Computer communication has gradually evolved to higher bandwidth modes of transmission. In the old days, there was teletype that was succeeded by dial-up modems, some acoustic and some electronic. From a security perspective, modems offered the advantage of calls being traceable via the telephone network. Certainly, authentication and identification could be circumvented via phreaking approaches, including black boxing, silver boxing, or using diverters and other ATM spoofs. But, those techniques were not widely accessible or easily executed. So, there was a certain level of accountability present to all, but the more sophisticated hackers.

With the move to broadband, computer identification relies more upon the IP addressing system and on unique MAC identifiers. This poses the problem that both IP addresses and MAC identifiers are easy to change, or worse, to clone. Spoofing IP addresses is easily accomplished through the use of downloadable applications that can be located on popular search engines. Chaining through proxy servers also is a popular approach, and with the availability of both web-based and application-based proxy servers and proxy searchers, the determined hacker’s identity can be masked by 10 or more layers of misrouting.

Broadband also raises the issue that much more information can be transferred within a much briefer period of time. Before the amount of data that could be stolen was limited by the bandwidth of the dial-up. With transfer rates exceeding the 30 MBps rate on fiber optic now and in the range of 10 MBps on cable modem, the rate of thievery possible today is laughable compared to what was possible before on 110 baud or 300 baud modems. What would have taken weeks to purloin before can now be obtained by the determined hacker within seconds. Perhaps more problematic, it can be propagated to his or her cronies in a similar timeframe so that gigabytes of data could spread to thousand of user within the time it might previously have taken one user to obtain kilobytes of data. The scale is thievery is thereby now faster and more virulent.

With our current communication infrastructure, it also is now possible to launch denial of service attacks that previously were unfathomable with previous communication technologies. Terabytes of data can be launched against target computers to essentially shut them down or disable them as both the bandwidth pipeline and the target computer’s CPU collapse under the pressure. Even single computers can slow target computers with the available bandwidth and a distributed denial of service attack is even more difficult to defend against.

So, it can be said as with most technological advances, we have a double edged sword with our advances in computer communication. While our connectivity and higher speeds has clearly increased our productivity in numerous domains, it also has increased the productivity of hackers and computer criminals. With every technological progression, we must raise our defenses against misuse of that technology. Computer users, computer IT professionals, computer programmers, and law enforcement should all band together to ensure that the gains we have made in telecommunication are not exploited by hackers leading to gains in their pocketbooks.