Hacker Attack 2830fm.qxd 8/28/00 5:17 PM Page i 2830fm.qxd 8/28/00 5:17 PM Page ii Hacker Attack Richard Mansfield San Francisco Paris Düsseldorf Soest London 2830fm.qxd 8/28/00 5:17 PM Page iii Associate Publisher: Jordan Gold Contracts and Licensing Manager: Kristine O’Callaghan Acquisitions and Developmental Editor: Diane Lowery Editor: Malka Geffen Production Editor: Leslie E. H. Light Technical Editor: Michelle A. Roudebush Book Designer: Maureen Forys, Happenstance Type-O-Rama Electronic Publishing Specialist: Maureen Forys Proofreaders: Erika Donald, Nancy Riddiough, Laura Schattsneider Indexer: Nancy Guenther CD Technician: Keith McNeil CD Coordinator: Kara Eve Schwartz Cover Designer: Daniel Ziegler Cover Illustrator/Photographer: Daniel Ziegler/Corbis Images Copyright © 2000 SYBEX Inc., 1151 Marina Village Parkway, Alameda, CA 94501. World rights reserved. The author(s) cre- ated reusable code in this publication expressly for reuse by readers. 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Please observe the requirements stated in appropriate files. Copy Protection The Software in whole or in part may or may not be copy- protected or encrypted. However, in all cases, reselling or redis- tributing these files without authorization is expressly forbidden except as specifically provided for by the Owner(s) therein. Software License Agreement: Terms and Conditions 2830fm.qxd 8/28/00 5:17 PM Page v 2830fm.qxd 8/28/00 5:17 PM Page vi This book is dedicated to the memory of James Carl Coward. 2830fm.qxd 8/28/00 5:17 PM Page vii 2830fm.qxd 8/28/00 5:17 PM Page viii Acknowledgments E ditor Diane Lowery deserves the primary credit for bringing this book to life. Not only is she a thoughtful acquisitions editor, she’s a most helpful develop- mental project editor—I find her suggestions uniformly wise. She was instru- mental in shaping the overall structure of this book as well as offering excellent advice on individual chapters. And it doesn’t hurt that she’s simply a pleasure to work with. Malka Geffen is another outstanding editor. She made many sensitive, useful recom- mendations throughout the book. I hope she’ll return to editing soon because authors who get to work with her are indeed lucky. Technical editor Michelle Roudebush asked for a double-check when my facts or con- clusions seemed suspect. These queries were, of course, quite worthwhile and prevented me more than once from embarrassing myself. I thank Production Editor Leslie Light for efficiently guiding this project through the production process—from edited manuscript to page layout, to galley proofs, then finally off to the printer. Not least, I would like to acknowledge Maureen Forys for her extraordinary and, I think, highly effective book design. 2830fm.qxd 8/28/00 5:17 PM Page ix Contents at a Glance Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxi Part 1 Hackers, Crackers, and Whackers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 CHAPTER 1 Danger on the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 CHAPTER 2 Phone Phreaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 CHAPTER 3 Hackers, Crackers, and Whackers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 CHAPTER 4 Bypassing Passwords and Doing the Rat Dance . . . . . . . . . . . 31 CHAPTER 5 The Venus Flytrap and Other Anti-Hacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 CHAPTER 6 Between a Rock and a Hard Place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 CHAPTER 7 The Dangers of High-Speed Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 CHAPTER 8 How to Protect Your Exposed Broadband . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 PART 2 Personal Privacy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 CHAPTER 9 Internet Privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 CHAPTER 10 The Elements of Cryptography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 CHAPTER 11 The Great Leap Forward . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 CHAPTER 12 The Computer Steps In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 CHAPTER 13 Infinite Monkeys: Brute Force Attacks and Other Curiosities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 CHAPTER 14 DES: A Public Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 CHAPTER 15 Making Keys Public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 CHAPTER 16 Electric Signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 CHAPTER 17 Encryption Implementations in Windows 2000 . . . . . . . . . . 171 CHAPTER 18 Hiding Data in Photon Streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 CHAPTER 19 The Perfect, Unbreakable Encryption System . . . . . . . . . . . . 