The Computer Revolution/Security/Cyber Threats

There are many threats out there. Most people believe that they are kept safe from them but however 2/3 of these people don't even have a firewall. More don't even know what a denial-of-service, a worm, a virus or a Trojan horse means. A denial-of-service attack is basically a number of requests by the computer or the network. This then overloads the network and denies legitimate users access to the network. Since most computers have a certain number of limited user requests at a given time a denial-of-service attack will inhibit them all. This kind of attack will either come from one computer or maybe even more because those computer will have been taken over as well. A worm is a program that, when is on a system, copies itself over and over again. This could cause the computer to crash. There have been many recorded worms before. Code Red, Nimda, Klez, SQL Slammer, MyDoom and Sasser. Viruses are a pain in the neck. There are "deviant" programs that store themselves on your hard drive and then cause all sorts of ruckus of your computer. They could corrupt data or literally blow up something. A way of transport of viruses are through email. The most famous was the love bug email. The subject line was "I LOVE U". It resulted in about $10 million worth of damage. Viruses can also do annoying things. Like have a pop up telling you to legalize marijuana, or have ping pong balls shooting around. It could even spread to external devices like your camera flash card and destroy it as well. Trojan Horses...Remember the story of the Trojan war? When the Greek soldiers tricked the Trojans into letting them into the grounds? Well, the Greek soldiers would be the virus. The Trojan horse would be the decoy Trojan horse that got them in. A Trojan horse is basically a carrier for viruses. It shows itself as a program that could be of great use to you. It could be a game or a screensaver but when its installed the instructions are to destroy or corrupt data on your computer. The worm, the virus and the Trojan horse are all apart of Malware. Malware is malicious software that is designed to attack a computer.

New Challenges for Cybersecurity


Many experts believe that 2012 will bring new challenges for cyber security. Security giant McAfee release a report titled ‘2012 Threat Predictions’ that detailed an expected rise in attacks against the U.S. Many of these threats are believe to be politically-motivated. There is also expected to be an increase in smartphone viruses. Panda Security predicts that foreign cyber espionage as well as social networking attacks will both contribute to a loss in government, corporate, and personal data. They believe that these data thefts should be a top security issue that organizations focus on this year. Both companies agree that Privacy violations will only increase in 2012.

Retrieved from http://cybersecuritynews.org/ on March 02, 2012.

On February 13, 2013, Representative Mike J. Rogers introduced the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). This bill was design to protect or prevent cyber-attacks on the government and infrastructure. If the bill is passed, it would allow private companies to share data with law enforcement and government agencies with the hope it would help solve or prevent cyber-attacks without the need to go through legal channels. Included in the bill, immunity from legal action for the government and private companies that share data. Proponents of the bill say the wording is much too vague which allows for individual interpretation. This bill shows the delicate balance of protection vs. privacy.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d113:HR00624:@@@D&summ2=m&