Write for money 2

Of the many computer security measures available to end users, none is more confusing to the novice than the firewall. I can understand why. Unlike anti-virus or anti-spyware tools, a firewall doesn’t immediately telegraph what it does. I wouldn’t be surprised if many people thought it was designed to prevent fires inside your computer. (It doesn’t.)

I’m writing this post for novices, so please forgive any over-simplifications. Basically, a firewall is software (or hardware) that blocks malicious attacks on your computer from coming through over the internet. But wait, you might say, don’t most malware attacks, like viruses, come over the internet? They do, but the difference is that with viruses and spyware, there is generally some human interaction that starts the infection: You might open an infected email or visit a bad website, for example. Anti-virus software helps in these situations where you’re actively involved in the process.

But believe it or not, many, many computer attacks come over the internet even if you aren’t at your desk and your web browser and email client are closed. Thanks to the millions of zombie PCs in the wild, attack computers are constantly scanning the internet, almost at random, looking for unprotected computers to attack. These zombies continuously scan for security holes (and I won’t go into the intricate details of how this works), many of which are caused by Windows. It’s like walking down the street, trying all the car doors to find one that’s unlocked. If your computer is connected to the internet, they will find you—fast. Before a firewall was added to Windows XP in Service Pack 2, it was commonly held that an unprotected Windows machine connected to the internet would be infected with some form of malware within 20 minutes and in some cases as quickly as 4 minutes. Just plug it in, and the bad guys do their work.

So where does a firewall come in? A firewall plugs the security holes I mentioned and blocks that bad, random traffic from coming through to your computer. Anti-virus won’t help you in many of these cases. You really need a firewall to stop a lot of this stuff.

The good news is that you probably already have a firewall up and running. The best firewalls are found inside router hardware (either wired or wireless) that you attach to your broadband modem. Every router I’ve ever tried has the firewall turned on by default, but check in the configuration tool to make sure it is. It should be easy to find. You usually need not configure it any more other than turning it on.

Don’t have a router? Turn on the Windows Firewall by going to the Windows Firewall control panel (in XP or Vista). It also needs no additional configuring, and in my experience it is just as good as using a third-party firewall software product. You do not need both a router-based firewall and the Windows firewall. One will do.

Once your firewall is on, you can largely forget it and let it do its work. You may not notice this silent friend protecting you in the background, but believe me, you’ll notice if you turn it off.

Exchange support, true push email, pro-level security and configuration features — they’re all in store for the iPhone as Apple tries to position its touch-screen handset as a true competitor to BlackBerrys, Palm Treos, and Windows Mobile devices.

Apple VP Phil Schiller said the new features, which will allow business users to instantly sync their Exchange email, contacts, and events, will be in the next iPhone software update. (No word yet on when the update will arrive.) (Update: Looks like it won’t be until June.)

Specifically, the iPhone will get support for Microsoft’s ActiveSync protocol, which taps into-and syncs with-corporate Exchange servers, pulling info into the iPhone’s existing email, calendar, and contacts applications. In the past, large business and corporate email networks have avoided using the iPhone because of compatibility, but now, that will no longer be an issue.

Also on tap are such must-have business features as Cisco VPN support (for creating secure tunnels into corporate servers), remote iPhone configuration (for rolling out software to an entire fleet of iPhone-toting employees), remote wipe for lost or stolen iPhones, and enterprise-level Wi-Fi security (including WPA2 encryption).

All these new features will surely make the iPhone, which hasn’t been able to sync with corporate servers until now, much more attractive to big business. (The iPhone originally launched with IMAP support, which lets you sync with IMAP-enabled Exchange email, but it doesn’t work with events or contacts, and there’s no push email support.) If you’ve been stuck with a BlackBerry for work and have been dying to switch over to an iPhone, now’s the time to pipe up.

Of course, the iPhone still lacks a physical QWERTY keypad, which will give many enterprise users-especially those who love cranking out messages with their thumbs-a moment of pause.

The announcement came during an event Thursday in Cupertino, during which Apple is rolling out details on its upcoming iPhone software development kit. Stay tuned.

Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. It is a large portion of Internet traffic. This is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country. There are many ways to monitor this traffic and the gathered data is used to help structure sites, highlight security problems or indicate a potential lack of bandwidth – not all web traffic is welcome.

Some companies offer advertising schemes that, in return for increased web traffic (visitors), pay for screen space on the site. Sites also often aim to increase their web traffic through inclusion on search engines and through Search engine optimization.

The Jargon File contains a bunch of definitions of the term ‘hacker’, most having to do with technical adeptness and a delight in solving problems and overcoming limits. If you want to know how to become a hacker, though, only two are really relevant.

There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you’re a hacker.

The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music — actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them ‘hackers’ too — and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in. But in the rest of this document we will focus on the skills and attitudes of software hackers, and the traditions of the shared culture that originated the term ‘hacker’.

There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren’t. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people ‘crackers’ and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn’t make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker’ to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end.

The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.

If you want to be a hacker, keep reading. If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup and get ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you aren’t as smart as you think you are. And that’s all I’m going to say about crackers.