Task #1
I.
Lab Exercises
SVG Viewer
From the Adobe website we downloaded the plugin to enable the viewing of
.SVG files. We then found a website which had links to various CAD files which were
converted to .SVG files. A converter we found is called CAD2SVG Converter and it can
be found at the following site www.aftercad.com/cad2svg-examples.html. Figure 1
displays a schematic drawn in the CAD program Protel and viewed using the SVG
plugin. Figure 2 shows how we can zoom in on the schematic while in the browser.
Figure 1: Viewing a .svg file
Figure 2: Zoomed in on .svg file
II.
Apple’s Quicktime
We downloaded Apple’s Quicktime and viewed a couple of Quicktime pictures.
This allowed us to rotate the picture in 3D. Figure 3 shows a picture of Apple’s G4
Powerbook. We were able to rotate and see all the dimensions of the hardware. We also
viewed a couple of panoramas at the following site www.virtualparks.org. Quicktime is
needed in order to view these panoramas of different scenic views. Once the panoramic
is loaded into the browser, with control of the mouse one can control the view and
observe the scenery like physically being there. Figure 4 displays a panoramic view of a
green pasture.
Figure 3: Quicktime picture
Figure 4: Panoramic view displayed in Quicktime
The website www.panomundo.com/panos/howto/index.html was very helpful in
understanding how to make these beautiful images. They provided a tutorial for taking
an amateur hobbyist through the steps and the equipment needed to produce a panorama.
The tutorial given is from the ground up so it is especially made for beginners. Click on
the link above to get a full description in detail. The person that wrote the tutorial warns
this is a very patient procedure and it might seem overwhelming at first, but the more
practice one gets the more efficient one will become.
III.
Animation Factory
The animation factory will bring life to your emails, presentations, web pages,
and videos. The website www.animationfactory.com provides 3D clip art, PowerPoint
templates, video backgrounds, backdrops, etc. They provide animated characters for all
occasions along with templates for various projects. We wanted to try an animated
character but we would have had to buy a membership. However, we sampled a free
PowerPoint template. Figure 5 shows the PowerPoint template sample from the
animation factory.
Figure 5: PowerPoint template from animation factory
IV.
Gimp
Gimp is an open source graphics creation and manipulation application similar to
Adobe Photoshop. Gimp is used for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition
and image authoring. We downloaded Gimp and the GTK +2 Runtime Environment.
The first thing we did with Gimp was crop, resize, and lighten up the background in our
Group 3 picture. Figure 6 displays our group picture in the Gimp editor window. Figure
7 shows a picture of an individual member of our group about to be edited using Gimp.
The final results of our edited pictures can be seen on our individual and group website.
Figure 6: Editing group picture using Gimp
Figure 7: Individual picture edited using Gimp
Figure 8 displays a picture of a stained glass window from a group member’s father’s
business. This was originally taken for a website. We used Gimp to at first scale it down
to size we could display in our report. Notice the original pixel size of 2576x1932; we
scaled it down to 500x400. Next we cropped the picture to just display the stain glass
window. With a little color adjustment the final picture can be seen in Figure 9.
Figure 8: Picture of stain glass window
Figure 9: Final picture
V.
Inkscape
Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to
Illustrator, Freehand, etc. Some of the supported SVG features include shapes, text,
paths, markers, clones, alpha bending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping.
Inkscape also supports Creative Commons (nonprofit organization that offers flexible
copyright licenses for creative works) meta data, node editing, layers, complex path
operations, bitmap tracing, text-to-path, flowed text, direct XML editing, etc. Inkscape’s
main goal is to create a powerful and convenient drawing tool fully compliant with XML,
SVG, and CSS standards. Figure 10 shows the group logo we designed using Inkscape.
Our logo is of an integrated circuit IC chip containing a CPU and other various
components.
Figure 10: Group 3’s logo for website
VI.
Yahoo Group Photo Album
This part of the lab we were to make a photo album of our group is Yahoo’s
photo album option. We took pictures of the members of our group while we were
working on different projects in the RF lab. Figure 11 shows our group album we made
using the Yahoo Group photo album feature. We found this very easy to use because all
a person has to do is attached the saved pictures to the site.
Figure 11: Yahoo Group photo album
VII.
Jalbum
Jalbum is a free program used for web photo album generation. Jalbum
allows a user to generate an HTML album from a collection of digital photos.
The person has the option to publish on the internet or they can burn to a portable
storage medium such as CD, DVD, and flash drives. The software includes pre
made templates and users are encouraged to make and distribute their own.
Figure 12 displays our photo album web page created by Jalbum. Jalbum was
actually quicker than Yahoo Groups in creating the album, with one click and
drag the album can be uploaded to the software.
Figure 12: Group photo album created by Jalbum
VIII. Sothink Glanda
Sothink Glanda is a flash animation program for both novice and intermediate
users. A person can create an attention-grabbing ad banner, text animation, eye catching
Flash album and greeting card. This is program was very ease to use also and is equipped
with lots of features to create an interesting photo album. Figure 13 shows a preview to
the photo album we created using this software.
Figure 13: Photo album creating using Glanda
IX.
Windows Media Encoder 9
Windows media encoder is a powerful tool for content producers who to want to
capture audio and video content using the many innovations in Windows Media,
including high-quality multi-channel sound, high-definition video quality, and support for
mixed-mode voice and music content. We use Media Encoder 9 to capture a moving
screen in the windows environment. During the moving screen capture we gave a
demonstration on how to do a FTP using FileZilla. The resulting screen shot segment
was saved as .wmv file. This .wmv file can be accessed through each of our individual
website pages. Figure 14 shows a screen shot of the Media Encoder Environment.
Figure 14: Windows Media Encoder 9
X.
