The personal internet security

This is a how-to guide for keeping your personal computer safe on the Internet. Following the success of The Internet Security Guidebook, the authors have used their expertise to create a book specifically addressing home computers and traveling notebooks. Included in this book is a comprehensive list of vendors and services that you can download and/or purchase. Included are these key elements: Protecting your PC on the Internet, Home firewall software, How to set up a home network, Protecting your PC on the road, and Protecting your PC via DSL and/or Cable Modem. Included in this book is a comprehensive list of vendors and services that you can download and/or purchase.

Author Biography: Timothy Speed is an infrastructure and security architect for Lotus Professional Services (LPS), an IBM company. Tim has been involved in Internet and messaging security for the last 8 years. He has assisted with the Domino infrastructure at the Nagano Olympics and the Lotus Notes systems for the Sydney Olympics. Certifications include MCSE, VCA (VeriSign Certified Administrator), Lotus Domino CLP Principal Administrator, and Lotus Domino CLP Principal Developer.

Juanita Ellis was the lead technical architect in Lotus Consulting for the Southern, Mid Atlantic, and Eastern regions of the U. S. She was responsible for designing and constructing enterprise-wide applications that integrated with Enterprise Resource Planning Systems, Internet technologies, and relational and transaction-based systems. She is the co-author of The E-Commerce Book: Building the E-Empire, (1st and 2nd), Academic Press.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Virus
• Worms
• Trojan
• Port Scanning
• File Share Attacks
• DOS
• Operating Systems (OS) Attacks
• Scams
• Chapter 1 - The Internet
• Beginning of TCP/IP
• TCP/IP and the Internet
• OK, Back to Reality
• Why Ethernet?
• Chapter 2 - Got DSL, Got Cable, May Have Trouble (Connecting to the Internet today)
• The Internet and the Home User
• The Personal Computer at Home:
• The Business Computer at Home:
• Connection Types
• Dial-Up
• ISDN
• DSL
• Cable Modem
• Chapter 3 - Connecting Your Home Network to the Internet
• Connection Types
• Network Interface Cards
• Setting Up the NIC
• HUB
• Routers
• What about Networking my MAC?
• Personal Firewalls
• Chapter 4 - Securing Your DSL, Cable Modem and Dial Up Connection
• Virus Review
• Law
• Software
• Attacks Against You and Your Pets
• Good Security Practices
• List of Death
• The Approach
• A Quick Overview on a Wireless Home Network
• Network Card or the PC
• The Access Point
• Dial-up Configuration Settings
• WinIPCfg
• IPConfig
• Junk and Spam
• The Junk
• The "Spam"
• Chapter 5 - Physical Security and Insurance
• Where are the risks?
• Theft Prevention Devices
• Alarms
• Anti-theft
• Security Enclosures
• Automatic Alert System
• Other Considerations
• Insurance
• PC Security Checklist
• Chapter 6 - Data Protection
• Windows 2000 EFS
• A Vendor Solution (Gatekeeper)
• Smart Cards
• Chapter 7 - Keep Your Data Private
• Who is Keeping US Safe
• How Are You Being Tracked?
• The FBI and Carnivore
• Privacy Tools
• Privacy References
• Chapter 8 - Encryption For Your PC
• A History ofCryptography
• Key Types
• How a Public-Private encryption system works
• RSA - Public and Private Key
• PGP
• Digital Signatures
• S/MIME
• Digital Certificates
• How It All Works
• Now the Packet Sniffer
• Securing the Link with SSL
• Using and Managing Certificates
• Reference books about Encryption
• Security Hardware and Software Reference Section
• Encryption
• Filters
• General Protection
• Personal Firewall
• User Authentication
• Virus Protection
• TCP/IP Reference
• ARP and Routing
• Ports
• DHCP
• Glossary of Terms
• PREFACE: Introduction
• The government has for years been sending out radio signals to our brains with secret messages. The messages tell us to "pay our taxes", "drive slow", and "to eat fatty foods". I have found a method to block those signals; I have created a hat made out of aluminum foil. I wear this hat whenever I go out of the house.
• We need to protect our computers from 'the evil bad dude hackers' much like I protect my mind from the government. While the aluminum hat seems to work for me, it does not work for my computer. OK, most any connection to the Internet exposes our computer to the bad dude hackers. Cable-modem and DSL provides an always-on high-speed link to the Internet. And these "always-on' connections from our homes can be easy prey to the bad dudes. Corporate DMZs, firewalls, and armed guard dogs do not sufficiently protect the home computer. In fact, if the hacker is really successful in their attempts to take over your machine, then your computer can be used to attack other systems back on your corporate network.
• Hackers are using various methods to attack systems connected to networks and especially the Internet. Here are some of the attacks that you, as a home PC user, can experience:
• 1. Virus
• 2. Worms
• 3. Trojan horse
• 4. Port Scanning
• 5. File Share Attacks
• 6. DoS
• 7. O/S Attacks
• 8. Scams
• 1. Virus - A computer virus is a program that spreads itself by making copies of itself and sending them from computer to computer, creating havoc on each computer it visits.
