Usenet groups are a common source of online vulnerability. If many employees from a single enterprise are frequently participating in Usenet groups, intelligence agents can collect the information and analyse it to reveal much information, possibly even uncovering confidential information. From the technical side, Usenet posts reveal information about the users systems, which can aid hacking activities to gain access to information. Information that can be revealed in a post from an employee whose company is using a proxy server even to small extent include the origination of the message, the operating system and the software running on the system. This information can be used by outsiders to gain access to your network or exploit the user s system.
Corporate espionage conducted by outsiders is more publicised than insider threats.
Vulnerabilities in your network that enable outsiders to gain access to the network will enable them to potentially access the proprietary information that they seek. Brute-force password cracking programs will try every password combination until they discover the right one. Programs can be executed on a user s computer to enable an outsider to gain control of that computer, and gain further network access. NetBus, Back Orifice andBO2K can all be used to capture data from the victim s computer and send it to a remote location. Generally, backdoors are emailed to the user or downloaded from a Web site, disguised as a benign email attachment or program.