Wink
Wink is a tutorial and presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating
tutorials on how to use a specific software tool. We used Wink to show a moving
panoramic view of St. Peter’s Basilica. Wink captures images one by one during the time
capture mode. After the person has the desired amount of screen shots, the screen shots
are rendered to produce a moving image. Wink outputs this image as a .htm file. Our
group page has a link demonstrating the moving screen shot we created using Wink.
Figure 15 shows a screen shot of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Wink environment. Notice all
the screen captures at the bottom, those are all rendered together with the green arrow.
Figure 15: Screen shot of Wink
XI.
Crazy Talk
With Crazy Talk a person can create and control a virtual cast of live talking
characters. These characters can then be used for your video, web, mobile or messaging
projects. Besides creating animated characters with Crazy Talk, the person has the option
of uploading a realistic photo. This photo can be further processing using image
processing techniques included in the software. The photo can then be brought to life
using a Text-To-Speech plugin which is separately downloaded and then integrated into
Crazy Talk. Figure 16 shows the animated character we created in Crazy Talk. This
character can be seen in action by accessing the group’s web page.
Figure 16: Our animated character we designed using Crazy Talk
Task #2
Weblog update
See Group 3 individual weblogs found on each individual member’s website.
Task #3
Update Project #2
We provided the descriptions of personal and engineering related interests
missing from each individual’s webpage. Original Project 1’s MS word link was updated
and the revised Project 1 can be found in the section called “Project 1 Revision” in
Project 2. In Project 2 we added a table which included the cost comparison of the group
collaboration tools.
Task #4
Update Group Webpage with Project 3 files
We updated the group page to provide a link to the final project report in MS
word and html and we provided a link for the final PowerPoint presentation.
Task #5
I.I.
Project Topic Paper
Introduction
The beginning of the Information Age saw a new tool set which paved the way
for the Digital Era. These tools transmit, receive, operate on and store data in digital
form. Thus, information services and information products were designed setting the
beginning stages of a completely new era or a digital revolution. A key concept behind
the Digital Era is information can be represented in binary form. Whether it is data
scanned from a clerk or fingerprints, the data is encoded into digital form. In order to
process this information, new digital equipment had to be implemented in order to realize
this new way of manipulating data.
Digital equipment involves both software and hardware. Software consists of
written programs, consisting of instructions and procedures, which tell the hardware how
to execute the data. Hardware, which processes the software instructions, has evolved a
long way since the early days of the vacuum tube. Now days, there are millions of
transistors which make up an integrated circuit fabricated on a silicon wafer. These
advancements in hardware allowed for the design of data networks, which interlink
processing nodes in individual computers to create a network of networks.
In the beginning there were few issues related to this network of networks called
the internet. Presently, there are more issues and controversies surrounding the Digital
Era that wide spread debate is very common amongst peers, colleagues and the
government. This paper focuses on three main issues surrounding this era: privacy,
security, and copyright.
I.II.
Privacy Defined
Privacy is the right a person has to retain personal or confidential information
about oneself from anyone, unless he or she willingly shares the information. One can
relate privacy to anonymity, although it is often most highly valued by famous people
whom always seem to be in the public eye. With the advent of the Digital Age, we as
individuals have to become more aware of how our privacy is constantly under attack.
Not only do we have to concern ourselves with the criminal-minded individual trying to
tap into our privacy via the net, but also there is an ever-growing debate between the
tradeoff of our individual privacy and the security methods practiced by our government.
Other issues raised of late are whether popular information tech companies, like Google,
can be entrusted in maintaining the individual’s privacy. These issues are due to the
major advancements in digital technology.
I.III.
Privacy in the Digital Era
The biggest advance in digital circuitry is the speed at which they operate. This
allows more information to be processed at a time giving rise to applications that were
once to computationally intensive. These applications are becoming a part of our
everyday lives and are under debate whether or not they infringe on to much of our
privacy. Due to the increased technological advances in the Digital Era, various new
technologies have raised question whether or not they are a hindrance to our privacy,
even though they may have good intentions for the well-being of society. Current
privacy issues because of advanced technology are biometrics, location tracking,
electronic communications, etc.
Biometrics
Every American is familiar with the Super Bowl. However, most Americans do
not know that at Super Bowl XXXV in Tampa Bay, Florida a new kind of identification
system was employed as a security measure. This identification method known as facial
recognition is a form of biometrics. Here a computer system is designed to identify a
person based on their biometric characteristics. The facial recognition system obtains
biometric samples of the person it wishes to identify and compares the samples to
biometric data stored in a database. If there is a match, the system is able to identify the
person at hand. Referred to as a "one-to-many" match, this type of facial recognition is
used by the police to identify criminals, as well as by government officials to identify
suspected terrorists on the wanted list. Most people would not object to using this
technology to catch criminals or terrorists.
Several issues arise from other uses of biometric data. Government agencies are
starting to use facial recognition as an authentication device to identify qualified
recipients for benefit-entitlement programs and registration systems such as driver's
licenses, voting and other applications. Here the individual’s biometric data is stored on
a smart card and used to verify the user is who he or she claims to be. Privacy issues
arise because some people object to the idea of submitting to an examination to obtain the
required data to form a biometric model. Whether it is an eye machine for retinal data,
DNA samples, or handing over their fingerprints, most people are not willing just to give
up personal information like this. All this information can then be stored in different
databases, which are linked together, and organizations will have access and can share
the data amongst themselves without any knowledge and control from the individual.
