about the future of information security -- and to get a little experience makin
ID: 3697400 • Letter: A
Question
about the future of information security -- and to get a little experience making decisions on the basis of insufficient information, a situation that occurs all too often in the real world.
Choose a technology, product, service, legislative area, social phenomenon, or other topic related to information security, analyze the present situation and future possibilities, and forecast its future.
The detailed requirements are:
· Introduce the topic.
o (2 points) What is your forecast about?
o (2 points) How is it pertinent to information security?
o (2 points) What is important or interesting about this particular topic?
· Analyze the present.
o (1 point) Describe the present situation.
o (1 point) What are the current issues, if any?
· Consider possible futures.
o (2 points) Describe at least two changes you believe possible.
o (1 point) Identify one or more of these changes you consider likely.
o (1 point) Explain why you consider it (or them) likely.
o (1 point) Identify one or more of these changes you consider unlikely.
o (1 point) Explain why you consider it (or them) unlikely.
· Provide a future forecast.
o (1 point) When do you think the most likely changes will occur?
o (1 point) How will that affect other areas of technology or society?
o (1 point) What is your level of confidence in this forecast?
· (1 point) Base your analysis, at least in part, on relevant literature (and give citations).
· (1 point) Your forecast should be no longer than about 1500 words
Explanation / Answer
ABSTRACT:
The following report discusses the problem of botnets and the interaction between the various internet service providers (ISP’s) regarding the botnets within the same networks.Botnet is one of the most important threats these days .It is basically a group of computers connected to each other whose security has been breached .This problem is increasing day by day and therefore, it is extremely important to discuss this problem in detail. Along with this there is another important aspect of the internet service providers(ISP’s).The report involves the discussion of the various information that should be allowed to be exchanged between them .The aboive mentioned problems are discussed within the report.
SCALE OF THE BOTNET PROBLEM:
Botnets have evolved very quickly over the recent years. The magnitude of such a problem is huge. Various surveys have been conducted for the same. It was found that the number of bots observed each day, increased from less than 2.000 to even more than 30,000 during the first 6 months of the year 2004. Also, the surveys have suggested that in 2005, the number of the bot infected systems was measured to be between 8 to 9 lakhs, with certain botnets having more than one lakh members [1].
In 2009, the total number of malware infections was found to be over 7 million and around 70% of all e-mail messages were spam. Out of this, 85% of the amount of spam was caused by just six botnets [2]. Also, the average number of active botnet members on a given day increased to ten million. This shows that botnets have increased at a very fast pace over a period of time and this needs to be controlled.
Botnets are one of the most dangerous threats today. The most important reason for this is that they use a very large group of hosts which are able to execute a combination of brute force and subtle attacks. Furthermore, bots work in extremely large groups or numbers with a centralized bot-master which gives orders to the bot. Botnets can easily cripple a large scale network within a short period of time. It further results into a large amount of data and financial loss.
The increase in the number of botnets over the years has been majorly for financial gain or for disruptive purposes [3]. Malware may be used to steal sensitive information such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, and passwords; which is passed to the bot-master and can be sold to criminals. A major motivation to operate a Botnet is the total amount of money (income) that can be earned by the online criminals from sending spam e-mails over the internet. According to Ferris Research, It has been found that the e-mail spam costs around $130 million worldwide to businesses every year with $42 million only within the US. A few of the disruptive activities caused by the operation of a Botnet are [3]:
Present and future:
SECURITY CONCERNS:
ISPs play an important role in preventing and identifying the botnets. The sharing of information between multiple ISPs has to take care of certain security concerns:
It is extremely important to protect the system against security breaches and the privacy demands of the users. ISP helps in achieving these two aspects.
DISCUSSION OF THE RESPONSES:
ISPs need to make intelligent use of the data received from other ISPs. In response to the information received, appropriate action must be taken. E.g.: If it is informed of a Botnet identified, it must be ready to counter or prevent the attack. It must update its database with the known bots or spams details received from other ISPs. They must work in collaboration to share information on threats like Bots to the network. At the same time, the ISP must ensure that all the communication with other ISP is done over a secure channel.
As a result the information to be shared and not to be shared should be taken into account to a great extent and thereby ISPs should respond as quickly as possible depending on the extent of the botnet which has been identified so that quick measure could be taken to detect and mitigate the botnet as soon as possible without too much damage to the computer systems.
Future forecast which must be done:
Information ISP should not exchange:
1.. The in-depth information regarding the attacker’s position, place and time is not notified to other ISP; only the attack information is exchanged, so that gates (interface between two ISPs, at the edge of the ISP network) are notified before a further attack is launched. The information on the several types of attacks launched by a single attacker is also not shared amongst ISP’s.
2.. ISPs have the responsibility to secure the customer's credential, personal data, and their browsing information. They must not disclose the identity of the Internet user in their networks to others.
3.. With regard to data exchange on Botnets, ISPs need not share their routing strategy and network configuration details with other ISPs.
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