Almost everyone here today possesses an Internet connection.

Often in Hollywood films we see cases of Identity Thefts,Web-cam Hacking, Server Cracking ,Password-Cracking, Credit card etc. Well,those are not too difficult for the ‘pro’s.

Believe me, any one with the right tools and with good knowledge of command prompt can actually attack,invade a vulnerable system ,Including your PC.

The so called modus operandi of this ‘cracking’ as it is called as is simple.

Well,the 1st step is to get the IP address of the target. An IP address is sort of a cell number or a mobile no. It is 32 bit number.

Example: IP of yahoo.com is 66.94.234.13.

IP address is the identity of your computer on the net. Anyone can pinpoint u if he knows the exact IP add of your computer. The ip add assigned by ISP can be static or dynamic(changing everytime u log in).

Following are the most common methods used for IP tracing and sniffing.

1. Current IP of a person can be easily known by the e-mail he/she just sent you. Whenever an e-mail is received ,it accompanies with a header, which keeps the information about the IP of the sender.

In yahoo,it is at right bottom of the e-mail being read.

Opening the header we see a list of items . the last received is the IP address of the one who has sent u the email.

So if u have sent an e-mail to your friend from your PC, he/she can determine your IP address in no time. A cracker can then use it to attack your computer or perform port scanning, spoofing, spying etc. by various tools that require only an IP address.

2. If u have a domain name (a web page of your own), then the accacker can perform a WHO IS query ,to reveal the IP add of your server. This can then, be used to actually hack ur server thus destroying the web site.

3. By Instant Messengers.

Every time in instant messengers when we transfer a file to the other end, a direct connection between source and receiver is established instead of server of the messenger. During file transfer an attacker can use the ‘netstat -n’ command in command prompt to reveal the targets IP.

4. If the attacker has a website of his/her own, he can know your IP by persuading u to visit his/her web page. Websites can be developed to reveal the ip add of the users visiting them. Once your IP is revealed by any means, attacker can perform the tracing of ur IP by a variety of tools

Example: Neo Trace, Visual Trace etc

He can then break in your computer by sending you a file or trojan which automatically gets installed, and starts communicating with attacker.

As a surfer we must Take care to protect our ‘privacy‘ and ‘anonymity‘

COUNTER MEASURES:

1. Use cyber cafes for chatting and blogging as far as posible as most attacks on ur computer can be easily performed via a chat server.

2. While surfing use a proxy server which hides your IP and in turn reveals its own IP. A proxy server acts as a mask attacker trying to attack will get IP address of proxy server instead of your’s.

Some proxy servers recommended by me are :

• vhide.info,
• proxy.org
• anonymizer.ru
• or google them.

3. Providing false registrating info like country,mobile no,name,etc at registration of e-mail accs, orkut acc, instant messengers etc.

4. Prefer an ISP which will assigns dynamic IP address which changes each time you log in instead of those who provide static IP address facility.

Feel free to comment me on this article.