Security.

UUCP, like any other application, has security tradeoffs. Some strong points for its security is that it is fairly limited in what it can do, and it's therefore more difficult to trick into doing something it shouldn't; it's been around a long time, and most its bugs have been discovered, analyzed, and fixed; and because UUCP networks are made up of occasional connections to other hosts, it isn't possible for someone on host E to directly make contact with host B, and take advantage of that connection to do something naughty.

On the other hand, UUCP typically works by having a system-wide UUCP user account and password. Any system that has a UUCP connection with another must know the appropriate password for the uucp or nuucp account. Identifying a host beyond that point has traditionally been little more than a matter of trusting that the host is who it claims to be, and that a connection is allowed at that time. More recently, there has been an additional layer of authentication, whereby both hosts must have the same sequence number , that is a number that is incremented each time a connection is made.

Hence, if I run host B, I know the uucp password on host A. If, though, I want to impersonate host C, I'll need to connect, identify myself as C, hope that I've done so at a time that A will allow it, and try to guess the correct sequence number for the session. While this might not be a trivial attack, it isn't considered very secure.

Computer security

A. What is computer security?

Computer security is the process of preventing and detecting unauthorized use of your computer. Prevention events help you to stop unlawful users (also known as "intruders") from accessing any part of your computer organization. Detection helps you to settle on whether or not someone attempt to break into your system, if they were victorious, and what they may have done.

B. Why should I care about computer security?

We use computers for the whole thing from banking and investing to shopping and communicate with others from end to end email or chat programs. even though you may not consider your communications "top secret," you probably do not want stranger reading your email, using your central processing unit to bother other systems, sending forged email from your computer, or investigative personal information stored on your computer (such as financial statement).

C. Who would want to break into my computer at home?

Intruders (also referred to as hackers, attacker, or crackers) may not care on the subject of your identity. Often they want to gain run of your computer so they can use it to launch attacks on other mainframe systems.

Having control of your computer gives them the ability to veil their true location as they commence attacks, often against sophisticated computer systems such as government or economic systems. Even if you have a computer connected to the Internet only to play the latest games or to send email to friends and family, your computer may be a objective.

Intruders may be able to look at all your proceedings on the computer, or cause damage to your computer by reformatting your hard drive or varying your facts.

D. How easy is it to break into my computer?

Unfortunately, intruder is always discovering new vulnerabilities (informally called "holes") to exploit in computer software. The complexity of software makes it increasingly difficult to systematically test the security of computer systems.

When holes are open, computer vendors will usually develop patch to address the problem(s). However, it is up to you, the user, to obtain and install the patches, or fittingly configure the software to operate more securely. Most of the incident

reports of computer break-ins acknowledged at the CERT/CC could have been prevented if system administrator and users kept their computers up-to-date with patches and security fixes.

Also, some software applications encompass default settings that allow other users to access your computer unless you revolutionize the settings to be more secure. example include chat program that let outsiders execute commands on your computer or web browsers that could allow a big shot to place destructive programs on your computer that run when you get on on them.