Legacy Security Articles

By Edward Toppe

Spyware and adware is advertising supported software that allows its publishers to snoop on a computer user's internet activity.

It is designed to obtain information about computer users and their surfing behavior usually without their knowledge or consent. Spyware is potentially more harmful than Adware because it can record your keystrokes, history, passwords, credit card number and other confidential and private information. Besides spyware and adware, computers can also be infected with my other internet parasites such as Winfixer 2005, viruses, trojans, dialers, etc.

By Clive Chansa

Online shopping offers many benefits that you won't find shopping in a brick and mortar store or by mail. The Internet is always open seven days a week and 24 hours a day. Internet-only deals and bargains can be numerous online. Shopping on the Internet is no less safe than shopping in a store or by mail. Keep the following tips in mind to help ensure that your online shopping experience is a safe one.

By Mitchell Krell, Scott Mann, Ellen Mitchell 
Article is provided courtesy of Addison Wesley Professional

Vulnerability Survey

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By Shanna Riley

You've heard all kinds of terrible things about it, but just what IS it - and how does it get on your computer in the first place?

By Rick Parrott

Go into to any office and look under the computer keyboards and you'll eventually find a little piece of paper with that users logon ID and passwords. Probably every password that person has.

1. INTRODUCTION
Does increased security provide comfort to paranoid people? Or does security provide some very basic protections that we are naive to believe that we don't need? During this time when the Internet provides essential communication between tens of millions of people and is being increasingly used as a tool for commerce, security becomes a tremendously important issue to deal with.

Firewalls are one of the fastest growing technical tools in the field of information security. However, afirewall is only as secure as the operating system it resides upon. This article is a continuation of the original Armoring Solaris article, focusing on building a minimized Solaris 8 64-bit for CheckPoint FW-1 NG firewall. This article does not include an updated script for the automated securing of the new installation, as there was in Armoring Solaris. Instead, we will be using Solaris Security Toolkit (JASS). This is a new tool developed and released by Sun for the secure deployment of the Solaris platform. In otherwords, I'm not going to develop a tool to automate the secure build since that tool is already out there.

By Marcos Christodonte II, CISSP

With the increased reliance on the Internet for everyday activities, attackers are looking for the largest online channels to infiltrate networks. Regular browsing for entertainment or research is becoming risky business. Websites using web 2.0 technologies such as MySpace and Face Book are key platforms to reach users for social engineering exploits. Moreover, advertising networks are becoming the newest targets of malvertising (malicious advertising), particularly those who syndicate by reselling their ad space to third parties. This article briefly outlines the risk of malvertising, social networking, and need for a defense-in-depth approach to combating these threats.

By Gary Gresham

Safe web surfing on the Internet continues to get harder every day. Even though you can't eliminate all of the risks, there are ways you can reduce some of the danger.

By Allen Brown

If you are actively working online than there is a huge possibility that in some way Spyware will get installed in your computer. After all, it takes is only clicking the wrong site or by downloading some programs. Nowadays there is a new form of Spyware everyday, which has been created by the people or company that is desperately seeking information. Spyware is also known as a great damager to the companies. It is not so noticeable like spam and virus attacks to the systems.