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Home hackers It was late one night in her suburban Ottawa house when Sara Charest noticed someone was watching, following her every keystroke, opening her computer programs. “It's creepy. I'd be away from my computer, nobody would be near it, and the mouse would be moving around,” she says. The machine wasn't haunted – it was connected. It was hooked up to high-speed Internet access through a cable modem, a way in for hackers. “It is kind of scary that a complete stranger can go into your computer just as if they walked through your front door,” says Charest. Instead, hackers follow the World Wide Web to unprotected computers all over the map. One hacker ended up in Campbell River, B.C., breaking into a home machine just hours after it was connected to high-speed Internet access through a phone line. “It feels like walking into your house after a burglar's been there and being robbed. It feels very invasive.” Photographer Paul Stobbe found his computer desktop erased. He also found rude digital graffiti. The hacker boasted he could have wiped out Stobbe's hard drive completely and bragged about finding Stobbe's bank password. “I have my business stuff on the computer,” he says. “We do some banking on-line as well. It was enough to scare the daylights out of me.” He still doesn't know if his clients' credit card numbers were copied. More than ever before, the hacker's trail leads to the personal computer. This is especially so in Canada where high-speed access at home is more common than anywhere else in the world. The average machine is so poorly protected someone tries to enter several times every hour. It's as if hackers just point and click, as if they've got software that systematically picks homes to target, rattling thousands of doorknobs at a time looking for ones that have been left unlocked. In fact, that's exactly the kind of software they use. Neal Christopher, who works for a network security firm called WhiteHat, knows what so-called black hat hackers (the bad guys) do. He says hackers can gain control of your computer, watch what you do and open files on your hard drive. And, with a widely available underground program, even unskilled hackers can automate their attacks. Using two computers, one as the attacker and one as a victim, Christopher demonstrates how hackers can control the cursor on your screen, open your CD-ROM tray or steal your online banking password even though it’s blanked out on your screen. “I can see you enter your user name, and I can see you enter your password,” he says. “I can then use that information to my advantage and log back into your account.” Some hackers rifle for valuable information and some simply want a thrill. A few want to use your machine to mask illegal activities, like distributing pornography or attacking bigger corporate computers. “And the only time you're going to find out that you've been involved in that, or that your computer's been involved, is when the police knock on your door to collect your computer as evidence,” Christopher says. The way to discourage hackers is with a firewall, which acts as a kind of burglar alarm to protect your computer. It's designed to block all access unless you approve. Some Web sites, such as zonealarm.com, even offer free firewall software. Others, such as symantec.com, will scan your connection to tell you just how vulnerable you are. Sara Charest knows how vulnerable she was. She still has no idea who was haunting her computer… or why. “I’ve heard of it happening to big companies,” she says, “but I never really thought that it would happen to me, just someone surfing on the Internet.” She is one of many Canadians with an open door to the spooky side of the Web. Use a Mac? You're not necessarily safer After every story that deals with computer viruses, worms or related critters I get e-mail from viewers telling me the easiest prevention is to switch to a Mac. It's true there are far fewer viruses written for Apple's operating systems. But it's not true that they are immune to them. For instance, viruses that take advantage of security holes in Microsoft Word have the same impact whether your version of Word is on a Mac or a PC platform. And when it comes to hackers, Macs are certainly not in the clear. An unprotected Mac using high-speed access at home is just as likely to have its ports scanned as a PC. – and hackers are just as likely to try to take advantage of an open port if they find one. The only difference is, the hacker has to recognize it's a different platform and choose his or her tools accordingly. (Underground programs to help the hacker do this are just as easily available.) For general information and plenty of discussion of the issue, see securemac.com. There are a number of companies that offer specific software or hardware to help set up firewalls and to address other Mac security issues. Start with the list at macosxapps.com. Reporter: Saša Petricic Airdate: April 2, 2002 CBC Newsworld http://www.cbc.ca/national/sasa/homehackers.html janet paterson: an akinetic rigid subtype, albeit perky, parky pd: 55/41/37 cd: 55/44/43 tel: 613 256 8340 email: [log in to unmask] smail: 375 Country Street, Almonte, Ontario, Canada, K0A 1A0 a new voice: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn