All about Security

Steganography

Pronounced STEHG-uh-NAH-gruhf-ee, from Greek steganos, or “covered,” and graphie, or “writing,” this method of protecting data involves hiding a secret message within an ordinary message and extracting it at its destination. Steganography takes cryptography a step farther by hiding an encrypted message so that no one suspects it exists. Ideally, anyone scanning your data doesn’t know it contains encrypted data.

Sniffing

Stealing data off a computer connection by capturing all the characters that come over the connection is called sniffing. This requires that the hacker have physical access to the network you are on. To capture useful information such as credit card numbers or site passwords, a sniffer would probably be connected to the part of a network that a Web site is on rather than the part of the network your home PC is on.

Protecting Against Malicious Attacks

As a general rule, you should visit only those Web sites you trust. This is because while surfing the Web you may subject your PC to an attack from a malicious Web site. This can happen when that site sends your browser instructions to execute in a form of ActiveX controls and JavaScripts.

However, it would be no fun to always visit the sites you know, and never try something new. Kids and others might also use your machine and go to places you hadn’t considered. For that reason, you should configure your browser to help protect your machine against malicious attacks. The following settings are recommended for Microsoft Internet Explorer:

• Prompt for downloading signed ActiveX controls
• Disable unsigned ActiveX controls
• Disable ActiveX controls not marked as safe
• Enable running ActiveX controls and plug-ins
• Enable ActiveX controls marked as safe for scripting
• Set Java permissions on high safety
• Disable script debugging
• Warn about invalid site certificates

Reference

Protect your DIGITAL PRIVACY (Survival Skills for the information age)