Learning The Web

6 Pages 1612 Words

The world in which we live is becoming based solely on computers as technology grows. Businesses have their organization’s finances, records, and information on the World Wide Web (WWW). On this network formally called the Internet, any person with a home computer or even one at their place of business, can access data, information, records, logs, and databases of organizations’. With this ability come those who would exploit it; they call themselves hackers. There have been many cases in our world where someone has broken into a company electronically through the Internet with very highly sophisticated equipment. Some can see any information you have on your computer if your computer is connected to the Internet. I will try to give you examples and make you aware of this terror that has come upon this world.

In the March 15th, 2002 issue of Newsweek there is an article on how a young man named Adrian Lamo hacked into the New York Times database. “Adrian Lamo is a 21-year-old high school dropout with no job and no permanent address. So how did he get to be listed alongside such luminaries as Bill Gates and Robert Redford in The New York Times' Op-Ed database? By hacking into the newspaper's supposedly secure corporate intranet-and then listing himself as an expert in "computer hacking, national security and communications intelligence.” (Fragala, Newsweek 1) To know that there are people out there that are able to accomplish these unimaginable feats of computer and electronic genius boggles my mind. The New York Times is a very distinguished and respectable newspaper. When there is a corporation of that magnitude, you expect that they have the best computer scientists on their staff developing web pages and databases that are more secure than Fort Knox. Well, there is a saying somewhere by someone that I cannot remember right now that goes, “Nothing in this world is completely secure.” That theory in my mind and most ...