Respected Sir & Dear Friends, This is my first article in ISC.

The protection of networks and their services from authorized modification, destruction or disclosure and provision of assurance that the network performs its critical functions correctly and there are no harmful side effect is called network security. The network security services thus include authentications, access control, data integrity, data confidentiality non repudiation and availability in all. Thus the basic aim of Network Security is to protect the networked computers and network operations from attackers and hackers. Before telling you more about security services and methods let us first, discuss what do we mean by attackers, hackers and their comparative effects. Attackers :- Any software or person that deliberately attempts to evade security services and violate the security policy of the networked system is called attacker. Such a person or computer program intentionally attempts to gain unauthorized access to information resources. They sometimes, also prevent legitimate access to those resource. Such an unauthorized activity user specially crafted codes or techniques and is called an attack. Two types of attacks are :> Passive Attack > Active Attack Active Attack is one is which the attacker only monitors the transmission and accesses the data in an unauthorized manner. In aPassive attack the attacker only looks and watches the transmission and does not try to modify or change the data packets. But in an Active Attack modification data stream or creation of false stream is also involved along with watching of transmission. Two types of passive attacks are :> Release of message contents > Traffic Analysis In release of message contents the attacker only looks the message and reads them in an unauthorized way. In Traffic Analysis the attacker marks the message in such a way that the authorized user either can not access it or can not understand the message properly. Active Attack involves reading of data messages along with modifications or manage to it in an unauthorized way. Not only this, some times the attacker creates his new message and sends it to destination instead of original. In such an attack the actual path of the data changes and the message is sent from another user while it appears to be coming from user one to another. Some times an unauthorized user may appear to be an unauthorized one to other user. In farmer case the message in modify by the attacker. So such active attack is called Modification of messages in the later one the message appear to coming from the unauthorized user while it is not so. This attack is called Masque rade. Two more types of active attacks are replay and denial of services. In Replay the attacker captures the data unit and subsequently retransmits it to destination to produce an unauthorized effect. The Denial of service prevents the normal management/use of communication facilities. In such attack all message directed to a particular destination may be suppressed, entire network may be disrupted or performance of network may be degraded due to disabling of network. Hackers :- A person who breaks into other people's computers with malicious intentions is called a Hacker. Such a person explorer computer and networks to discover his capabilities. He is a malicious

intruder, thus, who tries to discover information by gaining unauthorized access. It is very much possible that if will change the informations or commit hostile acts. Most of the times they write special programs which are called computer virus just to show that they are smarter than the people protecting the system against damages because of viruses. Computer viruses can be very dangerous as they can damage not only software but sometimes hardware of your computer also. Not only viruses, the hacker may write other harmful programs that affect the working of network or create damages in your system. Some other such programs are Trojans, Remote access trojans, worms, e-mail worms, malicious mobile codes etc. Some of the hackers write such programs that do nothing except harassing people. These programs do not damage the software or hardware part of the system. A hacker who manually attempts to hack is known as a cracker. Any how, a hacker tries for malicious attempts and unauthorized actions. Attacker Vs Hacker :- The attackers and hackers both are harmful for network or network of networks (Internet). Attackers try to capture or change the important and secret information in an unauthorized way. Not only this they some times create their own informations and send it to a user while it appear them to coming from an authorized user. Thus they not only destroy the important information but also send misleading informations to the users. With Regards, Sundeep Kumar Bronze Level :- ISC

Responses to the resource: "Network Security [Attackers, Hackers]" Author: RAHUL 21 Feb 2010Member Level: Bronze Points : 2In common usage, a hacker is a person who breaks into computers, usually by gaining access to administrative controls.[1] The subculture that has evolved around hackers is often referred to as the computer underground. Proponents claim to be motivated by artistic and political ends, and are often unconcerned about the use of illegal means to achieve them.[2] Other uses of the word hacker exist that are not related to computer security (computer programmer and home computer hobbyists), but these are rarely used by the mainstream media. Some would argue that the people that are now considered hackers are not hackers, as before the media described the person who breaks into computers as a hacker there was a hacker community. This community was a community of people who had a large interest in computer programming, often creating open source software. These people now refer to the cyber-criminal hackers as "crackers". Hacker attitudes Several subgroups of the computer underground with different attitudes and aims use different terms to demarcate themselves from each other, or try to exclude some specific group with which they do not

agree. Eric S. Raymond advocates that members of the computer underground should be called crackers. Yet, those people see themselves as hackers and even try to include the views of Raymond in what they see as one wider hacker culture, a view harshly rejected by Raymond himself. Instead of a hacker cracker dichotomy, they give more emphasis to a spectrum of different categories, such as white hat (ethical hacking), grey hat, black hat and script kiddie. In contrast to Raymond, they usually reserve the term cracker to refer to black hat hackers, or more generally hackers with unlawful intentions. White hat

A white hat hacker breaks security for non-malicious reasons, for instance testing their own security system. This type of hacker enjoys learning and working with computer systems, and consequently gains a deeper understanding of the subject. Such people normally go on to use their hacking skills in legitimate ways, such as becoming security consultants. The word 'hacker' originally included people like this, although a hacker may not be someone into security. Grey hat A grey hatted hacker is a hacker of ambiguous ethics and/or borderline legality, often frankly admitted. Black hat A black hat hacker, sometimes called "cracker", is someone who breaks computer security without authorization or uses technology (usually a computer, phone system or network) for vandalism, credit card fraud, identity theft, piracy, or other types of illegal activity.