201 2830fm.qxd 8/28/00 5:17 PM Page x [...]... you’ll see in the next few chapters, no hacker has yet taken advantage of a home personal computer user’s always-on, high-speed Internet connection, as far as we know (Many businesses and private individuals do not report virus or hacker attacks, for much the same reason that physical assaults often go unreported People are embarrassed, and they don’t want to make their vulnerability public knowledge.)... written or read containing Bangkok Even better, at the top of this list is an analysis that makes actually reading those paragraphs about Bangkok unnecessary The computer provides the rate of your use of that word during your lifetime compared to the average; frequencies of related phrases such as Juarez; your financial, travel, and legal profile in the context of certain types of foreign cities; and suggested... Radio Shack or CompUSA works just fine) and you can have long-distance phone conversations with a similarly equipped friend anywhere in the world These calls cost nothing and you can talk as long as you want I recently spent an hour talking with a friend in Athens, Greece Imagine how much that would have cost via a traditional telephone There can be a little echo, but ordinary phone calls aren’t exactly... of the anti -hacker team) scores by nabbing the hacker, then another hacker steps up to bat with a new tactic, and so on Back and forth, month after month, the attacking forces invent new ways to gain entrance to protected systems, as the defending forces find new ways to fight back I’ve worked hard to make everything in this book easily understood by the average, non-technical person True, perhaps one-third... hope that this book is as much fun to read as it was to research and write My goal was to cover all the major topics surrounding computer security: hackers, viruses, and the rapid erosion of personal privacy These are fascinating subjects You feel as if you’re watching a great game that might take decades to finish, if it is ever truly finished A clever hacker scores a point by breaching security, then... (such as microsoft.com) are automatically translated into an IP address The human-friendly words of an Internet address like microsoft.com are changed into the computer-friendly digits of an IP address IP addresses are made up of four numbers, separated by periods Here’s a typical example: 212.53.166.236 Sometimes you might want to give a friend your IP address (if you have a permanent one) For instance,... Privacy the main focus is on encryption and other data-hiding techniques that you can use to protect your privacy You’ll understand how encryption works and how to use it You’ll learn about related techniques, such as digital signatures and remailing, that guard your information against increasingly intrusive spying There are plenty of programs—some of the best are free—that you can start using immediately... portrait of your personality, finances, personal information such as your Social Security number, and so on ✔ How businesses can intelligently defend against hacker attacks, both from outsiders and the odd, deeply peeved employee inside ✔ Encrypting your data easily and thoroughly (this way, even if someone does get access to your files or e-mail, they can’t make any sense out of the scrambled characters)... likely cost less than 1 cent in the next year or so when recordable DVDs replace CDs The point is, computers make it very easy to gather, store, and search vast amounts of information It takes less than a second to search your measly ten-cents-worth of lifetime e-mail for suspicious words, such as Bangkok, for example Immediately after the search, a display pops up showing all the paragraphs you’ve ever... details about hacking—exactly where to get software passwords, hacker tools, other people’s Social Security numbers, and all the many other secret tricks that hackers know I thought about this issue quite a bit I didn’t want this to be one of those Wacko Hacko quickie newsprint books that focus on the fringes and have little to do with practical, everyday life However, I finally decided that I usually . programs that are distributed as shareware. Copyright laws apply to both shareware and ordinary commercial software, and the copyright Owner(s) retains all rights. If you try a shareware program and. identical format at no charge by sending the defective media, postage prepaid, with proof of purchase to: SYBEX Inc. Customer Service Department 1151 Marina Village Parkway Alameda, CA 94501 (510). Hacker Attack 2830fm.qxd 8/28/00 5:17 PM Page i 2830fm.qxd 8/28/00 5:17 PM Page ii Hacker Attack Richard Mansfield San Francisco Paris Düsseldorf Soest London 2830fm.qxd 8/28/00 5:17 PM Page