It might be worth mentioning for the original poster that the conversation has split levels. Im trying to avoid jumping in on the scarey one but to avoid a doomed feeling I should point out that this is deep tech people talking deep tech tactics. They are about as common in the real world as deep tech burglars deciding to rob your house. If you are the admin of a corporate computer handling lots of credit cards etc etc then it would be a concern.
On the other hand, most attacks arent real hackers. Real hackers are rare. Most attacks are script-kiddies, and some are crackers, but few are hackers. Hackers are knowledgeable and experimentally minded. They do not use standard tools and therefore standard tools tend to not work as well for them. Also a surprising number of hackers are not malicious, just irritating. Crackers tend to be knowledgeable thugs. They are definetly interested in taking or abusing. They tend to use tools they find on the net but they do at least understand them and are capable of trying many different things to get a result. Tools that are available to foil them can work but multiple levels of protection, kept up to date, is a good idea. Script-kiddies are the vast majority and most likely to hit a home system. They are clueless. They have found an attack tool online and are playing with it. The honeypot stories are vastly entertaining (a honeypot is a system setup to purposely draw attacks for security purposes). Ive seen skiddies use sophisticated tools to get in, then spend all day doing commands like dir c:\. Or their attack kit will install a sniffer to capture logins and passwords to a file; then they immeadiately start logging into their favorite hacker sites, previous hacked systems, and even their own home machine giving me a copy of all their addresses logins and passwords. Once you start watching the security of your system you might feel panic at seeing all the attacks you are getting. But dont be concerned. You are getting them all along. Most of them are brute force such as trying huge files of possible logins with huge files of common passwords. A standard system and good password habits will cover you there. Packages such as ChkRootKit and TripWire will help you sleep at night (of course they can be bypassed but think of it like having a great door lock which is adequate even though it wouldnt keep out an expert burglar) Gandalf Parker -- Never say "my machine is secure". Im not saying it isnt. Just that you should never say it. That's like in a horror movie when someone says "we should be safe here" _______________________________________________ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech
