Now there's a whole other side to this problem that is more closely related to your life. Imagine that a computer criminal is able to get, um, let's say, your credit card number. In the best case scenario, this will cause you a great deal of inconvenience, and in the worst case scenario, it will cause you financial loss. Another possibility is that someone may get your social security number; then they can impersonate you. This can lead to serious problems and huge costs in terms of time spent solving the problem and the stress involved. The more powerful a technology is, the more potential there is for problems.
Well, I've tried to give you some background about the seriousness of the problem, but now I'd like to briefly talk about the battle between hackers and computer criminals on the one side and the people and companies interested in preventing these problems on the other. What's being done to stop computer crime? First, the courts are getting much tougher with hackers—the people who illegally enter a computer network—even if they claim not to be stealing anything. The courts are also now punishing computer criminals more severely in order to give potential criminals a strong message that computer crime is serious, and if you're caught doing it, you'll be punished. Some of these criminals have gone to federal prison for several years and been fined large sums of money. This is seen as a way to discourage people from experimenting with this new type of crime.
Now within a company or other organization, firewalls are the first line of defense—the first way to deter computer crime. A firewall is a software program that acts as a gate-keeper between the Internet and a company's intranet— that's I-N-T-R-A-N-E-T—the network of computers used by the company's employees. Now one type of firewall examines the source address and destination address of all of the data going in or out of the network. It can stop some data from entering the network and other data from leaving. However, firewalls can't protect networks from all attacks. In the past, hackers have often gotten around a firewall by accessing the network from a modem that an employee has brought in on his or her own without talking to the system administrator. Such employees are also trying to find an easy route around the firewall, usually because they want to access data on their work computer from home. These paths must also be closed, so if you have a colleague who is doing this sort of thing, you should definitely talk to them because they're opening a door for potential hacking.
And another way to increase security is through the use of less obvious and less easily remembered passwords. For instance, employees are often advised to never use a per-son's name, such as \programs that are called password guessers. These programs check every word in a large dictionary, all of the names in an encyclopedia, and then they use each entry in a local telephone book. As you can guess, if you have used almost any word in your local language, the hacker will eventually find out what it is and then be able to get into your system. The most difficult passwords to guess are a combination of small and capital letters, numbers and punctuation marks, such as \tion point, small M.\Try finding that with a password guesser. In addition, passwords should be told to the mini-mum number of people.
OK, a fourth method concerns access-control software— something which has become quite common. Now this software limits the user's access to information as well as the operations he can perform. So for example, access-control software might only let people read certain files or programs but not input data, and it may keep them out of other files entirely. Many universities use this type of software. Com-puter system administrators at the school can access the entire system; teachers can access a great deal of it, but not as much as the system administrators; and finally, students can access fewer areas than the teachers. It works on a \to know\been developed to scramble data so that hackers can't understand it even if they do steal it. The data can be read and used only if the user knows the key. Now this is a very effective way of protecting information. Encryption has developed rapidly since the 1980s, so now all of us can have access to fast, affordable, and powerful encryption systems. These systems are already resistant to the average hacker, and in a few years only government or military super-computers will be able to break most codes.
And finally, audit trails—that's A-U-D-I-T trails—are also available. Audit trails monitor the use of a computer and alert owners to any attempts to enter their computer system. It's usually possible to identify any user who gains access to the system and when the access occurred, making it possible to trace the hacker. Although this isn't simple to do, it can be done, particularly if the hacker persists and returns for repeated attacks on the system. One way that some hackers have been caught has been when the system administrator has what is called a \information is put in the jail. This might be something like credit card numbers or other sensitive financial data. When the hacker tries to get the false data, the administrator uses software to determine where the hacker is. The software follows the line of data back to the hacker's computer.
Well, those are some of the major things that are happen-ing at present to decrease computer crime. None of them are completely satisfactory, but together they're certainly helping to maintain the integrity of personal and corporate computer systems and communications. And these changes, as well as the improvements that are certain to come, should influence people to stop hacking by making it less profitable and more risky. And this will help ensure confidentiality when communicating via computer. Well, let's stop here for today, and get started with your presentations. Our first speakers, uh, Carlos and Yumi, are scheduled to talk about encryption.
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