It seems there is never enough time to keep up with every possable network threat around, but I have a few suggestions for people that are intersted in this stuff. I started getting a magazine called 2600, the Hackers Quarterly. I think the name is misleading, a better name for it would be learn new cool stuff about computer systems and security. Their web site is www.2600.com and it is available on the shelf at Barnes and Nobel. It can never come out often enough for me. I read it cover to cover 2 or 3 times. There are always articles about neat tools, and things about viruses and how to use them to your advantage, or just be aware of them. If you think it makes you a bad person to read stuff like this, just remember that the bad guys are doing this stuff wheather you are aware of it or not. A couple of tools I have found that now I can't live without are: DNSCAPE - Software that you point at a particular dns server and it will give you all of the dns entries for a url. Great for tracking down dns problems. I bet 75% of all of the dns servers out there are misconfigured, this makes finding strange problems a snap. www.inettools.com Another must have tool is NEOTRACE. Manual, get neotrace, put in that bad ip address, and it will make you a map to them w/ information about every hop along the way. http://www.neoworx.com/help/default.asp?ver=2.121&pid=NT&page=purchase I think you can use it for free for 30 days, and then you need to spend $39. Troy Sosamon
