		Network Security

NT Untrustworthy

Microsoft NT continues to be plagued with instances of security problems. In most cases these are dependent upon obscure and rare circumstances. However, the efficiency with which criminal hackers are finding them must be cause for concern.

Web Server
Denial of Service
Rescue Disk "Droppings"
Microsoft Security Information
Black Hat Briefings

Web Server

The MS IIS allowed access to source of active pages and allowing access to files with long names. This meant that information such as access codes, account names and passwords required for the server to do its job could be seen by people downloading the server files.

Denial of Service

Denial of Service (DoS) is an insidious form of attack. It can be performed purely externally and requires no more information than the fact that your system is connected to a network accessible to the attacker. A typical DoS attack will be to send a stream of requests to a system without waiting for replies. In most cases replies will be ignored anyway. The continuous stream of requests gets in the way of legitimate users either slowing their access or consuming all available resources so that they are turned away. In extreme cases the host or server may fail.

The TCP/IP stack in Windows 95 and NT can be destabilised by sending sets of malformed packets to it. There are well-known programs available on the Internet to perform this attack. Update on Network Denial of Service Attacks at: http://www.microsoft.com/security/netdos.htm

Network Security

NT Untrustworthy

Web Server

Denial of Service

Rescue Disk "Droppings"

Microsoft Security Information

Black Hat Briefings