Network Security: Rules And Tools It is impressive how increasingly complex and complete software has spread on the Net, especially in recent months, which allows you to spy on remote computers connected via the Internet. Software wants to explain how prying eyes can read the documents inside our personal computers or how it is possible for someone to cause more or less severe damage to our faithful work and leisure partner.
Unfortunately, these are not the usual urban legends: there are programs that, combined with distraction or inexperience, make our personal computer easy prey for hundreds and hundreds of remote hackers, who may be able to clean up our computer. It is impressive how increasingly complex and complete software has spread on the Net, especially in recent months, which allows you to spy on remote computers connected via the Internet.
Software wants to explain how prying eyes can be able to read the documents inside our personal computers or how it is possible for someone to cause more or less severe damage to our faithful work and leisure partner. Unfortunately, these are not the usual urban legends: there are programs that, combined with distraction or inexperience, make our personal computer easy prey for hundreds and hundreds of remote hackers, who may be able to clean up our computer.
Windows, as it stands, is usually not directly and attackable, although it is not, as things stand, the most secure operating system of all. A particular “backdoor” must be activated inside our computer to make Windows immune to specific attacks. The backdoor is an actual “back door” in that, as soon as it is started, it cannot only let essential data out without our knowledge but also allow undisturbed access to our personal computers by unauthorized users.
Indeed, once the backdoor is activated, it offers a remote hacker complete access to all the resources of the “victim” personal computer and even to the individual computers connected to it. To connect to the latter, the remote hacker can recognize and use the data of the user who suffered the attack.
Back Orifice knows how to access system passwords, but that’s not all: the backdoor communicates every keystroke pressed by the victim user and can also record which operations take place offline. As soon as the victim reconnects to the Internet, all the “spied” information is passed on to the remote hacker, who can then have the possibility of simply identifying, for example, a credit card number or a current account and related access codes entered using the keyboard.
The hacker has a wide range of actions available that can be performed against the personal computer on which he has decided to direct the attack. First, the possibility of temporarily preventing the user from using the keyboard victim to black out the screen to perform any operation.
Applications like Back Orifice offer numerous other opportunities to confuse or panic the victim user:
- Reversing mouse keys
- Opening and closing the CD ROM tray
- Generating sounds
- Closing or crashing Windows
What the remote hacker always needs to connect to the “victim” computer is the IP address that is assigned upon connection. Usually, the IP address is dynamic, i.e., the provider gives us a different number each time we connect to the Internet.
The most recent backdoors seem to have overcome this problem: they can communicate to the hacker every time the victim user connects to the Internet, the new IP address, using ICQ, IRC, or simply email as means. Back Orifice, of which the 2000 version was recently developed, is undoubtedly one of the most famous software: A week before its official launch, all the online information websites competed to distribute news on the new BO. Other well-known backdoors are Deep Throat, NetSphere, Hack’àTack, and SubSeven.
Unfortunately, however, there are many of them in circulation: we were amazed after visiting The Trojans removal database site, which contains a long list of backdoors. In correspondence with the name of each backdoor, the changes that are made to the system (especially the registry) are listed to make it easier to attack. Therefore, drawing up a list of backdoors and proposing a solution for each one that leads to its identification and removal is challenging.
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