Security and the Privacy of the Internet

by Charlene Tinker, April 2015

1500 words

5 pages

essay

We can distinguish two general groups of hackers that act differently, according to their vision of goals they want to achieve. There are so-called “white hats” and “black hats”. The first group can be called “noble” hackers since their activities are mostly aimed at finding vulnerabilities in different network security systems. They notify stakeholders regarding such problems or simply do it for fun without causing any damage to the information or system they intruded in (Clark, 2003). “Black hats” either do it to prove something to themselves or other “colleagues” usually damaging information, etc., or with criminal intent, like stealing, intentional damage with certain purpose, etc. However, all hackers whether they are “white hats” or “black hats” have one thing in common. They are all professionals of rather high value; otherwise, their efforts regarding breaking in somewhere would not be that effective (Scambray, 2006). What do these people know about computers, networks, and security systems that other IT professionals do not? Hackers are usually very good at network and system programming; they are good mathematicians and have deep knowledge in many IT related areas (Clark, 2003). However, all this knowledge and skills cannot be distinguished as unique advantages of hackers. Many people can master all this. Hackers have another angle of look at the problem they want to solve. This is the main uniqueness of people that can breach the security of a system that cannot be breached by a regular IT specialist (Goode & Cruise, 2006). These angles and slightly different perception of virtual world, excellent programming and mathematical skills, and profound understanding of IT area provide hackers with advantages that other people will never have. So why do not there people work on creating such systems that potentially cannot be compromised? Well, they do. However, there is a saying that everything that was created by a man can be done even better by another man (Goode & Cruise, 2006). Therefore, despite the fact that former hackers can be on the “good” side, it does not change the rule that it is not a panacea from other, more successful hackers.

Web Security

On the browser, each data type is associated with a presentation program, called a viewer. These programs are, themselves, often large and complex, which means they may well contain bugs. Furthermore, some of the file formats contain some programmability (a good example of this is Postscript). A hacker could use these features to execute programs or install data on the client machine (Kaldal, 2011). Firewalls are pieces of software or hardware allowing only those users, who are outside a system with specified characteristics to access that system. They protect a system or network or a section of the Internet from unauthorized use from both within and outside. Inside the system it is possible to implement an internalized firewall system. Firewall devices enable secured access and communications with external networks where the level of security and trust is not well established (Olson, 2009).

Since their inception as simple bridges with access …

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