Location Tracking
The Digital Era has brought huge advancements in the cell phone industry. At
one time all cell phones were analog. Today’s digital cell phones are smaller, produce
better signal quality, and most even have cameras embedded in them. However, almost
every American carries a cell phone without realizing government agencies can track
their movements through signals radiating from their mobile handset. Cell phones act
like low-power radio transmitters. Cell phone providers can find out the location of that
phone with an accuracy of about 300 yards using multiple cell towers to measure a signal
transmitted by the phone. The past few years have seen an increase in law enforcement
agencies using this technology as a tool for secretly observing the movements of
suspects.
Newer cell phones are also equipped with on-demand tracking, or the “alwayson” feature. These provide emergency location reporting for the elderly or disabled.
These types of phones come with a large red “Alarm” button on top that automatically
places the call the service provider. This service was marketed for people needing quick
access to emergency services, such as the elderly and disabled as well as professionals
like doctors, security staffs, and taxi drivers. By having an “always-on” GPS receiver the
user’s location is reported as soon as the call is placed and help can be directed very
quickly.
What about people who buy this phone for other reasons than emergency
purposes. The question of privacy once again is brought to attention. Do we really want
the cell phone provider and government to be able to determine our location at any given
time? GPS receivers have been used for sometime now and offer many advantages to the
traveling person. Navigation software is based on knowing your own location with a
high degree of accuracy. When the person asks the navigator to locate a place, i.e.
restaurant, gas station, etc., the navigator system is tracking the person at hand.
Essentially the person is tracking himself and is quite different than being tracked by a
third party.
Other new technologies such as RFID tags, implanted radio chips, and license
plate cameras have come under the same scrutiny. One main push for these new tracking
devices is the idea of finding your children when they are lost. However, most skeptics
agree these things do a lot more than just find lost children. They give the tracker, the
person trying to find someone, an enormous amount of information about where the
person goes, with whom they associate, what they do, what they buy, and the list goes on.
That gives the tracker a lot of power he or she can potentially abuse.
Electronic Communications
One of the main concerns of individual privacy involves a type of electronics
communication every person in the world is familiar with and uses regularly, the internet.
A key issue in recent year is the anonymity of the user when he or she is browsing the
information superhighway. Does the user really want his or her every step to be tracked
while they browse? Just that information alone can tell a lot about a person whether good
or bad. When the beginning user surfs the web he or she might think they are
anonymous, but there are various ways that information about ones activities can be
collected without your knowledge and consent. Some privacy threats on the web are
cookies, browsers, search engines, email, spam, etc.
A. Cookies
Cookies are pieces of information that an internet website sends to your browser
when information is accessed from that site. When your computer receives the
information the browser saves the information on the hard drive. Now each time the
same computer is used to access the same website, the data which was previously
received is sent back to the site by the browser. One might ask why cookies are used. In
general, when an internet site is accessed through a public Internet Service Provider
(ISP), each request made to the website cannot be linked to a previous request. This is
because each request does not contain a permanent unique identifier. Cookies allow
website operators to assign a unique permanent identifier to a computer which can be
used to associate the requests made to the website from that computer.
Many internet surfers strongly object to cookies as they feel they’re invading their
hard drive without their permission. Cookies indicate to a website the person has been
there before and they can be used to record what parts of the site was visited. Because of
this a profile of a person’s buying habits and what he or she is interested can be created
through the use of cookies.
B. Browsers
The most widely used browsers are the versions of Netscape Navigator and
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. There have been many reports of security flaws in both of
these browsers. These security bugs allow hackers and websites to access a person’s
personal information while surfing the web. In an article in March’s issue of PCWORLD
Magazine they found 79 security vulnerabilities in the Internet Explorer browser.
Mozilla Firefox was the least vulnerable with only 21 security threats. Most browsers
offer security updates to fix security issues when a known bug is found. These can be
downloaded from their site.
C. Search Engines
Thanks to Google, search engines have been brought to question on how much
they compromise our privacy. There has been recent speculation into how Google treats
the data they collect. A group of people called Google Watch has raised nine interesting
privacy issues involving Google. These issues were raised in conjunction with
nominating Google for the Big Brother award in 2003. Here are the nine points taken
directly from their site www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html:
1. Google’s immortal cookie:
Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038.
This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using
persistent cookies altogether. Now it’s years later, and immortal cookies
are commonplace among search engines; Google set the standard because
no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID
number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a
Google cookie if you don’t already have one. If you have one, they read
and record your unique ID number.
2. Google records everything they can:
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your internet IP address, the
time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration.
Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number.
This is referred to in the industry as “IP delivery based on geolocation.”
3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able
to easily access all the user information they collect and save.
4. Google won’t say why they need this data:
Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the
New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whether Google
ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.
5. Google hires spooks:
Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security
Agency. Google wants to hire more people with security clearances, so
that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.
6. Google’s toolbar is spyware:
With the advanced features enabled, Google’s free toolbar for Explorer
phones home with every page you surf, and yes, it reads your cookies too.
Their privacy policy confesses this, but that’s only because Alexa lost a
class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their
privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google’s toolbar updates
to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have
the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard
disk every time you connect to Google (which is many times a day). Most
software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you’d like an updated
version. But not Google. Any software that updates automatically
presents a massive security risk.
7. Google’s cache copy is illegal:
Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright
laws to the Internet, Google’s cache copy appears to be illegal. The only
way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a
“noarchive” meta in the header of every page on his site. Surfers like the
cache, but webmasters don’t. Many webmasters have deleted
questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the
problem pages live merrily on in Google’s cache. The cache copy should
be “opt-in” for webmaster, not “opt-out.”
8. Google is not your friend:
By now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to
most websites. Webmasters cannot avoid seeking Google’s approval these
days, assuming they want to increase traffic to their site. If they try to take
advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google’s semi-secret
algorithms, they may find themselves penalized by Google, and their
traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by
Google, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Google is
completely unaccountable. Most of the time Google doesn’t even answer
email from webmasters.
