April Fool's Virus, IP Addresses, and Cookies

Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by Mercurial, Apr 1, 2009.

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  1. The Freshmaker

    The Freshmaker <insert obscure pop culture reference> Contributor

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    So...you're saying that the Internet will explode?
     
  2. LordKyleOfEarth

    LordKyleOfEarth Contributor Contributor

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    It may. More than likely its a guy who wanted to point out a problem and so he made a 'virus' which will call attention to the issue (fix it) without being destructive. A white-hat virus, if you will.

    Then again it could be starting the android revolution; anything can happen (on the internet)
     
  3. The Freshmaker

    The Freshmaker <insert obscure pop culture reference> Contributor

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    True.

    Though...if he(or they) is just trying to prove a point, that's a far way to go. I mean, Microsoft has a $250,000 bounty out on this guy/these guys.
     
  4. The Freshmaker

    The Freshmaker <insert obscure pop culture reference> Contributor

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    You know, I hear that if you turn out all the lights and stand in front of a mirror and say "Conficker" three times, it'll pop out of the mirror and eat your soul.
     
  5. LordKyleOfEarth

    LordKyleOfEarth Contributor Contributor

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    Conflicker, Conflicker, Conflicker.

    Nope, nothing. I guess you heard wro
     
  6. adamant

    adamant Contributor Contributor

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    From what I hear, after a person does a good hack job (which would ordinarily be an oxymoron), people at security firms usually want to hire them. That is, once they get out of jail.
     
  7. marina

    marina Contributor Contributor

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  8. ManicParroT

    ManicParroT New Member

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    This isn't strictly true. I mean, sure, it's probably happened, but it's not a standard event. IT professionals aren't as rare as they used to be, and you can usually find decent IT people that don't have authority issues and criminal records without going to ex-crackers.

    Kevin Mitnick did set up a security consultancy once he got out from under the court orders imposed on him, so it can happen.
     
  9. lordofhats

    lordofhats New Member

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    That's true. Crackers getting jobs as security consultants is a thing of the eighties and early nineties were it was still a challenge to find people with the skill set. That's not the case anymore, and these days the Federal Government keeps lists of crackers organized into White Hats and Black Hats (and a few other add on colors depending on what they do) and for the most part if your on the Black Hat list it has the same effect as having a long criminal record.

    Sure a Black Hat might start their own company or get a job but it isn't easy to get hired or get start up funds. I White Hat would have an easier time, but depending on how they go about their activities they might not do so well either.
     
  10. Neha

    Neha Beyond Infinity. Contributor

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    That's not true actually. Cookies can help a hacker get your REAL IP adresses. And if you do a Command Prompt call-I'm not going into the whole process, it becomes real easy to track you through your cookies, even if your IP address is not stable.

    You go to search engines? You view peoples albums in photobucket? You visit networking sites? Sometimes while typing a web address you open another thing which is something like a website? That's how you get trojans, and viruses in general. You can't really protect yourself, they're everywhere.

    I don't. I don't even have an antivirus. I just make sure I have nothing personal on my system, and keep two-three back-ups of everything. Nothing's happened to me yet, when it does, I'll deal with it. And maybe do the "an eye, for an eye" stuff.

    Once someone gets into your system, nothing safe. It's not like a part of the drive isn't infected or something. Do you know, a file that you've permanently deleted-even from the recycle bin, can still be accessed with the right software? The file is just called deleted because it's address is deleted from the main memory. But traces of it are still left AND can be found, thus enabling the person to access those files.


    Umm, no, cookies are like raw materials of a nuclear power plant-as themselves they're like safe, they radiate just enough that's balancable by their environment. But when they're processed they can have REALLY adverse effects.

    There's this theory going around that within ten years the Internet is going to crash-like completely fall down, because it's being overloaded-and it's going to completely overload one day and just shut down-and probably take power along with it. After that it's going to be pretty difficult to clear it up.

    Actually these days there's such a large market in IT, that black hat hackers are no longer in "style". There's are plenty of white-hat hackers who act as security consultants in firms and stuff. Chetan Bhagat is an Indian examples. And it's actually good for you if you learn the background of white-hat hacking-keeps you aware.
     
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  11. lordofhats

    lordofhats New Member

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    True, but the vast majority of Cookies are in fact harmless. They are put on the net for the purposes of advertising and collecting information on user preferences. I won't go through it all again I explained it in an earlier post. Most cookies don't track or even report your IP (though any cookie could be geared to do so), they just report what sites you frequent so their maker can use the data to better gear their site to their market and hopefully get a better profit. A cookies can be programmed to do a lot of things. Most of them aren't security threats on their own.

    I read an interesting article about that. The problem is that there isn't enough money going into the Internets infrastructure, and that if significant investment isn't made in the next few years to expand it, the internet will be overburdened with traffic and crash. The problem is that there isn't much profit to be made off internet infrastructure so no one wants to really invest much into it (ignoring of course the fact that maintaining the net will help them in the long run). The article I read specifically mentioned that the video sites like YouTube and streaming sites are taking up a lot of space in the internet highway, and they take up more and more every year.

    Unless you defragment your drive. Doing so often erases information without an address attached to it as other data is moved around the drive. You can also buy special software that can completely purge data from a drive. I defragment my drive every year or so.

    Don't confuse the above with data forensics though. It's impossible to guarantee deleted data can't be found, but there are many things you can do that make that data inaccessible without highly specialized equipment, most of which require the hard drive to be physically present and can't be done over the net.
     
  12. marina

    marina Contributor Contributor

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    One thing I don't understand is the danger of someone knowing my IP address. It's not my home address...so what's the problem? And even if you see my IP and know what city I live in, again, I don't understand why that matters. There are thousands of people who live in my city.
     
  13. marina

    marina Contributor Contributor

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    Oh, also, the link I posted is to an article about hacker Nils who was able to compromise 3 browsers. He won $ and a Vaio for doing it. It looks like he's trying to get a job with Microsoft now too.
     
  14. lordofhats

    lordofhats New Member

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    IP can be used to trace your exact address. How it works I'm not so sure; it might be similar to how one could triangulate a cell phone's location. *shrug* I'm a programmer not a networking guy.

    That is a white hat hacker contest of which there are very very many. The hacker was not breaking any laws when he did his hack. It's important to understand the difference between hackers and crackers. Hackers (White Hats) do not break laws. Crackers (Black Hats) break into systems illegally. Black Hats will have trouble getting jobs once they're found out. White Hats don't have that problem.
     
  15. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Cookies store small amounts of information locally on your computer. They can only supply information to the website that created them, using information that the browser can already provide to the site directly. The onbly difference is that they can remember and accumulate that information from visit to visit. The type of information collected comes through channels that can be assigned different levels of sensitivity, and the browser can prevent the cookies from saving information that is a higher risk than a set level without your permission. However, any data you enter into a form is considered in the safe category, because in theory you have control over it.

    Generally cookies don't pose much risk. Tracking cookies can provide a site with some of your browsing history, which is generally undwesirable (but important for some legitimate web applications).

    Cookies are generally more beneficial than harmful, and are feared more than they deserve.

    A hacker (or a legitimate web site) can get the IP address without cookies. It is a necessary part of the HTTP protocol. Without it, the web server could not return a web page to you.
     

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