Internet Security
Internet is in no way a safe place. You maybe using it daily, writing mail, using IM such as MSN Messenger or just browsing the web. You might think that if you write an email no one is possible to read what you have written except the one that should receive it. That is not entirely right, emails are sent on the Internet in clear text and everyone on the way can read it.
The HTTP is the protocol you use when you browse the web. This data is transferred between nodes in clear text which means when you post something on Facebook or Twitter using HTTP the message can be intercepted anywhere on the way.
This is an example how a message is shown in MSN Messenger between two users. The message sent was “demo of non-encrypted message” and was intercepted in my firewall and not on the client, the message can be spotted right over the hexadecimal numbers at the bottom of the image. The data was intercepted with the aid of tcpdump which is a tool provided by Linux and is really straight-forward to use. The files can then be read by Wireshark and you can read all types of traffic such as, for example DNS and HTTP.
How do you think one should protect itself against this? How should you hide your data? One answer is encryption. SSL is used to encrypt data between server and client. Implementation of SSL with HTTP is called HTTPS and should be used as much as possible to protect data such as passwords and private messages.
Posted 07/03 - 10