9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
With 200 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google
amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newlycommissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream
about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.
D. Email
How a person sets up their email address may affect his or her privacy. In
comparing it to a street address it is ideally a locator, except the person is located in
cyberspace instead of a real physical space. The format of an email is W@X.Y.Z, where
W is the person’s handle, X is usually the ISP or the organization the person works for,
and Y and Z are domains. If a person is concerned with their privacy they might create a
handle which does not give any clue about their name. They also might use a stand alone
email application like hotmail, which gives no reference to their work or what country
they live in and so on. The advantage of this is the person can only reveal their identity
to who they wish. If the person wishes to be kept anonymous it is important to use an
ISP which has disabled the Finger utility. The reason for this is someone can still use
their email address to find out their name and other information about them.
E. Spam
Spam is junk email. It may come from purchases which people have made
through various companies online, being apart of newsgroup or mailing lists,
subscribing to a news service, etc. This is due to the fact these public sources can
be harvested for email addresses. Even some ISPs and other internet businesses
have solicited lists of their customer’s email addresses to spammers. This
practice is looked down upon greatly and should be illegal. Spammers have been
known to use computer programs which randomly generate email addresses.
Spam has become so common it can slow down the whole network. There is now
a big anti-spam movement which the government has even gotten involved in to
determine the legality of it. Spam is now illegal in Australia. Legislation was
passed there, the Spam Act, 2003, making it illegal to send, or cause to be sent,
‘unsolicited commercial electronic messages’.
F. Anonymity
For those of us who wish to stay anonymous on the WWW this might see
like an impossible task. Although a person can not be completely anonymous
because someone is always tracking information, there are a few tools out there
which help tremendously in our quest to attain a self-assured level of privacy.
Remember, even with an internet tool which assures us privacy, someone else
created it and someone is monitoring the network. So it boils down to whether or
not the user trusts the third party.
“Anonymizer” is a typical example of a web anonymity tool. Here there is
a third-party website which acts as a middle layer between the user and the
internet site visited. Instead of the user establishing a direct link to the requested
site, his or her request goes through the Anonymizer website which forwards the
information to the requested site. Once the connection is made, the Anonymizer
forwards the information received from the requested site back to the user. The
requested website has no idea where the packets of information are being
requested and sent back to originally. The Anonymizer server can monitor all the
websites visited by the user, thus collecting information about his or her behavior.
It comes down to whether or not the user can trust the provider of the Anonymizer
service.
I.IV
Privacy and the Government
All the new technological advances can be used for the good of mankind.
The question of debate is how much do we let the government pry into our
everyday lives in order to defend the country. Biometrics, location tracking, and
electronic communications can all be used to provide a safer way of life.
However, each one can provide a powerful means of secretly spying on an
individual. These new technologies allow access to information that was once
unattainable. Private conversations, private meetings, the whereabouts of certain
individuals were all at one time just what they state, private. On the other hand,
where do most sinister plots take place, in private. So if the government has the
means to spy on potential terrorists, why not.
The main problem with this is they sift through a lot of irrelevant data that
belongs to an innocent individual. While they scan emails for terrorist
buzzwords, how many irrelevant emails do they come across? Where is the line
drawn between doing random searches and specifically tracing a potential
suspect’s internet history? These questions only get harder when one considers
the passing of the Patriot Act which gives the government full resources in the
digital domain to do basically whatever is necessary to track down suspected
terrorists.
For example, under Section 206 of the Patriot Act the FBI can conduct
roving surveillance on an individual suspect. With a single warrant the FBI could
raid every single house or office the individual suspect has visited over a year. It
doesn’t even matter whether or not the place belonged to the suspect; any one
place associated with the subject is fair game. In the communications context of
this section the FBI doesn’t even really have to identify the suspect in question.
They can conduct roving surveillance; meaning the FBI can wiretap every single
phone line, mobile communications device or internet connection that a suspect
might be using, without having to identify the suspect by name. Some people
believe this gives the FBI a “blank check” to violate the communications privacy
of countless Americans.
Americans must realize we live in a different world with far more
threatening organizations than in the past. Desperate times call for desperate
measures. Most Americans are happy to give up some of their privacy to ensure
there is not another 9/11. From then to now there have been plots dismantled due
to the government intelligence gathered from various digital technologies. There
is just a real fine line on how far we should let them invade our privacy.
References
http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html
http://www.privacy.gov.au/internet/internet_privacy/
http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/5267.html
http://www.mindfully.org/Technology/2005/Cellphone-Tracking-Privacy10dec05.htm
http://www.eff.org/patriot/sunset/206.php
http://gnunet.org/papers/p255.pdf
II.
Security
Internet security is the process of putting up barriers between a computer and the
internet. This can be done through different forms of software and hardware, such as
router usage and anti-spyware software.
Router Security
The use of a router can greatly reduce the risk of computer hacking. The router
must use NAT (Network Address Translation), which is re-writing the source and/or
destination addresses of IP packets as they pass through a router or firewall. Most
systems using NAT do so in order to enable multiple hosts on a private network to access
the Internet using a single public IP address. According to specifications, routers should
not act in this way, but many network administrators find NAT a convenient technique
and use it widely. Nonetheless, NAT can introduce complications in communication
between hosts.
NAT enables multiple computers to access to the Internet over a single high-speed
link. NAT also typically has the effect of preventing connections from being established
inbound into your computer, whilst permitting connections out. Getting a router in your
home improves the security of a home LAN; some people consider that they don't need a
firewall if they have a router. Typically, a router acts as a junction between two or more
networks to transfer data packets among them. A router is different from a switch. A
switch connects devices to form a Local Area Network (LAN).
One easy illustration for the different functions of routers and switches is to think
of switches as neighborhood streets, and the router as the intersections with the street
signs. Each house on the street has an address within a range on the block. In the same
way, a switch connects various devices each with their own IP address on a LAN.
However, the switch knows nothing about IP addresses except its own management
address. Routers connect networks together the way that on-ramps or major intersections
connect streets to both highways and freeways, etc. The street signs at the intersection
(routing table) show which way the packets need to flow. For example, a router at home
connects the Internet Service Provider's (ISP) network (usually on an Internet address)
together with the LAN in the home (typically using a range of private IP addresses) and a
single broadcast domain. The switch connects devices together to form the LAN.
Sometimes the switch and the router are combined together in one single package sold as
a multiple port router. The following picture depicts the differences:
In order to route packets, a router communicates with other routers using routing
protocols and using this information creates and maintains a routing table. The routing
table stores the best routes to certain network destinations, known as the "routing
metrics" associated with those routes, and the path to the next hop router. Routing is
most commonly associated with the Internet Protocol, but other types of protocols can be
used.
Firewall Security
A firewall is a possible solution to someone with only one computer in their
home. What it can do for you is block traffic to all unauthenticated ports on your
computer, thus restricting access. A stateful firewall is even more cautious about what it
permits through, and the most cautious system administrators often combine a proxy
firewall with a packet-filtering firewall to create defense in depth. Most home users
would use a software firewall, while some high risk servers and computers might need a
hardware firewall. A firewall is a piece of hardware and/or software which functions in a
networked environment to prevent some communications forbidden by the security
policy.
Firewalls use one or more of three methods to control traffic flowing in and out of the
network:

Packet filtering - Packets (small chunks of data) are analyzed against a set of
filters. Packets that make it through the filters are sent to the requesting system
and all others are discarded.

Proxy service - Information from the Internet is retrieved by the firewall and then
sent to the requesting system and vice versa.

Stateful inspection - A newer method that doesn't examine the contents of each
packet but instead compares certain key parts of the packet to a database of
trusted information. Information traveling from inside the firewall to the outside
is monitored for specific defining characteristics, then incoming information is
compared to these characteristics. If the comparison yields a reasonable match,
the information is allowed through. Otherwise it is discarded.
A firewall is also called a Border Protection Device (BPD), especially in NATO
contexts, or packet filter in BSD contexts. A firewall has the basic task of controlling
traffic between different zones of trust. Typical zones of trust include the Internet (a zone
with no trust) and an internal network (a zone with high trust). The ultimate goal is to
provide controlled connectivity between zones of differing trust levels through the
enforcement of a security policy and connectivity model based on the least privilege
principle. Network layer firewalls operate at a (relatively) low level of the TCP/IP
protocol stack as IP-packet filters, not allowing packets to pass through the firewall
unless they match the rules.
The firewall administrator may define the rules; or default built-in rules may
apply (as in some inflexible firewall systems). A more permissive setup could allow any
packet to pass the filter as long as it does not match one or more "negative-rules", or
"deny rules". Today network firewalls are built into most computer operating systems
and network appliances. Modern firewalls can filter traffic based on many packet
attributes like source IP address, source port, destination IP address or port, destination
service like WWW or FTP. They can filter based on protocols, TTL values, netblock of
originator, domain name of the source, and many other attributes.
Application-layer firewalls work on the application level of the TCP/IP stack (i.e.,
all browser traffic, or all telnet or ftp traffic), and may intercept all packets traveling to or
from an application. They block other packets (usually dropping them without
acknowledgement to the sender). In principle, application firewalls can prevent all
unwanted outside traffic from reaching protected machines. By inspecting all packets for
improper content, firewalls can even prevent the spread of the likes of viruses. In
practice, however, this becomes so complex and so difficult to attempt (given the variety
of applications and the diversity of content each may allow in its packet traffic) that
comprehensive firewall design does not generally attempt this approach.
The XML firewall exemplifies a more recent kind of application-layer firewall. A
proxy device (running either on dedicated hardware or as software on a general-purpose
machine) may act as a firewall by responding to input packets (connection requests, for
example) in the manner of an application, whilst blocking other packets. Proxies make
tampering with an internal system from the external network more difficult and misuse of
one internal system would not necessarily cause a security breach exploitable from
outside the firewall (as long as the application proxy remains intact and properly
configured). Conversely, intruders may hijack a publicly-reachable system and use it as a
proxy for their own purposes; the proxy then masquerades as that system to other internal
machines. While use of internal address spaces enhances security, crackers may still
employ methods such as IP spoofing to attempt to pass packets to a target network.
Security against Viruses, Worms, Trojan Horses, & Spyware
Hackers write programs called computer viruses, worms, trojan horses and
spyware. These programs are all characterized as being unwanted software that installs
itself on your computer through deception. Trojan horses are simply programs that
conceal their true purpose or include a hidden functionality that a user would not want.
Worms are characterized by having the ability to replicate themselves and viruses are
similar except that they achieve this by adding their code onto third party software. Once
a virus or worm has infected a computer, it would typically infect other programs (in the
case of viruses) and other computers. Viruses also slow down system performance and
cause strange system behavior and in many cases do serious harm to computers, either as
deliberate, malicious damage or as unintentional side effects.
