Network System, Essay Example

The most surprising thing that I learned from chapter 8 was about hackers in a network system. The majority of activities of hacking have now been directed to the applications at the point of the application layer. This has grave consequences since the attacker can access all the permissions associated with the application and the permissions are usually the super-user. It was also surprising to learn that, majority of the applications usually run through the root privileges of the super-user. Consequently, hackers manipulate this aspect of taking control of the host by taking over the root. The root is usually a special account of the user in most of the operating systems of a computer that are used by the system administrators. It was also surprising to learn about the “Buffer Overflow Attacks” which implied to temporary regions of data storage where information is stored temporarily by the programs in form of allocated bytes in RAM.

The most difficult aspects that were evident in chapter 8 were the hardening applications. It was revealed that some actions are responsible for hardening applications. The understanding of the role associated with the server as well as the threat environment is one of the actions. The basics were also important, such as physical security, hardening Oss, and the frequent back-ups that have some pitches coupled with configuration settings of high security. The creation of program configuration for secure applications and minimizing applications were equally important actions in this regard. Installation of patches in the entire applications as well as minimizing the application permissions also featured in this case. Addition of layer authentication to the application, auditing, and authorization in addition to the implementation of cryptographic systems also facilitated in hardening applications.