TCS - Denial of Service Attacks

Denial of Service Attacks

by Don Singleton
Tulsa Computer Society
From the April 2000 issue of the I/O Port Newsletter

After last month's paper came out I became aware of a serious security problem which I did not want to wait until this issue came out to tell TCS member about, so I posted a link to it at the top of our http://www.tcs.org/webpage.htm page, and have been referring to the information at recent meetings. I hope you have already read it, and if you have not, I want to refer you to http://www.tcs.org/virusalert/denial_of_service.htm or the online version of this article, since there are hot links to further information on many of these points.

I urge all members to check the top of our links page (I have selected that page rather than the top page for our website, because many members have that page as their home page) to see if there are any other urgent notices which need to reach members between I/O Port issues.

The notice said:

Recent news reports, such as ZDnet, CNN, CNN, Forbes, and CNet, have talked about hacker attacks on Yahoo, eBay, E*Trade, Buy.com, Amazon.com and other sites.

Even the FBI and Packet Storm are posting software to attempt to detect such attacks, although it appears that software is only appropriate for use on Unix/Linux machines.

Regardless of what platform you run, Gibson Research's Shields UP! will test your computer's vulnerability.

You may not think your computer is vulnerable, unless you read Fred Langa's WinMag article The Four Myths of Online Security.

One of the footnotes to that article referred to the DSL Reports site, with a database of current known windows Trojan Horses which I found particularly frightening.

You may want to install some sort of Firewall to block attempts to probe your computer. One free firewall is Zone Alarm 2.0, but there are others such as ConSeal PC Firewall ($49.95 - Win9x / $150 NT Wks / $295 NT Srv), SyShield ($29.95 for Win9x and NT), Norton Internet Security 2000 ($59.95 for Win9x ONLY!), and BlackICE Defender ($39.95 for Win9x and NT), all of which are discussed very well on http://grc.com/su-firewalls.htm.



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Tulsa Computer Society 3/10/2000
Don Singleton, President
djs@ionet.net