Threats and countermeasures for network security

In the late 1980's, the traditional threat of anonymous break-ins to networked computers was joined by viruses and worms, multiplicative surrogates that carry out the bidding of their authors. Technologies for authentication and secrecy, supplemented by good management practices, are the principal countermeasures. Four articles on these subjects are presented

The internet worm

In November 1988 a worm program invaded several thousand UNIX-operated Sun workstations and VAX computers attached to the Research Internet, seriously disrupting service for several days but damaging no files. An analysis of the work's decompiled code revealed a battery of attacks by a knowledgeable insider, and demonstrated a number of security weaknesses. The attack occurred in an open network, and little can be inferred about the vulnerabilities of closed networks used for critical operations. The attack showed that passwork protection procedures need review and strengthening. It showed that sets of mutually trusting computers need to be carefully controlled. Sharp public reaction crystalized into a demand for user awareness and accountability in a networked world

Competing communities of users and developers of computer software: competition between open source software and commercial software

The open source movement is a group of volunteer programmers that has recently caused quite a stir in the software market. The volunteers of this group develop computer operating systems, programming languages, and other software. They work together in teams that communicate via the Internet. Their goal is to develop useful software that is available for free and that users can change at will. To enable users to change and improve the software, they distribute their software not only in compiled form (that a computer needs to actually run the software), but also in its source code (the lines of code that programmers write). This cooperation breaks through the usual barriers that separate corporate suppliers from their buyers. This may represent the first example where the Internet enables cooperation on a scale that changes market dynamics. This paper studies the interaction between the network dynamics of the open source movement and the dynamics of a commercial software supplier. It makes our first step in identifying conditions that support a successful development of open source software. We focus on one particular set of projects within the open source movement, namely the Linux computer operating system.management and organization theory ;

An Exploratory Study into Open Source Platform Adoption

Research on open source software has focused mainly on the motivations of open source programmers and the organization of open source projects [17] [19]. Some researchers portray open source as an extension of the earlier open systems movement [36]. While there has been some research on open-systems software adoption by corporate MIS organizations [4] the issue of open source adoption has received little attention. We use a series of interviews with MIS managers to develop a grounded theory of open source platform adoption. We contrast this to prior academic and popular reports about the adoption of open source

Helping out by helping in : approaches to electronic submission of coursework

In this paper, we seek to address a range of issues that affect the use and applicability of electronic coursework submission. Key among these issues is the need to characterise the available mechanisms for supporting such submission. Allied to this, we require an appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses that would enable us to distinguish and choose wisely among the alternatives