快猫短视频

Know Your Enemy by the Honeynet Project, Addison-Wesley, $39.99, ISBN
0201746131

IN 414 BC Aristophanes wrote: 鈥淭he wise learn many things from their
enemies.鈥� What was true in his play The Birds has been true for
thousands of military commanders over thousands of years. They have sent scouts
to identify enemies, discover their attack plans, weapons and objectives. But
all this takes place in the physical realm. It鈥檚 mind-blowingly different in the
virtual world.

Few organisations have a clue about who is attacking their computer systems.
They may not know how or when the attacks occur, what the enemy might do once
the system is compromised鈥攐r even why they are doing it. Know Your
Enemy, edited by Lance Spitner, describes the non-profit Honeynet project
that set out to sort out the virtual enemies. Set up by 30 computer security
professionals in 1999, Honeynet aims to learn the tools, tactics and motives of
blackhats鈥攎alicious hackers鈥攁nd disseminate the lessons.

So Honeynet builds systems to lure hackers, monitors activity and waits to
see what happens when the systems are probed, attacked and exploited. One system
was attacked within 15 minutes of going online鈥攕urely a record. Honeynet
tracked the activity of one group of blackhats for seven days. These hackers
weren鈥檛 technically competent and they did not even understand the tools they
were using, but by attacking many systems they were able to do great harm.

Know Your Enemy will prove an invaluable aid to anyone interested in
computer security or who teaches the subject.