Having read Brian's report above, it might be time to make things easier for the folks that are new to all this by giving definitions to the jargon that us geeks use.
Computer Geek: - Comes in many sizes and shapes, usually 6 foot tall with bedroom eyes, walks with 'that knowing gait', can answer computer questions faster than a speeding bullet, is able to ftp without blinking an eye, usually is seen blinking his eye, invariably choses not to go with the crowd instead travels his 'own way', quite often overheard whistling "My Way', usually has a computer magazine sitting close by, and will sit up till all hours of the night getting his web page online for others to read and learn.
Most geeks are known to drink vast amounts of coffee throughout the day and therefore need bathroom breaks throughout their sleep. A true geek will check his e-mail during these bathroom breaks and/or check to see if any of his Instant Messaging Contacts are online.
Wannabe Geeks can be identified by the use of frames and flash
in their web pages - don't trust these people, as they are not true geeks and they have their own agenda which is taking over the world by the use of animated gif's which are intended to lull you into a feeling of security and contentment.
http://www.webopedia.com/
Spam: - Electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings. Some people define spam even more generally as any unsolicited e-mail. However, if a long-lost brother finds your e-mail address and sends you a message, this could hardly be called spam, even though it's unsolicited. Real spam is generally e-mail advertising for some product sent to a mailing list or newsgroup.
http://www.webopedia.com/
Trojan Horse: -
A destructive program that masquerades as a benign application. Unlike viruses, Trojan horses do not replicate themselves but they can be just as destructive. One of the most insidious types of Trojan horse is a program that claims to rid your computer of viruses but instead introduces viruses onto your computer.
http://www.webopedia.com/
Denial-of-service: - a type of attack on a network that is designed to bring the network to its knees by flooding it with useless traffic. Many DoS attacks, such as the Ping of Death and Teardrop attacks, exploit limitations in the TCP/IP protocols. For all known DoS attacks, there are software fixes that system administrators can install to limit the damage caused by the attacks. But, like viruses, new DoS attacks are constantly being dreamed up by hackers.
http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/
Identity Theft: - Identity theft occurs when someone uses your personal information such as your name, Social Security number, credit card number or other identifying information, without your permission to commit fraud or other crimes.
http://www.webopedia.com/
Hacker: - A slang term for a computer enthusiast, i.e., a person who enjoys learning programming languages and computer systems and can often be considered an expert on the subject(s). Among professional programmers, depending on how it used, the term can be either complimentary or derogatory, although it is developing an increasingly derogatory connotation. The pejorative sense of hacker is becoming more prominent largely because the popular press has coopted the term to refer to individuals who gain unauthorized access to computer systems for the purpose of stealing and corrupting data. Hackers, themselves, maintain that the proper term for such individuals is cracker.
http://www.webopedia.com/
Hardware Firewall: - A system designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network. Firewalls can be implemented in both hardware and software, or a combination of both. Firewalls are frequently used to prevent unauthorized Internet users from accessing private networks connected to the Internet, especially intranets. All messages entering or leaving the intranet pass through the firewall, which examines each message and blocks those that do not meet the specified security criteria.
http://www.webopedia.com/
Firewall: - see above
http://www.webopedia.com/
Virus: - A program or piece of code that is loaded onto your computer without your knowledge and runs against your wishes. Viruses can also replicate themselves. All computer viruses are manmade. A simple virus that can make a copy of itself over and over again is relatively easy to produce. Even such a simple virus is dangerous because it will quickly use all available memory and bring the system to a halt. An even more dangerous type of virus is one capable of transmitting itself across networks and bypassing security systems.
