Rants & Raves

« Computer Carnage | Main | More Despair »

June 08, 2001 Gibson Vs. The Script Kiddie

Recently, Steve Gibson was on TechTV briefly via netcam to talk about a recent denial of service attack against his site http://grc.com. Gibson has been on the show several times to talk about his free utilities ShieldsUp! and OptOut. ShieldsUp! tests the security of your internet connection against hackers, and OptOut removed the infamous Aureate spyware from users' computers. As proof of the adage that "no good deed goes unpunished" a malicious hacker has attempted to shut his site down.

Gibson launched an investigation into who caused the attack and why. Earlier this week, he posted an article on his website detailing the results of his investigation. It is a fascinating read. I highly recommend it if you are interested in security issues. Among other things, he found that Zone Alarm does stop the Trojan horse activity, and Black Ice Defender does not. He also issued notice to Microsoft that the release of XP will cause the number of DoS attacks to increase dramatically due to its ability to allow IP spoofing.

Steve Gibson's TechTV article on Internet Security Includes video of his appearance on Call For Help
Steve Gibson's TechTV article about OptOut Includes video of Gibson discussing OptOut on TSS

Last Friday, Leo started to read a viewer email asking how to customize the animated logo in Internet Explorer. It's been a week and they haven't gotten back to it, so I put instructions on how to do it on my FAQs & Tips page.

Posted by Christy on June 08, 2001 09:48 PM

Comments: