The end of 2003 – the Holiday Season!

A wonderful time.

It's hard to find a new way to say "Happy Holidays," but it's so nice to be back at this time of the year with decorations, holiday music, and Santa (I collect Santas so I'm set all year round) as a background for the warmth, the love, and the caring of this time of the year. Whether it's Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, we at SemCo wish all of you the very best of Decembers and your own holiday time with friends and family

In this issue I'm going to cover destructive software – the bad guys! My first introduction to destructive programming was a story from the 1960s (yes, from the very beginning of computer use) where a techie programmed the operating system to shut down the computer for 24 hours every month on the anniversary of the day he left the company. This is the first "logic bomb" that I know of. But it's not the last, so we'll take a quick look at various intentional computer problems.

Upcoming CSTA training sessions:

On the Web:
December 8, 9 January 14, 15, and February 17, 18

Classroom:
December: NYC area: 12/2 and Orlando: 12/4
January: Atlanta: 1/20 and Chicago: 1/21
February: DC area: 2/24 and Dallas: 2/25

As usual we close our offices during the last two weeks of December (12/22/03 through 1/2/04) but will be returning calls and emails.

Keep in touch …

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TechKnowledge

Software that falls in this category is not used to support IT, but attacks IT. Destructive software that changes or destroys systems falls into many types. Computer viruses are the most common, and a virus is a program that attaches code to other programs. When these infected programs run, the unsuspected attached code can do very damaging things throughout the entire computer system. Entire systems can be deleted through viruses. A virus infects other programs within the computer system but cannot affect another system unless a person copies or downloads the affected program. Programs that have been affected by viruses are called "Trojan Horses," as they carry the enemy into new systems.

Other destructive programs are called worms, backdoors, and logic bombs. A worm is a program that propagates itself over a network, reproducing itself as it goes. It replicates itself throughout disk and memory, using up the computer's resources and eventually putting the system down. A worm can affect many systems without any human action. A backdoor is a hidden program that gives remote access and control over a PC to unauthorized persons. Backdoors are used by hackers to get into a system as an authorized user. Logic bombs destroy data, but do not affect other programs. Or, a logic bomb is a resident computer program that lies dormant for a period, and then triggers an unauthorized act when a certain event, such as a date, occurs. The program described in the opening message is a logic bomb.

Other destructive software is used to shut down Web sites and cause DoS (Denial of Service). This is an explicit attempt by attackers to prevent legitimate users of a service from using that service. It usually is the temporary loss of network connectivity and services, which can, e.g., keep people from purchasing items over an ecommerce site. Very often DoS attacks prohibit sending and receiving email. These attacks are commonly the result of a virus and do not harm the Web site or any data, but are damaging to business operations. Ways of causing Denial of Service include:

• "flooding" a network, thereby preventing legitimate network traffic
• disrupting connections between two machines, thereby preventing access to a service
• preventing a particular individual from accessing a service
• disrupting service to a specific system or person.

A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) is an attack that uses zombie programs to attack a central program from many individual systems. A zombie program allows a hacker to use a machine to perform a Denial Of Service attack against targets like web servers, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) servers, and mail servers. Often Zombie programs are distributed to individual systems through email attachments. A hacker will usually locate several Zombie machines to launch a large attack against the target server, in order to make it busy so the site is effectively down thus causing a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. A Zombie program is also called a drone.

Destructive software is a fact of computer life. It's unfortunate, but there will always be people who create attacks, either maliciously or just for fun. Keeping on top of the problem with virus protection software is critical.

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TechCheck

December is the time for the year-end exam that covers the entire year's material. In fact, with the exception of question #1 (last month's teaser), the year-end exam is made up of my favorite questions from quizzes throughout the year. And, of course, it has to be bigger than a monthly quiz, so there are ten questions. If you've got a good memory, you'll get an A!

