Given the recent dialogs on this board regarding the recent series of highly-visible attacks on web sites, I found this lengthly and detailed article in which a Washington University "security expert" is interviewed, to be interesting.

Some of the questions asked:

"With the increasing popularity of broadband, always-on connections and the increasing distribution of networking software, it seems like "Joe DSL" faces a greater risk of having his system compromised than before. How much can the average user be expected to learn about securing their system? Do you foresee developments, either in software, education or in other services that might help private computer users or small time administrators protect themselves better?"

"I saw this evening on CNN that the FBI has enlisted the help of none other than Antionline, in its search for the perpetrators of the DoS attacks. What is your opinion, regarding this decision? How does this reflect upon the FBI's ability to investigate cybercrimes?"

"If you've had much contact with security specialists working for the government, how much confidence do you have in them that they're smart enough to: a) Understand the problem well enough b) Spot good solutions if they come along"

"SlashDot article"

One hypothesis that I did not see addressed in that article were the sorts of network hardware-based issues that the discussions on this board addressed.

-- redeye in ohio (not@work.com), February 17, 2000

Answers

Interesting to say the least! Was talking to one of our friends who had connected to ebay at the time it was starting to go down. George was attempting to connect to his page, when another page came up infront of it. It was in Chinese. George thought it was funny and a joke, and kept clicking on the chinese stuff. This lasted for several minutes. He then couldnt get out of it, and said his computer acted as if it were operating without him. He had to turn his computer off to get it to stop. Scared him to death. Were still not sure what happened. Know we have some pretty good computer experts here, any thoughts. (PS Have email and phone for George, if this turns out to be anything other than some wierd quirk.)

-- suzy (HAYSandCO@aol.com), February 17, 2000.

Suzy,

If your friend is not operating wihin a solid firewall, there are low-cost personal firewall products available.

See earlier threads on this topic for links -- sorry.

That kind of security is something I've been thinking about a lot recently.

-- redeye in ohio (not@work.com), February 17, 2000.

Thanks for your thoughts Redeye. He will have a firewall installed by this weekend at the latest. Don't know if a computer can be seized while on line, and used to hack other computers, but we will always wonder if this happened to George. From now on, we will all be using firewalls.

-- suzy (HAYSandCO@aol.com), February 17, 2000.

Good post redeye, thanks much! =)

-- Dee (T1Colt556@aol.com), February 18, 2000.