| By anonraider |
| In light of the recent focus
the United States has placed on security, consider these
scenarios * At an international airport, a terrorist uses
a modem in his notebook to hack in the wireless LAN of
an airlines curbside check-in Service, providing clearance
for himself and 10 other conspirators to board flight
to the united states under assumed names * A group of
servers uses the internet to launch attacks against the
computers of dozens of broadcasting companies, exploiting
a newly discovered vulnerbilityto gain entrance. The attack
scrambles the incoming satellite feed and shuts down the
stations' transmissions. Televesion viewers across the
country find their services discrupted * A terrorist hacks
into the computer networks of hospitals around the country,
exploiting security holes to gain access. Once inside
these computer systems, the terrorist alters the medical
directives for the patients, instructing the systems,
which automatically dispense medications, to feed deadly
drug combinations into these patients veins. * Hundredes
of thousands of servers around the world send a coodinated
flood of data packets over the internet to the main routers
that handle traffic. This data overload temporarily cripples
much of the internet's data flow, including email and
voice transmissions. Dozens of telephone networks, which
have begun routing some of their calls over the internet,
experience connection failures. Only a few years ago,
these possible events would only have been scenes from
a movie. Today, security experts warn that the possibility
exists. Following 09/11 the FBI's NIPC ( national infrastructure
protection center ) and the SANS ( system Administration,
networking and security ) institute a colation of 156,000
security and technical professionals, released the top
20 security vulnerbilities that crackers could use to
damage both the internet and companies it connects. The
list is available at http://www.sans.org/top20.htm. Along
with the list came a sobering message: THE INTERNET IS
AT RISK. "the internet is simply not ready because of
these vulnerbilities. We're not ready to withstand a major
Attack" , states ALLAN PALLER, the SANS institute director,
at at press briefing helf for the release of the FBI/SANS
top 20. |
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