Malware: Fighting Malicious Code

Chapter 5. Backdoors

Jim: Well, you'll never get in through the frontline security, but you        might look for a backdoor.Malvin: I can't believe it, Jim! That girl standing over there listening and               you're telling about our backdoors!Jim (shouting): Mr. Potato Head... Mr. Potato Head!!! Backdoors are not secrets!Malvin: Yeah, but, Jim, you're giving away all our best tricks!Jim: They're not tricks!

—Dialogue between two computer enthusiasts in the movie WarGames, 1987

Remember the movie WarGames, from way back in 1983? In that classic flick, Matthew Broderick's character, David Lightman, was desperate to play some revolutionary new computer games. He embarked on a project to break into the computers of Protovision, the fictional ...