the hacker are a giant math problem. Computers with antivirus software downloaded to them are secure, but it is when people still continue to go to a site that the software advises against, or when people download viruses the computer advises against. These people though will still find ways to get around more complex antivirus software, but it just takes a longer period of time to do so.
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