[Islam-Online- Science, Ideas & Technology]

With the prevalence of computers, their usage in most walks of life has skyrocketed. People use computers for anything from a word processor to gift shopping. What many people aren't aware of is how easy it is to have important documents all the way to your entire hard drive being corrupted from individuals attacking your system.

The first thing to know is that TCPI controls the Internet, as far as it can be controlled. It is a company that out-battled competitors for control of cyberspace. Next, you must know that the Internet offers virtually no security whatsoever for its users. Below is a list of things to be aware of to protect against these types of attack.

Modes Of Attack:
1) User ID and Password: By obtaining a person's ID and Password, anyone has access to their data.

2) IP Spoofing: Every user has an IP address. People can use your address and fool other people by making them think that you were the one whom they were dealing with.

3) Session Hijacking: This happens when two people are communicating on the Internet. A third party is monitoring their conversation until they decide to interfere. What they will do is take the place of one of the participants while the other thinks they are still talking to the original. The person that they replaced is then kicked off altogether. Now the intruder can ask anything, and the person on the other end thinks they're still talking to their friend.

4)Denial of Service: Calling the server of the person that is under attack can launch this attack. The server will open by allocating memory for the attacker and waits for a response. What the attacker wants to do here is barrage the memory of the server of a specific website that they want to attack for whatever reason. TCPI will then barrage that server with requests to the point that it has no memory left, bringing it to a total standstill.

5) Imposters: If a person wants to attack a website, they can do so by impersonating that website's URL address. Once they get in, they can do a 'denial of service' to that site, among other things.

Lower-level Modes Of Attack:
1) Service Providers: They have a history of all the sites that you visit. If you use e-commerce, they develop a pattern of your buying habits.The information that you leave on a website after purchasing material is left wide open for anyone to steal, with the proper know-how.

Although many websites that deal with e-commerce have security measures called SSL, they are not completely foolproof. When you use the SSL on any given site, it encodes your credit card information as well as your other forms of personal information sent in the message.

Once it reaches the website, they owners of the site want to make sure that you are a legitimate customer that has the resources available to pay for the products of interest. In order to read your information, the owners have to decode it. Once they do that and find out that you are legitimate, they will send you the products that you requested. In anticipation of future purchases, the owners leave your information saved in a databank stored on computers. They don't recode the information because it takes a lot of time to do so, making it not very cost effective.

What that means is that anyone who wants to get into their system and steal people's credit card numbers, can do so. The good thing is that if this happens to you, you can report it to the owners of that website and they will not charge you for the purchase. However, you still have to go through the tedium of getting the credit card frozen and changed. You will also probably have to present some form of proof that you didn't buy the items used when your number was stolen, bringing about a very annoying and dragged-out situation. In order to avoid this, the best thing to do is minimize the amount of shopping you do over the Internet.

Remember that the Internet is a very powerful tool that people use. It is at the same time, very weak when it comes to having security to protect people from being attacked or ripped off. Keep in mind that any information that you disclose on the Internet can be taken and used by anyone who knows how. It isn't very hard.

Science & Technology