preview

Viruses Essay

Better Essays

Computers have become much more important and popular to our society in recent decades. The computer’s ability to perform so many tasks speedily and reliably makes it useful for a wide variety of purposes. Therefore much important information is stored on computers. Because people and organisations depend on computers every day for a variety of significant tasks, it is imperative that the systems which are used are protected from loss, damage and misuse. This essay identifies some potential risks to computer systems and software and the safeguards that can be taken to minimise these risks. A computer security risk is defined as any event or action that could cause a loss or damage to computer equipment, software, data and information, or …show more content…

Users often select weak passwords. The two major sources of weaknesses in passwords are easily guessed passwords based on knowledge of the user (e.g. wife’s maiden name) and passwords that are susceptible to dictionary attacks (i.e. brute-force guessing of passwords using a dictionary as the source of guesses).

Another type of method to gain unauthorised access is the exploitation of known security weaknesses. Two types of security weaknesses exist: configuration errors and security bugs. Configuration errors occur when a system is set up in such a way that unwanted exposure is allowed. Then, according to the configuration, the system is at risk from even legitimate actions. An example of this would be if a system “exports” a file system to the world (makes the contents of a file system available to all other systems on the network). Then any other machine can have full access to that file system.
Security bugs occur when unexpected actions are allowed on the system due to a loophole in some application program. An example would be sending a very long string of keystrokes to a screen locking program, thus causing the program to crash and leaving the system inaccessible.

A third method of gaining unauthorised access is networks spoofing. In network spoofing a system presents itself to the network as though it were a different system. Network spoofing occurs in the

Get Access