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[2002-05-29] Security Basics
Most cracks involve a tool as simple as a Trojan horse, which will leave a backdoor account open to the cracker. Young teenagers have been known to utilize such tools effectively, even against corporate giants. It is because of these types of attacks that users (even if it is your family hooked up to a small LAN on a cable modem) need to be educated about some basics that will stop most typical hackers. First of all, lets talk about passwords. Many of these tools that I have mentioned will expose null passwords. This means that if you do not enter a password when you log in, these scanners will show that to the potential offender, and then the hacker can easily take control of your system.
[2002-05-29] Casing the Joint
First of all let's look at ports and what they are. When two machines across a TCP/IP network communicate with each other via a service (such as NetBIOS, HTTP, FTP, etc...) each machine will need to know not only the IP address but the port number that translates to the service that is being used. For instance, when someone is "surfing the web" the service that they will be using will be HTTP, which uses port number 80 by default.
Most port numbers can be changed so that vulnerable services can be disguised by using a non-standard port number. For instance, if you knew that certain software exposed a vulnerability in a service, you could try to change the port number in order to circumvent that weakness. However, you would need to be sure all machines on the network are configured as such in order to continue using the service.
[2002-05-21] Authenticating PostgreSQL Clients
Today’s article is about security (authentication in particular) in PostgreSQL, the most advanced open-source database available anywhere (as its developers claim!!). So what about it? We know that security is a very important concern in the present day IT world. It’s no different with databases.
[2002-05-16] Most Common Viruses According To SARC
Viruses are becoming more and more prevalent everyday (as if you didn't already know that...). This being the case, I decided to compile a list of the most common viruses according to SARC (see below), along with links on detection and removal procedures for each. It seemed that having this information in one place could be very helpful for those of you that have to deal with these viruses.
[2002-05-02] VPNs, 101
I am sure that most of you have heard of Virtual Private Networks, but do you know what they are and what they are good for? VPNs are a secure way for machines to communicate through a public network, privately.
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