Clifford Stoll's Report

The year is 1986, Clifford Stoll who manages the computers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is asked to fix an error in the University of California, Berkeley campus computer usage accounts. After tracking the account in question he soon realizes it is not a student but an unauthorized user gaining root access to the campus systems by taking advantage of a loop hole. In the next 10 months that follow Stoll puts all of his effort in finding out who this intruder is. He borrows computers from co-workers and friends and attaches them to incoming phone lines- the route which computers use to communicate with one another. Once he narrows down which phone line the hacker is using, he begins recording everything this stranger does. The hacker

headquarters and exclaims there is a hacker accessing classified routes in the U.S. networks. This is the first time the F.B.I. have even heard about cyber-attacks, and they promptly dismiss him. He doesn’t give up and keeps on recording the intruders every move. Knowing hackers mostly work during the night, he notices the activity is narrowed down to a few hours during the day, calculating that the hacker is from Europe. He takes this newfound information to the Feds once more and this time, they bite. With their help, the hacker is tracked down and arrested in Hanover, Germany. This is one of the first of many cyber-attacks which we see today. With technology taking over at a fast rate, with the good, there is also the bad. We must be vigilant. In this paper we will discuss how hacking works, the types of hackers, and what we can do to protect ourselves from the bad ones by summarizing, analyzing, and reviewing Victoria Loewengart’s An Introduction To Hacking And Crimeware, EFYtimes’s Demystifying Black, White And Gray-Hat Hackers, John Pavlus’s "The Search For A New Machine, and Artlitsch and Edelman’s Staying Safe: Cyber Security For People and

It gets an input of information, which it stores, processes and works through, and then outputs. This information is called data, which needs to be written in a language that the computer will understand, such as html or javascript. These commands are called “codes”. These codes are formed to make an operating system – the basic controls which manage the input, memory, processing, and output. Each system is connected to a network which is used to communicate with one another through telephone lines or wireless access. Imagine the computer as a person. Each day this person works by receiving a set of problems. They then store those problems and work with their memory to process these problems, and then give a solution. This person communicates to other co-workers through a network. Hacking is using a computer to get unauthorized access to data from systems and networks. This can go one of two ways say journalists at EFYTimes: black hat hacking and white hat hacking. Black hat hackers hack for personal gain or just to be mean. They are the ones who will let viruses lose and compromise your security or hack into your personal banking information. Thankfully, there are also white hat hackers. White hat hackers are ethical. They follow the law and use their hacking for good, such as hacking into a system to find the loop holes and fix them so they will be secure. However, where there is black and white, there is also gray.