The Sustainable Network

Chapter 32. I Am on the Net, Therefore I Am Vulnerable

Where there's a will, there's a way!

— Proverb

Every network has vulnerabilities—even the smallest network, such as your home wireless network. These vulnerabilities can be exploited to compromise network resources and all the information available on them. Given our increasing reliance on all of these online resources, it's vital to protect the sustainable network. It's important to understand and then guard against any vulnerability to maintain the integrity and availability of the network and all the digital assets it connects.

These vulnerabilities represent holes in the devices connecting to the network or the actual network itself, and attackers can use them to slip in and screw things up. When a vulnerability is exploited, the resulting attack can vary in impact from annoying to significantly damaging, and ultimately, to crippling. These exploits can allow someone to steal or change information, shut the whole thing down, or even take complete control.

In 2008, a survey^[333] asked Internet providers to rank the threats that pose the largest problems to their networks over a 12-month period. Bots and botnets, which are networks of compromised systems that can be used to launch other attacks, took the top spot, followed closely by DNS cache poisoning threats, which can redirect web traffic to the incorrect destinations, and ...