Personal Freedom: Protection from Hackers

Introduction

Most of the security and law enforcement people look upon hackers as the archenemy of the 20th and 21St Century. This view is also supported by the news media. In their interest to sell, sell, sell, the news media have made the name 'hacker' synonymous with anything from juvenile delinquents, to mass murderers and even linked them to the information age equivalent of the nuclear bomb in their ability to destroy the information-based world as we know it. New laws have been written in countries around the world to support the investigation, apprehension, prosecution and incarceration of these “vicious and violent” threats to societies and even mankind itself!

Hacking can be defined as unauthorized access of other people's computer systems for destroying or carrying out illegal activities on the network or computer systems. A cracker can be define as someone who breaks into someone else's computer system, often on a network by passes passwords or licenses in computer programs or in other ways intentionally breaches computer security.

The first hackers mainly wished to gain access to systems not to damage them. The first hacker to be prosecuted in the joined States was Pat Riddle. Pat had been renowned to frequently gain unauthorized get get access to to to U.S. Department of protecting against computers; a major problem to the security of the United States. He was apprehended but could not be ascribed with anything relating to hacking because at the time there were no anti-hacking laws. To prevent similar problem in the future the computer and Abuse Act was passed in 1984.it provided a legal mean to prosecute hacker for certain things.

holding a system secure means very cautious designing of a sound system that takes all threats into account. throughout this designing, you must keep dangers in perspective. Your hazard from unidentified out-of-doors threats is, in computers as in life, very remote. The large-scale hazards are from those people you understand and who understand you. The important thing to remember about security is that all risks arrive from persons and all risks must be stopped by people. Computers can make the supervising easier, but they will not counter an attack.

Internet security

The internet security can be described as" The mechanism for the protection of transfer and storage of data /information on a computer connected (directly and indirectly) to the internet by maintain its confidentiality, integrity and availability". (Nazir, 1999)

Internet security threats

Security risks currently present on the Internet are as follow:

Unauthorised use

Unauthorised access

Information corruption

Information theft

Viruses

E-mail related threats

devices accessible against internet hacking and cracking

There are distinct tools accessible to defend the Internet against hacking and breaking but the most significant are:

Fire walls

Virus protection software

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer)

Firewalls

Firewalls avert unauthorized access by casual and malicious users on the public mesh (Internet) into a personal mesh. It helps to protect against hackers and many computer viruses and worms'. The devices, which are used, are three primary types: packet filter, stateful inspection and the application proxy. The package filter is the simplest of the ...