The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to bit.listserv.ibm-main as well.
the other viewpoint was that the software was designed as dedicated, disconnected tabletop operation ... and allowed numerous applications (games, etc) to take over the whole machine. a little later the software was extended to support desktop operations with some local area business network (non-hostile and non-adversary). it was designed very well to do what it was intended to do (and in fact a great deal of countermeasures to machine take-over would have been counter productive to its original target market). it was when those pesky users started attaching the product (originally designed for totally stand-alone operation) to open (and potentially extremely hostile) networks, that you started having problems. it is somewhat like taking a Model T and asking why it doesn't have crush zones, safety belts, airbags, rollbars, safety glass, padded dashes, headrests, etc. for slight drift ... in the mid to late 90s, a lot of the threats were buffer overflow related to the use C language programming conventions ... lots of past posts discussing buffer overflow issues http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#overflow then automatic scripting (much of which had been originally targeted at closed, non-hostile, cooperative environments) exploits started to drastically increase until buffer overflow exploits and automatic scripting exploits were about equal. the potential for automatic scripting vulnerabilities was something that had been identified on the internal network in the 70s. a couple years ago, there was an estimate that 1/3rd of the exploits were buffer overflow related, 1/3rd automatic scripting related, and 1/3rd social engineering related. for other drift ... recent lengthy discussion on open networks and SSL related vulnerabilities http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#1 the latest seems to be a big upswing in *phishing* ... which can be considered a form of *social engineering* ... i.e. convincing victim to do something for the attacker (frequently involves divulging sensitive information). lots of past posts related to fraud, exploits, vulnerabilities, and threats http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#fraud and as a complement ... some number of past postings related to assurance http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#assurance a major objective of *phishing* attacks is to obtain sensitive information that is frequently used in *something you know* authentication (that can be turned around and used by the attacker in replay and/or impersonation exploits). from 3-factor authentication model http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#3factor * something you have * something you know * something you are this is particularly applicable to pins, passwords "something you know" shared-secret authentication http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subintegrity.html#secrets or account numbers ... where attackers can turn around and use the account numbers in transactions requiring little or no additional information ... misc. posts mentioning account number harvesting for fraudulent transactions http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/sbuintegrity.html#harvest ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
