Internet Security Essay Research Paper Seminar PaperSecurity

Internet Security Essay, Research Paper

Seminar Paper

Security on the Internet

Etan Weintraub

189-58-7802

L911 – Contemporary Perspectives

Dr. Warner

The Internet is the community of the future, but if security measures are not put in place and enforced, then it will become more of a slum and less of a community. The primary question is, therefore, who has the obligation to put these security measures into place. Is it the individual users of the computers and the Internet. Is it the responsibility of the companies that develop the different computer applications to place certain security measures in place. Or is it the responsibility of the governments of the world to unite and create rules and regulations that secure the Internet and guard the citizens of the world from the malicious activities of the hackers. In my opinion, the responsibility belongs to them all.

Security on the Internet is a very important issue in the world today. Billions of people have an on-ramp to the Information Superhighway, and more are finding one every day. The Internet transcends geographical locations, and is the first example of a true global village. Unfortunately for regular users of the Internet, much like the real world, criminals exist on the Internet as well. “Hackers,” the computer wizards who use their knowledge for evil, are rampant on the Internet. Sometimes they do seemingly harmless acts, such as just going into a computer system and observing, but at other times, they steal, destroy or alter data. On some occasions, these cyber-felons perform even more malicious acts, such as infecting systems with “viruses,” computer programs that “infect” the systems by latching onto other programs and eventually destroying them. Another favorite activity of the hacker is to gain access to the computer system and then manually either delete files or cause the computer to do “strange” things, such as placing messages on the screen that either make no sense or have an unusual meaning.

Before we look at who has the responsibility to protect the end user, we must first look at what the truth is behind all the “security breaches.” There is almost regular notice in the media of a “backdoor” or “bug” in a program: an error in the coding of the program that allows the knowledgeable hacker to access the computer system of someone using that program. Most frequently, we hear about this regarding a World Wide Web browser, such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Netscape’s Navigator. While we associate Microsoft and Netscape with the United States, they are used internationally. Netscape and Microsoft both have large market shares in countries such as Japan and Canada, as well as all throughout Europe.

A prime example of the sorts of bugs found is one which recently affected Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. On May 8, 1997, C-net’s online news service, News.com, reported that yet another bug had been found in Internet Explorer. According to the article, “The glitch could allow a malicious Web site to execute any program on a user’s computer without permission, including deleting files and uploading private information.” The article continues to describe how Microsoft had found out about the bug, and would very shortly have a fix available on their web page. However, further reading of the article, brings some interesting points into view. The article describes how the “glitch” launches a PowerPoint presentation. PowerPoint is an application included in Microsoft’s Office Suite; however, not everyone either has this program or chooses to install it. In other words, the only way for the “glitch” to affect a user is if PowerPoint has been installed on the individual computer system. That important item of information failed to make it into the more mainstream reports, such as the television news, leaving the uninformed worried about a “glitch” that had no affect on them. This caused thousands of people to hurry onto the Internet to find a patch to the “glitch,” thereby slowing down the connections to the Internet.

More recently, on June 12, 1997, the Associated Press reported on a bug in Netscape’s Navigator web browser. According to the article, the glitch “lets Web site operators read anything on a hard drive of a personal computer logged onto the site.” PC Magazine and CNNfn ran their own tests for the bug and determined that even firewalls (security measures put in place to try to protect against just this type of security breach) were not effective in protecting against this bug. Unfortunately, this article, much like most articles about software bugs that are from mainstream media sources, offers no technical information about the bug and, therefore, it is hard to determine what the reality is behind this bug. This is the type of article that the typical Internet user sees and most likely will frighten them enough to make them take time away from their usual regimen to find a patch for the bug. This may become an enormous waste of time and resources since these users do not realize that this bug most likely does not affect them or their computer systems.

Another popular form of scaring the public is virus hoaxes. According to the National Computer Security Association, ten hoaxes currently are making their way around the Internet, most of them by E-mail. One of the most popular hoaxes is the “Good Times” v