In the recent past, society has seen malicious editing of the Justice Department web page (1), unauthorized access into classified government computer files, phone card and credit card fraud, and electronic embezzlement. All these crimes are committed in the name of "free speech." These new breed of criminals claim that information should not be suppressed or protected and that the crimes they commit are really not crimes at all. What they choose to deny is that the nature of their actions are slowly consuming the fabric of our country's moral and ethical trust in the information age.

Federal law enforcement agencies, as well as commercial computer companies, have been scrambling around in an attempt to "educate" the public on how to prevent computer crime from happening to them. They inform us whenever there is an attack, provide us with mostly ineffective anti-virus software, and we

Scanners and disinfectors, the most popular classes of anti-virus software, rely on a great deal of a prior knowledge about the viral code. Scanners search for "signature strings" or use algorithmic detection methods to identify known viruses. Disinfectors rely on substantial information regarding the size of a virus and the type of modifications to restore the infected file's contents.

Viruses are currently designed to attack single platforms. A platform is defined as the combination of hardware and the most prevalent operating system for that hardware. As an example, a virus can be referred to as an IBM-PC virus, referring to the hardware, or a DOS virus, referring to the operating system. "Clones" of systems are also included with the original platform.

"Social engineering" is the final method of gaining unauthorized system access. People have been known to call a system operator, pretending to be some authority figure, and demand that a password be changed to allow them access. One could also say that using personal data to guess a user's password is social engineering.

· Destructive viruses are more likely to be eradicated and

Some topics in this essay:
Preventive Action, Social Engineering, Justice Department, Threats Insiders, Conclusion Poor, GS91 UNIX, Errors Passwords, PCS PC, Code Viruses, Network Worm, operating system, configuration errors, malicious code, system access, viruses worms, phone system, security bugs, computer security, system system, network security, trojan horse program, malicious code viruses, system trusts system, code viruses worms, unauthorized system access,