Articles
Cybercrime: An Epidemic
Painted in the broadest of strokes, cybercrime essentially is the leveraging of information systems and technology to commit larceny, extortion, identity theft, fraud, and, in some cases, corporate espionage. Who are the miscreants who commit these crimes, and what are their motivations? One might imagine they are not the same individuals committing crimes in the physical world. Bank robbers and scam artists garner a certain public notoriety after only a few occurrences of their crimes, yet cybercriminals largely remain invisible and unheralded. Based on sketchy news accounts and a few public arrests, such as Mafiaboy, accused of paralyzing Amazon, CNN, and other Web sites, the public may infer these miscreants are merely a subculture of teenagers. In this article we provide insight into the root causes of cybercrime, its participants and their motivations, and we identify some of the issues inherent in dealing with this crime wave.
E-mail Authentication: What, Why, How?
Internet e-mail was conceived in a different world than we live in today. It was a small, tightly knit community, and we didn’t really have to worry too much about miscreants. Generally, if someone did something wrong, the problem could be dealt with through social means; “shunning” is very effective in small communities.
Criminal Code: The Making of a Cybercriminal
NOTE: This is a fictional account of malware creators and their experiences. Although the characters are made up, the techniques and events are patterned on real activities of many different groups developing malicious software.
Playing for Keeps
Inflection points come at you without warning and quickly recede out of reach. We may be nearing one now. If so, we are now about to play for keeps, and “we” doesn’t mean just us security geeks. If anything, it’s because we security geeks have not worked the necessary miracles already that an inflection point seems to be approaching at high velocity.
Interviews
A Conversation with Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann
Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann have long been active participants in promoting integrity in the election process, with special emphasis on the dependable use of information technology, as well as on the weak-link nature of the entire process, from beginning to end.
Curmudgeon
The Joy of Spam
Not a day goes by that a large amount of spam doesn’t get past the two filters that I have in place (one on the server and one on my mail client). Most of this e-mail is annoying and some of it dangerous. But I have finally come to peace with spam and it no longer bothers me. How did I do that, you ask? I have learned to respect, even love, spam’s malicious beauty. I want to share my journey to inner peace, hopeful that you will find happiness too.
Kode Vicious
Understanding the Problem
Dear KV, I've done a one-day intro class and read a book on Java
but never had to write any serious code in it. As an admin,
however, I've been up close and personal with a number of Java
server projects, which seem to share a number of problems:
* Performance--about 10 times slower than C.
* Complexity--programs seem very large and obtuse.
* Slow to code--projects always running behind.
Is there any data showing that Java projects are any more or less
successful than those using older languages? Java does have heavy
commercial support, as well as the noble aim of helping programmers
reduce certain types of errors. But as professional programmers, we
use sharp tools, and they are dangerous for exactly the reasons
they are useful. Trying to protect everyone from level 1 programmer
errors seems very limiting to me. I keep seeing projects to replace
legacy apps start amid fanfare and hoopla and with significant
budgets using the most modern techniques, only to end up being
cancelled or only partially implemented. Am I missing
something?
Opinion
Better Health Care Through Technology
Leveraging technology to support aging relatives in their homes is a cost-efficient way to maintain health and happiness and extend life. As the technology expert for my extended family, it has fallen to me to architect the infrastructure that will support my family’s aging loved ones in their homes as long as possible. Over the years, I have assisted four different senior households in achieving this goal, and although things have been bumpy at times, I have refined technical solutions and methodologies that seem to work well.