The first virus occurred in 1987 infecting ARPANET, a large network used by the Defense Department and many universities.
http://www.webopedia.com/
Antivirus Program: - A utility that searches a hard disk for viruses and removes any that are found. Most antivirus programs include an auto-update feature that enables the program to download profiles of new viruses so that it can check for the new viruses as soon as they are discovered.
http://www.webopedia.com/
Worm: - Some people distinguish between general viruses and worms. A worm is a special type of virus that can replicate itself and use memory, but cannot attach itself to other programs.
http://www.webopedia.com/
Phishing: - The act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user’s information. For example, 2003 saw the proliferation of a phishing scam in which users received e-mails supposedly from eBay claiming that the user’s account was about to be suspended unless he clicked on the provided link and updated the credit card information that the genuine eBay already had. Because it is relatively simple to make a Web site look like a legitimate organizations site by mimicking the HTML code, the scam counted on people being tricked into thinking they were actually being contacted by eBay and were subsequently going to eBay’s site to update their account information. By spamming large groups of people, the “phisher” counted on the e-mail being read by a percentage of people who actually had listed credit card numbers with eBay legitimately.
http://www.webopedia.com/
Adware: - (1) A form of spyware that collects information about the user in order to display advertisements in the Web browser based on the information it collects from the user's browsing patterns.
(2) Software that is given to the user with advertisements already embedded in the application.
http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/index.html
Bandwidth:
The amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time. For digital devices, the bandwidth is usually expressed in bits per second(bps) or bytes per second. For analog devices, the bandwidth is expressed in cycles per second, or Hertz (Hz).
Steve Gibson - http://grc.com/optout.htm
Spyware: is ANY SOFTWARE which employs a user's Internet connection in the background (the so-called "backchannel") without their knowledge or explicit permission.
Silent background use of an Internet "backchannel" connection MUST BE PRECEDED by a complete and truthful disclosure of proposed backchannel usage, followed by the receipt of explicit, informed, consent for such use.
ANY SOFTWARE communicating across the Internet absent these elements is guilty of information theft and is properly and rightfully termed: Spyware.
Mike Healan - http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/hijacked/
Browser Hijacking: there is a despicable trend that is becoming more and more common where the browser settings of web surfers are being forcibly hijacked by malicious web sites and software which modifies your default start and search pages.
Sometimes internet shortcuts will be added to your favorites folder without asking you. The purpose of this is force you to visit a web site of the hijacker's choice so that they can artificially inflate their web site's traffic for higher advertising revenues.
http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/
Parasite: is a shorthand term for “unsolicited commercial software” — that is, a program that gets installed on your computer which you never asked for, and which does something you probably don’t want it to, for someone else’s profit.
http://cpcug.org/user/clemenzi/technical/Parasites.htm
Parasites: are programs running on your system that you don't need, don't want, and probably don't even know you have. Normally, these are intentional parts of larger applications. I use the term parasite because they use memory, CPU time, and other resources which reduce the performance of your machine.
Normally, you don't know about these because they are loaded at boot time either via the registry (a part of the operating system that Microsoft warns all users not to read or modify), via Start / Programs / Startup, or by some other method.
As an example,
loading Netscape 4.72 loads RealAudio/RealPlayer and other related crap on your system without even telling you. (Another good reason to stop using Netscape.)
Many people like RealAudio, it may even be good software. However,
-
It hijacks many file extensions without asking or telling you
- It adds a significant number of entries to the registry, there by slowing down every task on your machine
- It automatically runs every time you boot your machine
- It uses about 30% of your cpu
- And the old versions loaded the Comet Cursor parasite
Tom Spring, PCWorld.com - http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,57064,00.asp
Scumware: Move over spam, there's a new ad scheme called Toptext that is delighting advertisers and drawing ire from users who view it as yet another obnoxious online advertising gimmick.
Popularized by a California firm called Ezula, Toptext technology highlights words on a Web page which then link you to an advertiser. But for those who have unknowingly downloaded and installed Toptext, the technology is more a scourge than a revolution.
Toptext works with Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser 4.0 and above. It's typically bundled with free software programs and is currently being distributed with popular file sharing software such as IMesh and KaZaa.
But while advertisers are seeing results with TopText, critics view the technology merely as the latest iteration of intrusive advertising and liken it to pop-up and pop-down ads.
http://www.thiefware.com/
ThiefWare: is software being used in an unethical or disagreeable manner. The term does not necessarily mean that the software is involved in outright thievery or other serious criminal activity as determined by law.
The word is being used to denote unethical, unacceptable, or otherwise negative use of software and Internet technology.
