Internet security
Internet securityThe Internet is the community of the future, but if security measures are not put in place and enforced, then it will become more of a slum and less of a community. The primary question is, therefore, who has the obligation to put these security measures into place? Is it the individual users of the computers and the Internet? Is it the responsibility of the companies that develop the different computer applications to place certain security measures in place? Or is it the responsibility of the governments of the world to unite and create rules and regulations that secure the Internet and guard the citizens of the world from the malicious activities of the hackers? In my opinion, the responsibility belongs to them all. Security on the Internet is a very important issue in the world today. Billions of people have an on-ramp to the Information Superhighway, and more are finding one every day. The Internet transcends geographical locations, and is the first example of a true global village. Unfortunately for regular users of the Internet, much like the real world, criminals exist on the Internet as well. "Hackers," the computer wizards who use their knowledge for evil, are rampant on the Internet. Sometimes they do seemingly harmless acts, such as just going into a computer system and observing, but at other times, they steal, destroy or alter data. On some occasions, these cyber-felons perform even more malicious acts, such as infecting systems with "viruses," computer programs that "infect" the systems by latching onto other programs and eventually destroying them. Another favorite activity of the hacker is to gain access to the computer system and then manually either delete files or cause the computer to do "strange" things, such as placing messages on the screen that either make no sense or have an unusual meaning. Before we look at who has the responsibility to protect the end user, we must first look at what the truth is behind all the "security breaches." There is almost regular notice in the media of a "backdoor" or "bug" in a program: an error in the coding of the program that allows the knowledgeable hacker to access the computer system of someone using that program. Most frequently, we hear about this regarding a World Wide Web browser, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer or Netscape's Navigator. While we associate Microsoft and Netscape with the United States, they are used internationally. Netscape and Microsoft both have large market shares in countries such as Japan and Canada, as well as all throughout Europe. A prime example of the sorts of bugs found is one which recently affected Microsoft's Internet Explorer. On May 8, 1997, C-net's online news service, News.com, reported that yet another bug had been found in Internet Explorer. According to the article, "The glitch could allow a malicious Web site to execute any program on a user's computer without permission, including deleting files and uploading private information." The article continues to describe how...
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