When crackers attack
Slashdot carried this story a while back, about a couple of students (from Oxford, no less *grin*) who got into their university network and fooled around a bit (including controlling CCTV cameras).
The reason to remember this was that I appeared to get a lot (something like 300-400, which is shockingly high) scan attempts on my machine since I logged on tonight. Obviously automated, possibly along a subnet. I remember reading somewhere (no link, unfortunately) that a machine is only online an average of 6 hours before attempts are made to compromise it. If I didn't experiment with the LAN when I was an undergrad, I would honestly have known less about networks (and been a lot worse at Quake and Starcraft, but never mind that *grin*). Regardless of the ethics, I think what those students did was raise awareness about security. Along the way, they also managed to embarass some administrators (WTF is a CCTV system doing on the same LAN as students ? sheesh).
ADSL use is sky rocketing in Sri Lanka. A friend tried to get a connection and was put on a waiting list, because the 1000 connections on the loop had all been allocated. As more and more Sri Lankans discover the internet, and get online ... and stay online longer, who teaches them awareness about security issues ? Are we then destined to become a nation of spambots, DDOS bots and virus spewing machines ? How many people who get online regularly patch and update their software ? Antivirus ? Spyware checks ? What, you still use IE ? *shakes his head and stops ranting*
*vacates soapbox*
Also new from today (until I get bored with it): I am going to start a sig of the day. Nothing original, of course. Just a random sig or quote uncovered from my trawls of the net.
Update: changed the title from "hacker" to "cracker" to prevent at least one person from complaining. You know who you are *grin*. If you spent the entire post wondering why a type of biscuit made out of flour and water and/or a poor white person in the US was attacking something...umm, well; *no comment*
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A free society is a place where it is safe to be unpopular - Adlai Stevenson.
The reason to remember this was that I appeared to get a lot (something like 300-400, which is shockingly high) scan attempts on my machine since I logged on tonight. Obviously automated, possibly along a subnet. I remember reading somewhere (no link, unfortunately) that a machine is only online an average of 6 hours before attempts are made to compromise it. If I didn't experiment with the LAN when I was an undergrad, I would honestly have known less about networks (and been a lot worse at Quake and Starcraft, but never mind that *grin*). Regardless of the ethics, I think what those students did was raise awareness about security. Along the way, they also managed to embarass some administrators (WTF is a CCTV system doing on the same LAN as students ? sheesh).
ADSL use is sky rocketing in Sri Lanka. A friend tried to get a connection and was put on a waiting list, because the 1000 connections on the loop had all been allocated. As more and more Sri Lankans discover the internet, and get online ... and stay online longer, who teaches them awareness about security issues ? Are we then destined to become a nation of spambots, DDOS bots and virus spewing machines ? How many people who get online regularly patch and update their software ? Antivirus ? Spyware checks ? What, you still use IE ? *shakes his head and stops ranting*
*vacates soapbox*
Also new from today (until I get bored with it): I am going to start a sig of the day. Nothing original, of course. Just a random sig or quote uncovered from my trawls of the net.
Update: changed the title from "hacker" to "cracker" to prevent at least one person from complaining. You know who you are *grin*. If you spent the entire post wondering why a type of biscuit made out of flour and water and/or a poor white person in the US was attacking something...umm, well; *no comment*
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A free society is a place where it is safe to be unpopular - Adlai Stevenson.
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