Interesting information

Very interesting information about computers security

War dialing — a method of searching phone numbers for analog modem connections in a defined area code and phone prefix combination. - RedHat

Infamous computer cracker Kevin Mitnick was arrested and charged with 25 counts of computer and access device fraud that resulted in an estimated US$80 Million in losses of intellectual property and source code from Nokia, NEC, Sun Microsystems, Novell, Fujitsu, and Motorola

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Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) form the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) begin exploring and programming the school's PDP-1 mainframe computer system. The group eventually use the term "hacker" in the context it is known today.


Ken Thompson develops the UNIX operating system, widely hailed as the most "hacker-friendly" OS because of its accessible developer tools and compilers, and its supportive user community. Around the same time, Dennis Ritchie develops the C programming language, arguably the most popular hacking language in computer history.

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The 414 gang (named after the area code where they lived and hacked from) are raided by authorities after a nine-day cracking spree where they break into systems from such top-secret locations as the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a nuclear weapons research facility.

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On any given day, there are approximately 225 major incidences of security breach reported to the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University. [source: http://www.cert.org]


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The worldwide economic impact of the three most dangerous Internet Viruses of the last two years was estimated at US$13.2 Billion. [source: http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16407.html]


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A common trait among most hackers is a willingness to explore in detail how computer systems and networks function with little or no outside motivation.


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The white hat hacker is one who tests networks and systems to examine their performance and determine how vulnerable they are to intrusion. Usually, white hat hackers crack their own systems or the systems of a client who has specifically employed them for the purposes of security auditing. Academic researchers and professional security consultants .

A black hat hacker is synonymous with a cracker. I

The grey hat hacker, on the other hand, has the skills and intent of a white hat hacker in most situations but uses his knowledge for less than noble purposes on occasion. A grey hat hacker can be thought of as a white hat hacker who wears a black hat at times to accomplish his own agenda.

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a centralized server introduces a single point of failure on the network.

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A full installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux contains up to 1200 application and library packages.

security = Physical, Technical, Administrative

The 7 Top Management Errors that Lead to Computer Security Vulnerabilities