Computer People Play a Duel Role that Serves
Many Masters
by Doug Chick
 
 Many
of you probably don't think about it, but we sometimes have to work for the
dark side of the net too, especially when jobs are scares and we have bills
to pay. Who do you think harvests all the e-mail addresses for Spam and
builds all the porn sites? You know who. Someone e-mailed me today asking
what they could do to keep spammers from getting their e-mail address? I
thought, I can't think of anything you can do to keep me from getting your
e-mail address, much less spammers. Hell, I can't stop people from spamming
me. I've even gone into spammers machines and renames the admin passwords
and shut all of the services down. Now I just delete, delete delete...It
doesn't bother me anymore. I used to track down the IP Address and block
their entire range from accessing my network. But now it would be a full
time job. Most spammers use other peoples mail servers to send their mail.
And since 90% of all mail servers are open to mail forwarding, there's not
much that you can do. Many computer people have played a duel role in their
careers: they have worked as Security Administrators protecting large
companies from the bad intruding Hackers, and their next job could very well
be that of the Attacker.
Below are a few examples of duel role computer
jobs:
Spammers and Harvesters: You already know what a spammer is, but
many computer people have never heard of a harvester? A harvester is someone
that goes out and retrieves e-mail addresses for a specific market
demographic and sells them to the spammers. Say company X might need a group
of e-mail addresses for people that might be interested in penis
enlargements, so a harvester might harvest addresses from groups interested
in sports cars or bodybuilding.
Commercial hacking: There are commercial hackers that break into
companies, monitor their e-mail, even set up registries to forward all
incoming and outgoing mail to an alias account. And if they can't access
their target network via the Internet, then they find a job with the company
that will grant them access to the building. I mean what's easier, trying to
bypass routers and firewalls or just get a night time data entry job, or
security guard or janitor. There's
also industrial espionage. I'll leave those possibilities to your
imagination. There was a time that I thought software companies housed their
own hackers to do nothing but espionage their competition. I can't use any
examples, in fear of a lawsuit, but it happens.
Porn sites: I think that there are more porn sites on the Internet
than Jesus sites made with FrontPage express. (I mean I've heard.) I think
porn sites invented popups. (you know what I mean.) I once interviewed for a
network administrators position in Seattle for a company that had phone sex
and porn sites. I expected to walk it to an office that looked like
Singapore's red light district where people were going at it right there in
the middle of a lit stage and rows of cubicles with old women answering the
phones. Needless to say it was nothing like that at all. In fact, it was
very professional with no obvious indication of what type of business it
was. I think that I would have gotten the job too, if not for the comment I
made about a hooker, a diuretic chimpanzee and an umbrella. I never know how
to answer the question of where I see myself in 5 years.
I'll add more to this article later in the week.
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your comments to dougchick@thenetworkadministrator.com
