Even though it was close to my birthday, these were people I only vaguely knew and included a few married men, so I opted not to get involved. Coming a year after Melissa, it seems that at least a few people forgot about the lessons of suspicious attachments. We have since seen a lot more viruses with potentially much more dangerous payloads, yet there has not been a repeat of the Lovebug fiasco. Certainly the bad guy is emboldened by the anonymity of the Internet, and this will be an ongoing issue. For those of us who love to shop online, it is probably only a matter of time before we all find some strange charges on our monthly statement.
Eternal vigilance is the price for the liberty of Internet commerce.
Encryption, the core technology for protecting information from prying eyes, got a significant boost in 2000. This encryption algorithm will provide a foundation for the security technology we will use to conduct business and protect our privacy for many years to come. An important policy announcement from the US Government lifted many restrictions on the export of encryption technology, another move that should aid the goal of making encryption more commonly used. Hopefully, if you are a PGP user, this is not the first you have heard of this issue. While all of our top 10 security stories are significant, there is an increasing realization within the criminal hacker element that corporate networks are where the money is and that is where they need to be.