In order to prevent damage by viruses and worms, you need either to completely
isolate your computer from dangers (impractical for many people or networks) or install
anti-virus software, which typically runs in the background on your computer, detecting
any suspicious software and preventing it from running. Generally, anti-virus software
may be also be used to scan all of the files on a computer occasionally. Because of the
continuing increase in the number of viruses and worms being identified, all good antivirus software include a facility to regularly update the data that is used to identify
viruses. As well as the commercial antivirus programs, which generally require an
annual subscription, there are free antivirus programs available, but the best commercial
programs appear to be a little more reliable at present. Here are some statistics of virus
trafficking from the past week:
Past 7
days
#
Virus Name
1
2
3
4
5
6
Exploit-WMF
JS/Wonka
Exploit-ByteVerify
Exploit-ANIfile
Adware-Url.gen
Downloader-ZQ
Generic
Downloader.z
Adware-Boarim
Adware-Cometsys
JV/Shinwow
7
8
9
10
Infected
Computers
Scanned
Computers
% Infected
43,451
40,810
34,966
31,114
29,956
27,797
955,481
955,481
955,481
955,481
955,481
955,481
4.55
4.27
3.66
3.26
3.14
2.91
27,545
20,991
17,779
15,491
955,481
955,481
955,481
955,481
2.88
2.2
1.86
1.62
Several companies provide a comparison of the performance of different antivirus
programs which should be useful in making a decision as to which to use. Some malware
programs that can be classified as trojans with a limited payload are not detected by most
antivirus software and may require the use of other software designed to detect other
classes of malware, including spyware.
Many users install anti-virus software that can detect and eliminate known viruses
after the computer downloads or runs the executable. They work by examining the
contents of the computer's memory (its RAM, and boot sector) and the files stored on
fixed or removable drives (hard drives, floppy drives), and comparing those files against
a database of known virus "signatures". Some anti-virus programs are able to scan
opened files in addition to sent and received emails 'on the fly' in a similar manner. This
practice is known as "on-access scanning."
Anti-virus software does not change the underlying capability of host software to
transmit viruses. There have been attempts to do this but adoption of such anti-virus
solutions can void the warranty for the host software. Users must therefore update their
software regularly to patch security holes. Anti-virus software also needs to be regularly
updated in order to gain knowledge about the latest threats and hoaxes.
Here is an example of McAfee’s virus detecting software:
Another widely used virus detecting software is made by Norton, but users should
beware of both these famous programs as viruses are now constructed to specifically
attack them, so in some cases it may be better to use a lesser known program. Virus
writers can have various reasons for creating and spreading malware. Viruses have been
written as research projects, pranks, vandalism, to attack the products of specific
companies, to distribute political messages, and financial gain from identity theft,
spyware, and cryptoviral extortion.
Some virus writers consider their creations to be works of art, and see virus
writing as a creative hobby. Additionally, many virus writers oppose deliberately
destructive payload routines. Some viruses were intended as "good viruses". They spread
improvements to the programs they infect, or delete other viruses. These viruses are,
however, quite rare, still consume system resources, may accidentally damage systems
they infect, and, on occasion, have become infected and acted as vectors for malicious
viruses. Moreover, they normally operate without asking for permission of the owner of
the computer. Since self-replicating code causes many complications, it is questionable if
a well-intentioned virus can ever solve a problem in a way which is superior to a regular
program that does not replicate itself.
Spyware refers to a broad category of malicious software designed to intercept or take
partial control of a computer's operation without the informed consent of that machine's
owner or legitimate user. While the term taken literally suggests software that
surreptitiously monitors the user, it has come to refer more broadly to software that
subverts the computer's operation for the benefit of a third party. Spyware differs from
viruses and worms in that it does not usually self-replicate. Like many recent viruses,
however, spyware – by design – exploits infected computers for commercial gain.
Typical tactics furthering this goal include delivery of unsolicited pop-up
advertisements; theft of personal information (including financial information such as
credit card numbers); monitoring of Web-browsing activity for marketing purposes; or
routing of HTTP requests to advertising sites. As of 2005, spyware has become one of
the pre-eminent security threats to computer-systems running Microsoft Windows
operating-systems (and especially to users of Internet Explorer because of that browser's
collaboration with the Windows operating system). Some malware on the Linux and
Mac OS X platforms has behavior similar to Windows spyware, but to date has not
become anywhere near as widespread. An example of how spyware infiltrates a pc is
depicted in the following figure:
Malicious websites may attempt to install spyware on readers' computers. In this screenshot a spamblog has
triggered a pop-up that offers spyware in the guise of a security upgrade.
The most direct route by which spyware can infect a computer involves the user installing
it. However, users tend not to install software if they know that it will disrupt their
working environment and compromise their privacy.
So many spyware programs deceive the users, either by piggybacking on a piece
of desirable software, or by tricking the users to do something that installs the software
without them realizing. Recently, spyware has come to include "rogue anti-spyware"
programs, which masquerade as security software while actually doing damage.
Classically, a Trojan horse, by definition, smuggles in something dangerous in the guise
of something desirable. Some spyware programs get spread in just this manner. The
distributor of spyware presents the program as a useful utility — for instance as a "Web
accelerator" or as a helpful software agent. Users download and install the software
without immediately suspecting that it could cause harm. An example of some software
that can be downloaded and installed into an internet browser is as follows:
Many Internet Explorer add-on toolbars monitor the user's activity. When installed and run without the
user's consent, such add-ons count as spyware. Here multiple toolbars (including both spyware and
innocuous ones) overwhelm an Internet Explorer session.
Phishing
Phishing is a form of criminal activity using social engineering techniques. It is
characterized by attempts to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as
passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in
an apparently official electronic communication. Phishing is typically done using email
or an instant message, and it has more recently also been done via fax.



13,776 phishing attacks linked to 5,259 Web sites took place in August of 2005.
They targeted 84 different businesses, but three businesses received 80 percent of the
attacks.
85 percent of the attacks targeted banks and other financial institutions.
