What Do You Think Are The Biggest Security Threats Facing The Internet Today?

One More Crack at the WEP

Wireless Equivalency Protocol (WEP) has been one of the hottest topics in Irish news over the last few days. One of the leading providers of DSL in Ireland has supplied users with wireless routers protected using WEP. What made this newsworthy is that it has emerged that the WEP keys used to encrypt the network traffic and to control access to a private network were generated using the (Service Set Identifier) SSID. The algorithm used to generate the encryption keys has been analyzed and a tool is freely available which allows anyone within range of the router to trespass on a wireless network that has been secured using the default settings. …

In my opinion, the government

The biggest threat is, in my opinion, the government. all of the points made in the other comments are valid concerns but it is small potatoes to the threat posed by those who have the law on their side - they do not have to hack to read your email, your google documents, your efaxes and whatever else you pass electronically around the internet. The is no antispy software capable of defeating CIA, NSA and the likes.

Poor Legal Policies

I think the biggest threats to the interwebs as we know and love them come from poor legal policies. When a government allows traffic shaping, little to no competition between broadband ISPs, the selling of private information, and malfunctioning e-voting machines, then there is a problem waiting to happen. …

Identity theft, consumer credit fraud, child abuse, & GW

As always, identity theft, consumer credit fraud, child abuse, and George Bush. …

Your Government

The biggest security threat facing the internet today = YOUR GOVERNMENT!

Big Brother

Our African group has investigated another, more sinister trick which belongs in the category of George Orwell’s Big Brother Is Watching You. That is, that anyone putting anything onto share videos run the risk of having his/her material removed if considered dangerous to the politicians running the show. …

Mobile Data

I don’t think it is so much on the internet alone so much any more, but with mobile devices. As we move to a mobile web, security concerns seem to be ignored when it comes to mobile devices and corporate policies. It is kind of scary how many mobile phones are out there with all of that customer data and other important information.

Search Engines WEB

Do you mean the biggest security threats facing The Internet - or do you mean The Web?

Internet based security flaws are quite different from Web based flaws. The former being more technical and programmatic in nature.

If you actually are referring to The Web, many technical concerns have been addressed in the latest version of Vista running IE 7.

However, social engineering type tactics will still be effective against the naive and the careless.

Top Three List

1. People aren’t as cautious about their information as they were back in the early 2000’s. So identity theft is on the rise. …

Jim Wellman

All of the comments are great! I agree that too many users are nieve and way too trusting and they fall for the “click here” or “contact us for the mega-millions” promised in the e-mail.

I see exploitation of the ignorant as a major problem. No policies or laws exist to provide a remedy to them when victimized. …

Cybercrime and Infringement

on a personal note, i am the victim of a scam by a well-known music provider, and can feel the same hurt that other victims of cybercrime and infringement are feeling. this provider denies sales, yet my music is being continously distributed and hosted out to thousands of websites around the world, and in different languages as well. p.s. please allow three weeks for any responses you may have.

Loss of personal information

Loss of personal information and the government.

One word: Ignorance

People love to believe anything is possible, especially when it comes to computers and the internet. If something says “click here to __________” they will click and expect that _________ will magically come true, whether it be sexual enhancement, speeding up downloads, protecting your computer from spyware or getting a free gift. When they don’t get expected results more often than not they assume they did something wrong and just continue surfing through life with their blinders on.

Leaking of personal information over wireless

Clearly, one of the top five threats is the leaking of personal information over wireless means: whether Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, or even wireless keyboards (Microsoft’s wireless keyboard driver was just hacked). …

Malware

Operating systems that allow administrative control over a computer to an untrained user too easily and that don’t set strict limits to what resources applications can access.

Most Windows malware is easily disseminated because most users have administrative access and can’t distinguish between legitimate software and those that can harm their computers.

Big Brother

Big Brother is the biggest threat - not some hackers

Identity theft

Internet users have bits of their personal information littered all over the sites they visit. I had to divulge my email address just to post here! How can anyone keep track of it all, or verify how that information is being used? And once information is leaked, how can it be reigned in again?

Kernel vulnerabilities

As little as three years ago, the concept of remote kernel exploitation remained arcane for most people in the security industry and was believed in some circles to be practically impossible, mostly due to reliability issues. However, things in the security realm change quickly. Reliable exploit techniques come and go, new security mechanisms are introduced, and arcane exploitation concepts are revisited. Sometimes an exploitation concept that was once brushed off as too unreliable is reconsidered, bringing it again into focus as a useful and feasible attack vector. …

spim

There is a relatively new annoyance called “spim” that seems to be popping up on our screens more frequently. Spim is the equivalent of spam (unsolicited email, usually selling snake oil) that is delivered over instant messaging clients. After recently receiving more spim, which was advertising what I believed to be a spyware product, it occurred to me that the best tricks are still the oldest ones. With the recent attention that spyware applications are receiving, it is easy to overlook some of the simpler, more direct methods of spying. …

Loss of confidential information

In today’s computerized world, loss of confidential information is far too common. If you look at a good list of personal information data breaches , you will quickly see that a breach occurs almost every day, and that’s just in the United States! …