Maintaining Control
The ultimate gratification for a network intruder always is to obtain administrator privileges for a network. When an intruder is inside, one of his or her first undertakings is often to install a so-called rootkit on a target computer. This is a collection of programs to facilitate durable influence on a system. Some of these programs are used to compromise new user accounts or new computers on the network. Other programs are to obscure the presence of the intruder. These obscuring programs may include false versions of standard network utilities such as netstat, or programs that can remove all data from the log files of a computer that relate to the intruder. Yet other programs of a rootkit may be used to survey the network or to overhear more passwords that are travelling over it. Rootkits may also give the means to change the very operating system of the computer it is installed on.
The network intruder then proceeds with creating one or more so called back doors. These are access provisions that are hard to find for system administrators, and they serve to prevent the logging and monitoring that results from normal use of the network. A back door may be a concealed account or an account of which the privileges have been escalated. Or it may be a utility for remote access, such as Telnet, that has been configured to operate with a port number that is not customary.
The network intruder then proceeds with stealing files, or stealing credit card information, or preparing a computer to send spam emails at will. Another goal is to prepare for the next intrusion. A cautious intruder is protective against discovery of his or her location. The method of choice is to use a computer that already has been attacked as an intermediary. Some intruders use a series of intermediate computers, making it impracticable to locate them.
Read more about this topic: Cracking Of Wireless Networks
Famous quotes containing the words maintaining and/or control:
“Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“The child knows only that he engages in play because it is enjoyable. He isn’t aware of his need to play—a need which has its source in the pressure of unsolved problems. Nor does he know that his pleasure in playing comes from a deep sense of well-being that is the direct result of feeling in control of things, in contrast to the rest of his life, which is managed by his parents or other adults.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)