1. What's a dongle?

2. Which is the sillier word, churn or stickiness?

3. What's a federated database?

4. What is the relationship between memory leaks and garbage collection (in the context of IT)? And, what's a well-behaved program?

5. Which of the following does not belong:

a) multivalue
b) multitasking
c) multidimensional

6. Are G2, G3, G5, and G8 related?

7. Which of the following does not belong?

a) Bobcat
b) Cougar
c) Panther
d) Shark
e)T-Rex

8. Delta Airlines is making technical news by an exploratory use of wireless technology. What is Delta using wireless for?

9. Do you need flash memory to run flash programs?

10. What's the most important thing in messaging today?

2003 in Review

It's been quite a year! In fact, we're still excited about the changes implemented in 2003.

TechRef v2.0 is going strong. We made the database easier to use, added new information, and, most of all, added new search options. Subscribers can now use advanced search functions to:

• Use Boolean operators for complex searches,

• create categories dynamically by searching for words in definitions,

• search within a single vendor,

• search within a time period of when terms were added or updated,

• combine any or all of the search functions.

In addition, we added a new information section, Technical Shorts, which contains 500-1,000 word explanations of new, newly popular, confusing, or just plain interesting, technology. Also,there are over 2,100 terms have been added or updated during 2003.

CSTA has a new look, too. It's now a six-hour seminar that concentrates on major concepts and uses TechRef to cover the details. It's a great match – and everyone gets the amount of information they need. Because keeping up with IT is as important as understanding it in the first place, a year's subscription to TechRef and email support for technical questions are part of every registration. And, that means both classroom and Web-based training. We hold this training every month over the Web, and we go to major cities following a published schedule. It's the same instructor-led coverage, with plenty of room for all your questions, so you can pick what best fits your needs. Best of all, if something happens to disrupt scheduled training, there's always a way to catch up on what was missed.

Finally, we're really happy to have released the 14th edition of Computers: Systems, Terms, and Acronyms. Although all the material is included in TechRef, we missed the book, too – and are glad to have it back.

We've made other changes, but these are the important ones, the ongoing ones. In December we review the past year – in January, we'll talk about what we've planned for 2004. It's going to be an exciting year, too!

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Short Supercomputer Vocabulary

Supercomputers are designed to process complex applications and speed is the most important feature in their design. For many years supercomputers were only used in the scientific environment, but some of today's business applications such as data mining require these same speeds, and supercomputers are now used in the business world.

Beowulf Operating system technology used to build virtual supercomputers. The supercomputer is built as a cluster of PCs that function as parallel processors. Beowulf clusters can reach gigaflop operating speeds. The technology was developed in 1994.

Blue Gene Supercomputer. Designed to execute in petaflops - a quadrillion calculations per second (one petaflop). Will contain 65,000 processors and 16 trillion bytes of memory. Operating system: Linux. Delivery date: 2004 or 2005.

cluster Technology used to manage both computers and storage devices. A computer cluster is a group of computers linked together to provide multiprocessing capabilities: A high-availability cluster links a second computer that acts as a backup in case of system failure.

Clusters can actually contain dozens of processors and Linux clusters (all the processors run under Linux) are increasingly popular. A Linux cluster can provide the same processing power as a supercomputer for a fraction of the cost. Computer clusters are also referred to as parallel processing.

grid computing Computer technology. Using software to build a grid of processors and other computing resources that is available over a local or wide area network. The grid system appears to an end user or application as one large virtual computing system. This builds a network of processors that can be used on the same problem and can be used to solve problems too intensive for any stand-alone machine. Grid technology is being used as an alternative to supercomputers for scientific processing and for some commercial processing such as automated testing and data mining. Also called incremental computing, cluster, N+1, utility or Organic architecture. Is often part of on demand, or autonomic, computing. Introduced: mid-1990s.

