Tom Regan Cable modem and DSL users under constant attack by hackers Bandwidth - Archive of Recent Columns Send Tom an e-mail. Cable modem and DSL users under constant attack by hackers New study says top online shopping sites don't offer adequate privacy protection to users www.nowyoucanhaveareallylongURL.com 'Freedom' software promises complete privacy and anonymity on the Internet Media didn't give Comet Systems a chance to explain The mosquitos and the elephants Comic cursor tracking not funny AOL's flimsy 'Marketing Preferences' The return of Bubbleboy E-mail survey just wants to scam you Red Hat head says dominance of PCs at end The new Rockefellers are masters @ timing Encryption's evolving role Balkans war reaches our corner of the Web Microsoft might throw in the towel in battle with DOJ Super Bowl ads take virtual leap in Canada Political expression on the Internet bumps into special-interest gridlock Rising tide of online commerce lifts all shoppers Babes in virtual land are advertisers' new toys? Will AOL smother Netscape's spark? Making Sure the Form Fits the Medium Hard Hacking Lesson From New York Times Sad, Lonely World of Internet Users - Not! Keeping Your Child Off the Mean Streets Of the Internet Pedestrian-Friendly Cell Phones Are 'Ere 'Computer, Listen to Me About My First Draft' Back to other cybercoverage writers I had a lot of visitors over Christmas. Almost 2500 at last count. Sadly, most of them were unwanted and uninvited. Worse, they were trying to do me harm -- they were computer crackers (a hacker is not actually a bad person -- crackers are) trying to use my machine to hide their true identities from law enforcement agencies or get at files or personal information on my computer. All over a 36-hour period. How do I know this? An amazing piece of software called BlackICE Defender. With mainstream media agog over e-commerce and the information economy, the rush to get faster bandwidth into consumers' homes has attained an 'Oklahoma landrush' mentality. And having faster Internet access (I have a highspeed DSL line in my home) is a real treat. Unfortunately, the media and the Net companies pushing faster access seldom mention the security problems that come with Internet 'Dialtone,' as always-on Internet access is called. BlackICE Defender is basically a 'firewall' for your personal computer. It detects and blocks unwanted intrusions, and then creates a track back to the offending party that you can submit to their ISP. Even better, the installation of Defender defies description, it's so easy. The majority of probes on my machine were FTP port probes, which are fairly 'common' (according to the BlackICE 'advICE' feature that comes with the program). FTP stands for file transfer protocol -- FTP, which allows you to exchange files with another FTP-equipped machine, was one of the 'building blocks' of the Internet. Crackers use programs to scan hundreds and thousands of machines to find those ones running ftp programs. Then they use them as 'drop-off' sites for illegal programs (porn or pirate MP3s for instance) that they want to hide from various authorities. They were also three 'critical' attempts, including one scan that wanted to see if I had turned on the file and print sharing feature in Windows, in order to secretly get at my files. (I hadn't.) Anyone who has a dial-up, cable modem or DSL connection to the Internet should visit the Network Ice site and buy a copy right now. You can only purchase BlackICE Defender online, but at $39.95 it may be one of the best online purchases you'll make this year. PalmPilot in Color Could this be too much of a good thing? Many of us who would never leave home without our most important gadget -- our PalmPilots -- no doubt will be pleased to hear that Palm Computing will offer a device with a color screen in February of 2000. Known so far as the Palm IIIc, the new device will be launched to coincide with the company's IPO. (Surprise, surprise.) It's also an attempt by Palm, which owns about three-quarters of the entire hand-held market, to swat down that pesky Microsoft, which has had a color-screen hand-held for several months. This move puzzles me. The beauty of the Palm is that it does so much with so little. As the head of Palm Computing said at the recent Comdex exhibit in Las Vegas, "What we left out was as important as what we put it." Ahem to that, brother. So why mess with a good thing? As a long time Palm user, I can say without reservation that the addition of a color screen will do little for me. And implementing color on a device like a Palm is no easy task. Why add one more bit of technology if you don't really need it? The real path to a Palm user's heart is by giving then more memory and truly 'useful' features. (A good example is the wireless function of the new Palm VII -- it works fine without a color screen.) Do that and we will stay with you forever. And black and white will do just fine, thank you. Back to the future Every now and then, technology and language crossbreed and produce interesting offspring. Most of them belong in a virtual wastebasket. (I'm starting to feel that way about any word that has an 'e' in front of it). But some are interesting enough to examine more closely. The latest 'cybernoun' that caught my eye was 'electrohippie.' I found it in a report issued by iDefense, a 'cyber defense'group that sends e-mail reports on acts of cyberterrorism to journalists. The report in question chronicles attempts by a group named RTMark to sabotage the etoys.com Web site, and lower its stock value. etoys.com wants to stop a European Internet art group from using the domain name etoy, even though the art group owned the etoy name two years before etoys was even a gleam in the eye of some Internet capitalist. A US federal judge ruled in etoys.com's favor, and the etoy domain name has been frozen until all the legal issues have been resolved. Is the protest working? Well, etoys.com share price has gone down from about $66 a share in late November to just under $30 a share on Tuesday, Dec. 28. While the RTMark effort may be having some effect, market experts point out that a huge number of etoys shares became available to trade in late November, which most likely is the cause of the stock price plunge. RTMark (which "supports the informative alteration of corporate products") created a very good spoof of the WTO official site during the recent protests in Seattle. Also, the group behind the site plans to release a software tool called Wartoys, which will allow users to launch 'denial of service' attacks against Web sites they don't like. (A denial of service attack basically floods a Web site with requests for pages and renders it useless.) "The ToyWar.com tool," iDefense continues, "expected to be active soon, is likely to be similar to the FloodNet tool, which has been used by the Zapatistas in Mexico and against the WTO by the electrohippies." Hmmm. Electrohippies. Has a nice 60ish ring to it. I wonder if they travel in a virtual Volkswagen van?

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