Here is a screenshot example from www.howstuffworks.com of a typical phishing
email:
Some more phishing statistics from www.wikipedia.org:
A chart showing the increase in phishing reports from October 2004 to June 2005.
References:
http://www.mcafee.com
http://www.symantec.com
http://www.wikipedia.org
http://www.howstuffworks.com
III.
Copyright and Copyright Infringement
What is copyright and copyright infringement? This section will answer that
question and will explain copyright, copyright infringement, and the tools used for each
of them. “Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted by governments to regulate the
use of a particular expression of an idea or information. At its most general, it is literally
"the right to copy" an original creation. In most cases, these rights are of limited duration
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright)i.” “Copyright infringement is the unauthorized
use of copyrighted material in a manner that violates one of the copyright owner's
exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to
make derivative works that build upon it. The slang term bootleg (derived from the use
of the shank of a boot for the purposes of smuggling) is often used to describe illicitly
copied material (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement)ii.”
Copyright protection has been in place in the US since the Copyright Act of 1790.
“The object of the act was the "encouragement of learning," and it achieved this by
securing authors the "sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and
vending" the copies of their "maps, charts, and books" for a term of 14 years, with the
right to renew for one additional 14 year term should the copyright holder still be alive
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790iii.” Since then many changes have
been made to copyright laws the two most important and recent ones include the
Copyright Act of 1976 and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, DMCA.
The
Copyright Act of 1976 remains today the primary basis of copyright law in America. The
primary purpose of this act was to provide what is know as a fair use policy for copyright
holders.
The term fair use defines conditions under which individuals may use
copyrighted material without permission. Therefore anything that is not defined in the
fair use doctrine is considered copyright infringement. Also defined by this act what was
the copyright of expression.
“The Copyright Act of 1976 states that the items of
expression can include literary, dramatic, and musical works; pantomimes and
choreography; pictorial, graphic and sculptural works; audio-visual works; sound
recordings; and architectural works. An original expression is eligible for copyright
protection as soon as it is fixed in a tangible form
(http://www.benedict.com/Info/Law/LawWhat.aspx)iv.”
Since the Copyright Act of 1976 the most important copyright laws were defined
by the DMCA. “The act criminalizes production and dissemination of technology that
can circumvent measures taken to protect copyright, not merely infringement of
copyright itself, and heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet.
Passed on May 14, 1998 by a unanimous vote in the United States Senate and signed into
law by President Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998, the DMCA amended title 17 of the
US Code to extend the reach of copyright, while limiting the liability of Online Providers
from copyright infringement by their users
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act)v.”
Synonymous with copyright are the MPAA, Motion Picture Association of
America, and the RIAA, Recording Industry Association of America. “The MPAA's
mission is to protect member interests through political lobbying for changes in copyright
and criminal law. It seeks to promote digital rights management technologies, seen by
some as infringing on user rights and others as balancing user rights with artist
protection. The motion-picture equivalent of the RIAA, the MPAA has taken strong steps
to reduce the number of file-sharing sites online where copyrighted films are available for
download (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpaa)vi.”
The RIAA has been primarily
responsible for setting recording standards for music artists and administering standards
for music recording and reproduction. The RIAA still today is responsible for the
collection of music licenses and royalties.
The MPAA and RIAA are also responsible for the continuing effort to protect
copyright and the fair use doctrine. Part of this ongoing effort includes the introduction
Digital Rights Management, DRM, tools. Digital Rights Management refers to
technologies used to enforce pre-defined fair use policies controlling access to software,
music, movies, or any other digital data. “To date, all DRM systems have failed to meet
the challenge of protecting the rights of the copyright owner while also respecting the
rights of the purchaser of a copy. And none has yet succeeded in preventing criminal
copyright infringement by organized, unlicensed, commercial pirates.
Flaws of some well known systems include:

Physical protection: Uses separate hardware to ensure protection. Examples
include hardware dongles that had to be attached to the computer prior to using
the content, and USB and smart card devices working in a similar fashion.
Physical protection methods consistently failed in consumer markets due to
compatibility problems and extra level of complexity in content use; however,
they did enjoy limited success with enterprise software.

DIVX: Required a phone line, inhibiting mobile use. To take a work for which
unlimited plays had been purchased (called DIVX Silver) to a friend's home, it
was necessary to carry a 14 kg (30 lb) DVD player as well as the light and
compact disc; or to telephone the DIVX service and have the player of the friend
transferred to the account of the purchaser of the work, and then call again to have
it switched back. The system prevented certain legal uses such as the creation of
compilations, by the purchaser. Under copyright law, the owner of a legallyobtained copy of a work may create compilations, or re-sell the copy in the
secondary (used goods) market. By using these technical measures, the DIVX
system was able to thwart the buyer's right of first sale and other fair use rights.
DIVX is a form of physical protection of the content (see above).

CSS – Content-scrambling system: Restricts fair use and first purchaser rights,
such as the creation of compilations or full quality reproductions for the use of
children or in cars. It also prevents the user from playing CSS-encrypted DVDs
on any computer platform (although this restriction can be easily circumvented).
Recently, the advent of DeCSS and cryptographic analysis of the CSS algorithm
have demonstrated flaws in this system which can be exploited to allow users to
recover some of their fair-use rights. Full quality digital copies can now be easily
made, making fair use by normal consumers easier. Although it has been argued
that programs like DeCSS make copyright infringement easier, this system has
never been effective in preventing illegal mass copying of DVDs by criminal
gangs, even before the system was found to be flawed. CSS is an example of
certificate-based encryption.

