HACKERS AND CRACKERS
Hackers (breaking and entering your system) portray themselves as different from Crackers (also steal or do damage). Most people do not make such a distinction. Most see little distinction between entering your home and handling all of your personal items and entering your home, handling all of your personal items, and stealing some of them.

Hackers have a number of methods for finding and accessing your computer. They might mass mail a Trojan horse, but they can also just run programs that ping all of the possible IP addresses. If your computer is exposed and answers, the hacker may take his or her time breaking into your system. Computers have scores of portals exposed to the Ethernet. Many of them can be easily breeched. A hacker with your IP address can simply explore all of the ports until he or she finds one that is open. If you do not have good security, breaking into your system can be very easy indeed!

Once in your system, hackers may browse your files for private information about you and/or your credit. But they may as easily create hidden directories within your computer that permit them to store (and even deliver) pornography or other information they do not want connected to their systems. Once in your system, hackers frequently use it to attack other systems. A hack attack on a computer will often pass through several "zombies" on its way.

Another common use hackers can have for your computer is Denial of Service (DOS) attacks on other systems. These attacks are designed to interrupt communication in larger systems. For example, when hackers have accumulated enough computers, they might have them all simultaneously ping the server in a corporation as often as they are capable. The computer being pinged, forced to simultaneously answer the pings and becomes useless. Even computers with firewalls that protect them from the pinging are forced to produce a report for each ping – thousands of reports for thousands of pings every few seconds. Since it is your computer and not the hacker’s, you are the one the authorities find and question.

Computers attached to DSL connections, cable modems, or the Ethernet are particularly vulnerable to hacking and should be protected with up-to-date firewalls. Next

For more information defense agains hackers and crackers check out the cybercoyote.org web site.