• The term "virus" is used loosely to cover any sort of program that tries to hide its possibly malicious function while it tries to spread onto as many computers as possible. A virus can spread itself via a number of mechanisms; a floppy, a CD, an e-mail message, and even an application. Viruses can even use your computer's internal clock to trigger the actual program on a certain date.
• 2. Worms - A worm gestates in a networked environment and then spreads by spawning copies of itself on other computers on the network. Worms eat up computer resources like memory and even network bandwidth. Also, we see that worms can sometimes delete data and then spread themselves via e-mail. Here again, the transport of choice is e-mail. One of the earliest worms that caused great disruption on the Internet was the Morris worm in 1988. This worm was a harbinger of things to come. The Morris Internet worm burrowed through the Internet world of 1988; it only impacted 6,000 of the 60,000 computers. Stop and think for a second, only 60,000 computers were on the Internet at that time, not much, but that worm hit 10% of the existing community. The Love Bug hit 100 times that, as the technology has been growing so have the worms; bummer dude.
• 3. Trojan horse - A Trojan horse is a program that appears legitimate but contains second, hidden functions that can (and many times will) cause damage. E-mail with the aim of stealing passwords from a victim's computer and then e-mailing the stolen data to a targeted recipient often illustrates one of the most common type of Trojan horse. Back Orifice is one of these types of tools (or virus —- you make the call)
• There are many vendors providing information and tools to combat viruses. 4. Port Scanning - There are hundreds, if not thousands, of tools that can be used to 'scan' a system or web page. These tools can be downloaded by most anyone and used with little or no modification. These tools will search a network or Operating systems looking for vulnerabilities and reporting them back to the hacker. The hacker can then take advantage of these 'open doors'. With the results of the port scanning tools the hackers can then use that information to attack specific ports, like - 137 or 139- the ports used for file sharing.
• 5. File Share Attacks - Windows provides the ability to share files over a network. In order to use file sharing, two different protocols are used:
• 1. Netbeui - is a proprietary protocol created by Microsoft,
• 2. TCP/IP - the protocol that allows us to communicate on the Internet
• A computer with file sharing over TCP/IP enabled can easily become a target for the bad dudes. You can have a directory that can be written to and have all of the data on your hard drive removed, or some bad dude can print all types of junk on your 'shared' printer.
• 6. DoS - this stands for Denial of Service Attacks. This is an indirect attack to the site. The hackers are not trying to get into the site itself. They are keeping everyone else from getting into the site. One of the most famous of these attacks was the "IP Ping of Death", as documented as early as January 1998. CERT(r) Advisory CA-98.01 "smurf" IP Denial-of-Service Attacks. The DoS can keep you from using your home computer on the Internet.
• 7. Operating Systems (OS) Attacks - This is where a set of tools can be used to attack the OS, try to damage the OS and/or extract passwords from the OS. A combination of approaches is used for these attacks, port scanning to find an open port, Virus, and Trojan horses.
• 8. Scams -
• Scams are nothing new, I was about 10 years old and had five dollars scammed away from me at a carnival in George West, Texas. AT .50 cents a throw the attendant had me convinced that I would double my money on the next ball. That was the best five-dollar lesson of my life. The Internet is a spawning ground for Scams. Here is an example:
• You may receive an e-mail that looks like your service provider sent it. This request may look very 'official'. The request has your name, and your e-mail address. The request may read something like this:
• From: Your Service Provider
• To: Joe Smith
• Subject: Please update your account information
• Dear Joe Smith:
• It is time for you to update your account information. Please go to this URL and enter your credit card information and your expiration date. Also please enter your password when you enter the site.
• http://192.9.201.200/ISP.html
• Thanks for your cooperation
• Now is the message a fake or a real message? Here is what you do:
• Contact your service provider and ask them if they actually sent this message. Also notice the URL in the message above. It has an IP address. The ISP should never use an IP address for account information updates, why - SSL. (More on SSL later in this chapter). A secure server should always have the name of the service in the URL. For example, when I connect to purchase a book from Amazon.com they take me to a secure area. The name is still Amazon.com.
• So if you receive any message via e-mail that requests personal information, social security numbers, credit card numbers, and password, contact the source directly (and not via e-mail). Please take the time to protect yourself.