Product activation: Invalidates or severely restricts a product's functionality until
the product is registered with a publisher by means of a special identification
(activation) code. The process often uses information about the specific
configuration of the hardware on which the software runs, hashing it with the
identification number specific to the product's license. Microsoft was the first
company to use this method in its Microsoft Reader product. Activation was later
used with Windows XP and then with Office XP. Ultimately, workarounds which
bypassed the product activation system have been developed. In 2003, Intuit's use
of a flawed product activation scheme angered thousands of customers who were
denied legitimate use of the product, resulting in a formal apology by Intuit and
discontinuation of the use of the mechanism.

Digital watermarking: Allows hidden data, such as a unique disc ID, to be
placed on the media. Then, the name and address of the purchaser would be taken
at the location of sale, and entered into a database along with the unique media
ID. This does not prevent copying, but it ensures that any copies made of the
media will bear the same hidden information—so if the content appeared on (for
example) P2P networks, the ID number could be easily extracted and the
purchaser prosecuted. This scheme is flawed primarily because authenticating the
buyer as the infringing party is nearly impossible: The buyer may give a false
name and address or present false identification at purchase, the infringing party
may be someone who purchased or otherwise obtained the media second hand,
the media may have been borrowed or stolen from the original purchaser before
the
infringement
occurred,
etc.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management)vii”
Copyright Infringement historically has been around just as long as there have been
copyrights. Even though the penalties for copyright infringement are higher today than
they have ever been piracy is at the highest it has ever been. What has caused this
increase in piracy, well the MPAA and RIAA would say that the internet would be to
blame. However all the internet has done is shown haw easy it is to access whatever type
of media content you could imagine. Near limitless access to information does not seem
like something negative. It seems that who is to blame for copyright infringement should
be the MPAA and the RIAA for being behind in the technological race and not foreseeing
the possibilities that exist for marketing their products. Before internet file sharing
people hardly knew what constituted copyright infringement and even those who did
rarely were punished for it. As a matter of fact equipment such as dual cassette recorders
were marketed for the purpose of such things as recording mix tapes which is now
considered a breach of the fair use doctrine.
In 2005 during MGM vs.Grokster, Don Verrilli said to the Supreme Court "The
record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it's been on their
website for some time now, that it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased,
upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod."viii However later on that same year
“as part of the on-going DMCA rule-making proceedings, the RIAA and other copyright
industry associations submitted a filing that included this as part of their argument that
space-shifting and format-shifting do not count as noninfringing uses, even when you are
talking about making copies of your own CDs: Nor does the fact that permission to make
a copy in particular circumstances is often or even routinely granted, necessarily establish
that the copying is a fair use when the copyright owner withholds that authorization. In
this regard, the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v.
Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use.
(http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004409.php)"ix
Why has the internet made copyright infringement so popular? With all the new
technologies available staying connected to digital content has become extremely
popular. With portable devices like MP3 players, media players, and DVD players,
society wants to be able to bring their media content with them. Even though the internet
may have enabled the access for copyright infringement it also opened the eyes of the
providers of this information to new business opportunities. Although programs like
Napster which was the first notable large internet file sharing community allowed users
to download free music and movies, without it there wouldn’t be programs like ITunes
and the legal version of Napster.
One of the main focuses of the MPAA and the RIAA lately has been with the
BitTorrent protocol. “BitTorrent is both the name of a peer-to-peer (P2P) file distribution
client application and also the name of the file sharing protocol itself, both of which were
created by programmer Bram Cohen. BitTorrent is designed to widely distribute large
amounts of data without incurring the corresponding consumption in costly server and
bandwidth resources. CacheLogic suggests that BitTorrent traffic accounts for ~35% of
all traffic on the Internet The BitTorrent protocol breaks the file(s) down into smaller
fragments, typically a quarter of a megabyte (256 KB) in size, though the larger the file,
the larger the piece size is by default—a 4.37 GB file will often have a piece size of 4
MB (4096 KB). Peers download missing fragments from each other and upload those that
they already have to peers that request them. The protocol is 'smart' enough to choose the
peer with the best network connections for the fragments that it is requesting. To increase
the overall efficiency of the swarm (the ad-hoc P2P network temporarily created to
distribute a particular file), the BitTorrent clients request from their peers the fragments
that are most rare; in other words, the fragments that are available on the fewest peers,
making most fragments available widely across many machines and avoiding
bottlenecks. The file fragments are not usually downloaded in sequential order and need
to be reassembled by the receiving machine. It is important to note that clients start
uploading fragments to their peers before the entire file is downloaded. Everyone can
eventually get the complete file as long as all the pieces are available somewhere in the
swarm, even if no one peer has the complete file (a complete copy of the file is called a
"seed").(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bittorent)x.” Below is a screen capture of a popular
bittorrent client known as UTorrent.
Bittorrent has been responsible for the sharing of TV shows, Movies, and CD’s.
The MPAA and RIAA have shut down and brought litigation against hundreds of top
bittorrent indexing sites. However the popularity of what these sites provide have kept
them multiplying. For every site that gets shut down at least 5 more take over in its
place. Due to this the licensing is now available to download and purchase entire movies
online. Just this past week Warner Brothers has signed a deal to distribute full feature
movies using the bittorrent protocol because of its ability to distribute media to
consumers.
In conclusion copyright and copyright infringement is an ongoing battle between
producers and consumers. However it is from advancements in copyright infringement
which have brought legal means for distributing the same media to consumers willing to
pay for legal content. Although piracy will always exist if the MPAA and RIAA can
conform to the needs of their consumers, more of society will convert too legally
obtaining copyrighted material.
i
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement
iii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790
iv
http://www.benedict.com/Info/Law/LawWhat.aspx
v
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act
vi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpaa
vii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management
viii
Verrilli, Don. (3/29/2005). “MGM v. Grokster In the Supreme Court of the United
States.” http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/04480.pdf
ix
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004409.php
x
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bittorent
ii