Welcome!
Bullet Points
Confusion Between Backing Up and Archiving Data
Backing Up Outlook Express Email & Address Book
Test Your Firewall
Happy Birthday, PC Virus!
What is a Rootkit?


What is a Bot?

If there are any topics you would like to see discussed in the future or if you have any comments, please contact me at JoeT@HighCaliber.com

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• Confusion Between Backing Up and Archiving Data

  I have noticed that some people do not completely understand the difference between backing up data and archiving it. This article helps clear things up:

  http://www.continuitycentral.com/news02287.htm

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• Backing Up Outlook Express Email & Address Book

  Keep in mind that, unless you are using Microsoft Exchange, your email and address book are stored on your local hard drive. If that drive goes, you have just lost all of that information. Here is an explanation of how to back this information up if you are using Outlook Express:

  http://askbobrankin.com/backup_outlook_express.html

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• Test Your Firewall

  http://www.firewallleaktester.com/

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• Happy Birthday, PC Virus!

  January 19, 2006 marked the twentieth year of existence of the PC virus.

  The boot sector virus "Brain," which infected computers via floppy disk, was first detected back in January 1986. While Brain was relatively harmless compared to threats faced today, it signaled the beginning of the current virus situation.

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• What Is A Rootkit?

  A "rootkit" is software that activates each time a system boots. Malware installed as a rootkit is hard to find and very difficult to control because it's up and running before most of the rest of the operating system is ready; and certainly before the user interface is up.

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What Is A Bot?

Programs called 'bots or agents automate actions that are typically performed by people. 'Bots can be used for good purposes - there are 'bot programs that play games over the Internet, for example, and 'bots that collect information for search engines. Programmers have used 'bots to automatically search eBay for bargains. 'Bots are common on the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network, where they can moderate a channel by "listening" for profanity or other undesirable conversation and removing violators from the discussion. So-called ChatBots can carry on conversations over Instant Messaging programs.

Unfortunately, 'bots have gotten a bad reputation because attackers can use them for malicious purposes, such as coordinating a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack to overwhelm and crash a company's network. Other uses of 'bots include:

• Committing "click fraud," where the 'bot pretends to be a person clicking on an ad, to generate a high number of pay-per-click fees paid by the advertiser to the site owner.

• Collecting confidential information like passwords and credit card numbers that users type into web forms for the purpose of identity theft.

• Relaying spam so as to hide the identity of the sender.

• Sniff network packets to read the data inside, and use keyloggers to capture everything a user types.

• Spread new 'bots, thus propagating themselves through HTTP, FTP or email.

• Manipulate online polls and ratings, so that the 'bot can greatly increase - or decrease - the apparent popularity of a book on Amazon, an article on a Web site, or a candidate in a political poll. Each 'bot has a different IP address, so the votes seem to be coming from different, legitimate voters.

'Bots can work in conjunction with each other. "BotMasters" are people who run robot networks called BotNets, using worms, Trojans and backdoors to install the 'bot software on the systems of unsuspecting users. Then each user's computer becomes a part of the BotNet, which is controlled by the BotMaster.

The 'bot software is hidden from the user, who has no idea his/her computer is being used to commit attacks, intrusions and theft of data, or to distribute spam, spyware, and viruses. Because the systems are under the control of a remote entity, they're often called "zombies." For a quick overview of how BotNets work, watch the video called "About BotNets" linked here: http://www.wxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=060207ED-Bots (you'll need Quicktime Player to watch).

Last October, Dutch police shut down a BotNet that included more than 100,000 computers and arrested its perpetrators. The BotMasters were using the zombie computers to attack networks and hack into bank accounts and PayPal and eBay accounts.

How do you protect your computer from becoming a member of a BotNet? The same way you secure it against other threats: install good firewall and anti-spyware software. Keep your anti-virus software updated. XP Service Pack 2 also helps to protect against 'bots.

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