Untangling The Web
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The 21st Century: When War is Fought
Through the Web
November 24, 2010 |Created by: Travis Francis
My Webpage: http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/TFRANCIS/Paper.html
The 21st Century: When War is Fought Through The Web
Travis Francis
The 21st Century: When War is Fought Through the Web
Recently Purdue University thought they had a minor glitch in their campus
network, only to find out the system had been hacked. The culprit gained access to
about 100 passwords of students and employees and was able to obtain some personal
information. This put the school in a panic and they had to find the best solution to
recover from this incident. Due to the increase in hacking activity, technology officers
face the continuing challenges of maintaining sensitive data on campus networks and
finding secure methods to protect the data.
We first have to look at the intent of a hacker. A hacker wants the easy route in
life; they are similar to drug dealers in that they want the fast cash and want to be
anonymous and hard to track down. Most hackers are looking for social security and
credit card numbers so they can access your financial records. Could the hacker’s
intent be more innocent, like they are looking to dump movies or send out junk e-mails?
Maybe, but not likely. We do know from previous knowledge that hackers are often bad
news and bring problems to your software. Purdue
acting proactively, sent emails to all 60,000 students,
faculty members and employees on the main campus
asking them to change their network passwords.
Within 24 hours about 15,000 people had changed
their passwords. By day four, more than fifty percent
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The 21st Century: When War is Fought Through The Web
of the professors and 38 percent of the students had changed their passwords. There
was mixed emotions regarding the incident. Some felt it was not a big deal, while others
felt the network should always work and they were being inconvenienced.
I can relate to this incident personally. A friend had their computer hacked
partially because of his confidence that the network was safe and it’s not a big deal. He
used short cuts and didn’t have
firewalls up because they thought
it was a waste of time, until his
computer was hacked and crucial
banking information was stolen.
At this point, the damage is done.
Do not under estimate a hacker’s
ability! They are very computersavvy and they attack those who are not computer savvy.
There are steps that could be taken to avoid hacking. Users could be forced to
change passwords. It’s also a good idea to have a series of passwords that you use for
different websites just so you don’t become too predictable. The more passwords you
have the better off you are. You should never leave passwords lying around on your
desk or left on a sticky note, that can lead to a co-worker hacking into your system.
Doing so will lead you prone to having your information hacked.
Another more expensive measure would be to equip every campus machine with
hardware called a one-time-password-token device. The drawbacks to taking these
types of measures is colleges prefer to keep their networks open and accessible.
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The 21st Century: When War is Fought Through The Web
Although instituting campus wide password changes could be a logistical nightmare,
Purdue did require all campus network users to accept new randomly generated
password. If the technology officers are able to identify either the hacker’s intentions or
identity, they may be able to determine which servers need to be made more secure.
The idea to help eliminate this problem is let people know what is going on and ask for
their help protecting the data.
Purdue University is not alone; others are finding themselves in the same
position. For example, California State University at Hayward, network was attacked by
a hacker, compromising personal information for over 2,000 people. Hayward officials
within five days of the attack sent apology letters to the people whose personal
information may have been exposed. Another reason the officials had to move quickly
is because a California Law passed in 2003 requires that within 10 days of an attack,
public universities must notify anyone whose personal information may have been
exposed. Other schools in California have had their networks attacked by Hackers,
California Polytechnic State University and Berkeley. Large universities can afford to
implement the more expensive measures to prevent hackers from being successful.
They can afford to invest substantial money and staff hours to react when the hacking
occurs.
As a result of this, the hackers are
attacking the smaller universities because
they often leave their networks relatively
unprotected. One has to remember hackers
don’t want to work too hard and they can be
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compared to a robber. A robber is not going to break into a store with a cop in it and
hackers are not going to break into a secured network because they don’t want to get
caught.
Colleges and universities should have a plan in place and be able to act quickly
against these hackers. They need to tell students and professors right away what
happened and request they change their passwords as soon as possible. They need to
form a plan before making a fix. They also need to try and track down the hackers and
try to find out what their intent was. Knowing what the hacker’s motives are will help in
reaching an applicable solution to the problem. Another thought that should be
considered in shutting down the network and to keep a close eye on the servers. They
need to analyze what happened and what went wrong, so they can be pro-active and be
prepared for the next time the hacking may occur. You just have to remember that there
are different kinds of hackers. Some hackers use expensive and highly function
malware. Malware in short is Software developed for the purpose of causing harm to a
computer system. If you are as proactive as possible then you will be a safe internet
user and enjoy the web without being at risk for being invaded by criminal activity.
This article was interesting and very informative. I think hacking is a growing
problem and more people will experience the headaches and inconveniences that occur
when your network has been hacked. One of the best ways I believe to address this
issue is to educate people and make them realize how important it is that they make
their networks secure. After reading this, I pondered over the question as to why some
people could feel that hacking is ethical and not criminal. Some people may feel that
hackers are bad. Other may say that actually, hackers are merely computer
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The 21st Century: When War is Fought Through The Web
programmers who go in to someone else's code and reorganize it somehow. Some say
the opposite; hackers are programmers to whom we owe a lot of thanks for working out
troubles in software and the Internet. Do you agree with this statement? I do not. I
believe that hacking should be considered criminal. Any computer hacking that is
committed by a person who uses this information to accomplish acts of terrorism,
vandalism, credit and debit card fraud, and identity theft, intellectual property theft
should be considered a criminal act and be prosecuted. Computer hacking always
involves some type of infringement on the privacy of others or some type of damage to
computer-based property. Computer hacking can be done for numerous reasons;
including performing fraudulent acts intended to secure financial gain at the expense of
businesses or consumers. Computer hacking become so common that there had to be
a new term for it. Cybercrime is a relatively new word. It refers to any crime that involves
a computer and a network. Some of the most common forms of cybercrime that we hear
of today is hacking, plagiarism, illegal downloads, and child pornography. If you
participate in any of these activities, in my opinion you deserve to go to jail. If you do the
crime, you should do the time!
I am glad I chose this topic for research. As I plan my future out I always knew I
wanted to be in law enforcement. I thought this whole time I wanted to be a State
Trooper but now after reading this article and doing some research on this topic, I am
now looking into the Criminal Intelligence Agency (CIA) . I will be able to have a fun and
stable paying job while working on something I love, computers! This will be a great
opportunity for me to see what is going on in the world and how I can maybe help deter
these criminal acts!
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The 21st Century: When War is Fought Through The Web
Travis Francis
1. Have you been hacked Never?
a. 303 People
2. Have you been hacked Once?
a. 102 People
3. Have you been hacked Twice?
a. 22 People
4. Have you been hacked Several Times (2-50 Times)?
a. 22 People
5. Have you been hacked Lots( 50+ times)?
a. 10 People
People Who Have Been Hacked
Never
Once
Twice
Several
Times(More than 2
303
102
22
22
less than 50)
Lots (More then 50
10
times)
Total
470 Votes
How Many Times You Have Been Hacked?
350
300
Number of People
250
200
150
100
50
0
Never
Once
Twice
Serveal Times
Lots
Occurence of Being Hacked
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Works Cited
Bibliography:

Read, Brock. "When Hackers Attack. " The Chronicle of Higher Education. 51.11 (Nov 5,
2004): NA. Academic
OneFile. Gale. UniversityofHartford. 15Oct.2010 http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/infomark.do?&contentSet=
IACDocuments&type=retrieve&tabID=T002&prodId=AONE&docId=A147100311&source=gale&userGr
oupName=a23uh&version=1.0

"What Is Cyberwar?" WiseGEEK: Clear Answers for Common Questions. Web. 24 Nov. 2010.
<http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-cyberwar.htm>.

"Information Security in Education/Malicious Software - Wikibooks, Collection of Open-content
Textbooks." Wikibooks. Web. 24 Nov. 2010.
<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Information_Security_in_Education/Malicious_Software>.

"What Is Malware?" WiseGEEK: Clear Answers for Common Questions. Web. 24 Nov. 2010.
<http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-malware.htm>.
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