MPP (Massively Parallel Processor) Computer system. Considered a supercomputer, but internally consists of hundreds (sometimes thousands) of RISC microprocessors rather than a single powerful processor. Also known as a "loosely coupled" system.

petaflop Computer speed measure. Stands for a thousand trillion (quadrillion) floating point operations per second. Theoretical measure, as today's fastest computers operate in teraflops.

teraflop Computer speed measure. Stands for a trillion floating point operations per second. Today's fastest supercomputers, or parallel processors can operate in teraflop speeds. Also called tflop.

Answers to TechCheck

1. A device about the size of a small travel alarm clock, the dongle attaches to a desktop PC or a laptop and lets users charge small Internet purchases to their cell phone bill. It's intended to allow users to purchase items such as a single song or game, purchases which are typically too small for credit card companies to want to handle. Vodefone, the world's second biggest mobile phone vendor, demonstrated the device at the ITU Telecom World Conference. It remains to be seen whether this will be a successful innovation.

2. This one's an opinion question. I vote for churn (leaving a Website). I just can't see where the word came from. Stickiness (design qualities that keep a visitor on a Website), however, actually makes sense.

3. A federated database allows users to access data in disparate databases, and perhaps even unstructured information stored in documents or e-mail messages from a single query. These databases would not require the data to be converted to a single format. Federated databases are in their infancy, and IBM is the leader in this technology and released DB2 Information Integrator in 2003.

4. A memory leak occurs when memory is allocated for program use, but is not returned to free space when the program is finished with it. During execution, programs request storage for both program execution and data buffering and need to return this storage to free space when they are finished, or when the program ends. A well-behaved program does this, but not all programs are well-behaved. In addition, if a program crashes, the memory it has been using can remain flagged as "in use." While "memory leak" sounds like an odd term, it really means free space is leaking away. Garbage collection is a term that was first introduced with the LISP programming language in the 1970s, and is a function of current object oriented languages including Java and C#. It refers to the automatically detection and release storage that is no longer being used. Individual programs do not have to program this, and garbage collection prevents memory leaks. Operating systems and communication systems also have garbage collection functions.

5. b) doesn't belong. Multitasking is a function of operating systems, where the operating system loads multiple programs into memory at one time. The operating system then controls the concurrent execution of these programs. a) and c) are both database types. A multivalue database is one that provides relational properties but stores records in files. A multidimensional database is also called an OLAP (OnLine Analytical Processing) database, and builds datacubes with three or more dimensions.

6. No, not all of them.

G2 is an application development platform used to build expert systems for the operational management of manufacturing applications. Developers capture the knowledge of the best operations experts and combine that knowledge with real-time data, archival information and even business policies.

G3 and G5 are related. Both are desktop computers; G3 is Apple's iMac and G5 is a microprocessor from Motorola. Its full name is PowerPC G5.

G8 Stays in the computer field, but it's a mainframe, part of IBM's zSeries line.

7. Actually it's d) Shark. All the others are computers, ranging in size from desktop (Bobcat, Cougar, and Panther) to mainframe (T-Rex), while Shark is a storage system that supports terabytes (trillions) of data.

8. Delta's actually using wireless technology to track baggage. RFIDs (Radio Frequency Identification Devices) are used by IT in configuration management. An RFID tag is placed on a physical asset and sends a signal to a reader which inputs information on all the devices to an asset management system. This is used to keep track of assets which are not connected to a computer system. While it's fairly easy to track hardware and software, non-connected devices such as medical equipment in a hospital or mobile cell phones. are much harder to track. Delta is testing the use of RFIDs to track baggage in place of the currently used bar codes.

9. No. The two have nothing to do with each other. Flash memory: Variation of EEPROM (Electrically Erasable and Programmable Read Only Memory). Information is burned into memory in blocks, not individual bytes, and memory can be erased and reprogrammed as often as needed. Flash memory provides the best speeds and cost ratios, and is the most popular type of ROM being used today.

10. HAVE A WONDERFUL HOLIDAY SEASON!

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