Computers Under Attack [antikvár]

Preface Network intruders—some would call themselves explorers or liberators—have found ways of using networks to dial into remote computers, browse through their contents, and work their way into other computers. They have become skilled at cracking the password protocols that guard computers and adept at tricking the operating systems into giving them superuser or system manager privileges. They have also created worm and virus programs that carry out these actions unattended and replicate themselves endlessly—electronic surrogates that can prowl the network independent of their creators. We can expect steady increases in acts of crime, espionage, vandalism, and even political terrorism by computer in the years ahead. The growing world network shares many characteristics with biological organisms, especially an astronomical number of connections among a large number of simple components. The overall system can exhibit behaviors that cannot be seen in an analysis of its separate components. Like their biological counterparts, computer networks can suffer disorders from small organisms that create local malfunctions; in large numbers, these organisms can produce network-wide disorder. For this reason, the attacks against networks of computers have biological analogies, and two of them, worms and viruses, are designated by explicit biological terminology. Newspapers tell tales of growing public concern about the integrity and privacy of information stored in computers. As electronic networking spreads around the globe, making possible new international interactions and breaching barriers of language and time, so rise the risks of damage to valuable information and the anxiety over attacks by intruders, worms, and viruses. There also have been several recent books and numerous articles on this subject. The more I read, the more I have become convinced that I iii