Computer Applications - Assignment: Forensic Incident Response Policies

In the current age of technology where computers have greatly benefited our daily lives, it has also made our privacy and personal / professional data less secure. Today a growing number of network bad guys are professional criminals, and they're looking to steal real money (Young, 2009). Computer is always a risk of attack whether it's connected to a network or not. Just inserting USB key that may contain malicious software can not only destroy all the data in the computer but also damage its hardware. The Chernobyl virus is the first virus known to have the power to damage computer hardware (Margaret Rouse, 2005). The matter can get very serious when an insecure computer is connected to a network or internet. Different methods like installation of a Trojan or simple phishing methods used by hackers can help them gain access to all the files present in a computer. Non-malicious methods are also a big cause of security threats that involves an untrained ignorant person using a

computer who is unaware of the vulnerabilities. Security threats towards

computers or networks are not always coming from humans but nature

has also an important role to play when natural disasters like floods fire,

hurricanes or earthquake completely destroy a network of computers.

Following are the list of possible threats faced by a computer or network users:

1) To bring an outage in the network, malicious attackers use denial of service also known as DoS attack. In this form of attack the attacker tries to prevent the legal users on a network from accessing different information or services. The most common type of DoS is when the attacker 'floods' the network with tons of wasteful data. This makes the network overcrowded which becomes unreachable.

2) Phishing scams are on the rise in which an attacker tries different techniques to trick the user in writing their passwords which are actually sent to attacker rather than the original website where it was intended for. In this process the attacker sends information about phony schemes via e-mails, discussion boards or website comments that lure the users to click on a link where a fake page is loaded to enter their password.

3) Virus is the most harmful and common type of security threat present in a computer. It is a malicious code which can have adverse effects on the computer data. It can open ports for the hackers to hijack the computer for data stealing and it can also slow down the computer for further use. Some viruses are so high tech that it feeds on the computer's network connection to host files or create p2p connections for pirated data.

4) Password cracking is way through which attacker can gain access to an account of a user. The most common way to