Free Reading Book

The book that I have chosen to read for my free reading book is a book called Worm. This book is by Mark Bowden. The story talks about the digital war that is being fought around the world. Computers are hacked all the time and have not gotten as much press as these hackings should get. One attack the book focuses on is the Conficker worm. I had never heard of this attack so I was interested in reading about what this virus had done. After reading the back cover I was surprised that I did not hear about this, or possibly I do not remember, but the worm had taken over 1.5 million computers. The worm also infected networks of banks, British Parliament, French military, and German Military. This is huge, an attack on militaries and the British Parliament hold valuable information that should not be exposed.  This information is interesting to me because I did not realize to the extent of how large of an attack this worm did, and the security risks also involved with the information needing to be protected.

http://www.amazon.com/Worm-First-Digital-World-War/dp/0802119832/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319390580&sr=8-1

Above is a link to the Amazon description to the book incase more information is needed about the book. Below is a picture of book.

Link to picture: bit.ly/pGQLjY

Internet Hackings

Wanting to know more about the cyber war I went to YouTube to try to find a segment on some recent cyber war news. I found a segment, air on 60 minutes. Part one and part two are in two separate links listed below.

Sources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZUzB8uC9bs&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-qudlJDqmU&feature=related

Something interesting I learned from this video is a term called white plastic. What white plastic is, is a piece of plastic that is identical in weight size and shape. Than once the hackers receive the pin number they are able to use this ATM card and drain the account to nothing. This method has been used to steal over ten million dollars in a 24-hour period over 49 cities around the world. This is astonishing to hear about all the money that has been stolen just because of a computer hacker. Another instance is n Virginia with the computer medical records. This instance shocked me that someone would harm others to this extend. Medical records are important for a patient to have because they hold the prescriptions that a patient may need to survive. They also hold a lot of personal information like your social security number. This was all for a total stole amount of ten million dollars. There are many other cases of these types of examples. Either money is stolen from bank accounts and passwords or information is taken. These risks happen everyday and these viruses can be found in an email attachment or going to a certain webpage. 

Link: http://news.cnet.com/i/tim//2010/07/28/1T0R2167_610x407.JPG

Internet Safety

 I did a quick search online for Internet Safety tips and came across this. I thought it would be important to share some tips to browse the Internet safely.

http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/parent-guide

Link to Picture: http://www.glogster.com/media/5/26/41/38/26413848.gif

Speech Codes

After seeing the pictures of what these fraternities did, it makes me wonder why someone would go along with this. These people should be punished for what they did. Not for the physical harm of what they did to those people, but instead the symbolism that these fraternities were saying. People viewing this party around campus might have felt they were not safe. This would in turn cause a panic throughout the school, which is not needed. The fraternity even went as far to say, “Some even went so far as to simulate the lynching of a member in blackface wearing a T-shirt bearing the name FUBU.” This just shows how their acts could have hurt others safety. Due to the reason of safety, the behavior depicted should be outlawed or banned on campus. School is intended for learning purposes and having this on campus is unacceptable. The only positive outcome of this event is how the Delta Sigma Phi executive said, "We're absolutely disgusted by what we've seen," said Jon Hockman.

Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WMBsO_95JJdVlMahc8ddLurufvYjHokQ8wrVnGAM8xA/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1#

The university that I have chosen under the FIRE database is University of Miami Ohio. This school has moderate speech code tolerance. These speech codes are something that would not affect myself choosing a school. Most schools have a tendency to restrict what someone is allowed say in the interested for an equal and safe public learning environment. As long as the speech codes are not very strict I am ok with that, this is due to the fact that students should be able to say what they want but not to the point where it creates an unsafe learning environment. This school has moderate speech code level. The school has a good balance between what is too strict and what is not too strict. This is reinsuring to hear from being a school I am considering.

Burning the Flag

            Recently in class we have been discussing the issue of burning the American flag. I am personally biased that burning the flag should not be legal. This is due to what the flag stands to me personally. The flag to me stands for freedom but also the people who have lost their lives in wars supporting this county. Burning the flag is showing disrespect to everyone who lost their lives for the freedoms they fought for. I do also believe though people should have a freedom of speech, symbolic or vocal. While I do not approve of burning of the flag, if that is how people want to express their beliefs they should be entitled to do so.