Some of the software mentioned places links on victimized sites for visitors to click on leading them away to other competitor sites. Many site owners would say the software is stealing visitors which makes it ThiefWare, an appropriate name for such services and software.
http://www.geocities.com/yosponge/datacoll.html
Cookies: are small text files containing information on what sites you visit, a unique ID number, and may contain any other information the website designer chooses to include, such as how long you were at the site, if you made any purchases, where else you went, your name, credit card number, etc.
When you visit most popular websites, or click on any ad, a cookie is generated and set on your computer. It can either be stored on your computer's hard drive (called persistent cookies) or are temporary and will be erased once you shut down your browser (called per-session cookies.) In either case, the website can store the information they keep and or reveal.
Data collection works by association: that is, there must be a unique identifying number assigned to you. This is necessary in order for any data collection to generate reliable and useful data. If the number were different every time, the website company and its advertisers would not know you've been there before because last time you may have had a different identifying number.
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question525.htm
Packet: It turns out that everything you do on the Internet involves packets. For example, every Web page that you receive comes as a series of packets, and every e-mail you send leaves as a series of packets. Networks that ship data around in small packets are called packet switched networks.
On the Internet, the network breaks an e-mail message into parts of a certain size in bytes. These are the packets. Each packet carries the information that will help it get to its destination -- the sender's IP address, the intended receiver's IP address, something that tells the network how many packets this e-mail message has been broken into and the number of this particular packet. The packets carry the data in the protocols that the Internet uses: Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). Each packet contains part of the body of your message. A typical packet contains perhaps 1,000 or 1,500 bytes.
Each packet is then sent off to its destination by the best available route -- a route that might be taken by all the other packets in the message or by none of the other packets in the message. This makes the network more efficient. First, the network can balance the load across various pieces of equipment on a millisecond-by-millisecond basis. Second, if there is a problem with one piece of equipment in the network while a message is being transferred, packets can be routed around the problem, ensuring the delivery of the entire message.
Most packets are split into three parts - header, payload, and trailer.
Let's say that you send an e-mail to a friend. It is broken into packets as the network uses fixed-length packets.
Each packet's header will contain the proper protocols, the originating address (the IP address of your computer), the destination address (the IP address of the computer where you are sending the e-mail) and the packet number. Routers in the network will look at the destination address in the header and compare it to their lookup table to find out where to send the packet. Once the packet arrives at its destination, your friend's computer will strip the header and trailer off each packet and reassemble the e-mail based on the numbered sequence of the packets.
http://www.geocities.com/yosponge/internet.html
Packet sniffers: are highly-useful tools for intercepting and monitoring data passing around the Internet. They are used legitimately by all Internet Service Providers, including yours, to check out performance. They are used by law enforcement to check out illegal activity. And they are used by businesses and amateurs to look for suspicious data coming into or leaving their computers and networks.
Of course, any tool that can be used for good can be used for unethical or illegal purposes. They can be used to read credit card numbers, SSNs, and other information in transit.
http://www.geocities.com/yosponge/internet.html
Port: A port provides a mechanism for organizing incoming packets so they go to the right place at a particular IP address. This is exactly like the situation if you sent your letter to someone living in an apartment building: apartments usually have the same street address, so it's not good enough to jsut have the address. You also have to specify an apartment number in order to make sure it gets to the right place. If computers didn't use "apartments", or ports, then you would be restricted to only running one thing at a time; your couldn't use email, your web browser, and such simultaneously. If you tried, you'd be downloading that song from Napster in your browser and pieces of this webpage might be showing up in your email.
That was quite a list of definitions, but now that they are all listed - it is not important that you memorize them. Just reading them a few times until this all starts to make sense is all that is needed here.
If you wish to have a quick reference to 'computer definitions' you will find many scattered across the internet, but click
here
for Webopedia.
Seeing as this is a page about security....if you clicked on Webopedia.com above the page that opened would have displayed this image. It is advertising and if you click thru it you will be paying for something if you see something you like. Keep that in mind! Another is Ads by Google - another advertising thingie and nothing that is going to be a freebie.
What follows now is old material that I had previously posted elsewhere that will appear in a new window. It is a large file, but worthy of your time, so read
'Secure Your Computer'
I suppose that if you now click on the links listed below, you will be as educated as me with respect PC Security. So, "Happy reading my friend!"
POKO
