What They Are and How to Defend Against Them Introduction Using malicious programs like WinNuke, Papa Smurf, and Teardrop, intruders invade our privacy and undermine the integrity of our computers. Thirty percent reported that they had found actual intrusions into their networks and 26 percent reported theft of proprietary information. The incident handling entity for the civilian government, FedCIRC, reported that 130,000 government sites totaling 1,100,000 hosts were subject to attacks in 1998.
Computer crime is substantial.
It is clear that we must increase our efforts to secure our systems and mitigate crime in the relatively new medium of cyberspace. In order to prevent attacks in cyberspace, systems administrators need a high-level understanding of the methods attackers use to penetrate computers. You cannot effectively fight a war without some knowledge of the weapons of your enemy. The Information Technology Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, researches the tricks of intruders and educates the public on how to stop them. Overview of Attacker Tools Vast resources are available on the Internet that enable intruders to penetrate computer networks.