Lecture 10 August 2009

This lecture on 10^th August was talked about program security. There are several types of flows such as validation error, domain error, serialization and aliasing, inadequate identification and authentication, boundary condition violation, and other exploitable logic errors.

Mr. Zaki explained the slide that describes some no malicious program errors which are buffer overflows, incomplete mediation and attack associated to programs error. Besides that, viruses and other malicious code which programs work on data and users that usually do not see the raw data. Malicious code can do harm and has been around for a long time. Trojan Horse, Virus, Worm, Bacteria, Logic bomb, Trap Door and Spyware are examples of malicious code.

Viruses can replicate, it requires a host program as a carrier. So, it would modify files and OS in a computer. To solve these problems, we could use some detection tools such as scanners or vulnerability monitors to protect against the viruses. Meanwhile, we should not open attachments to email unless they have been scanned.

Besides that, worms can self- contained, do not require a host, replicate, and also activated by creating process. For network worms, replication usually occurs across communication links. So, we require a combination of basic system security and a good network security to protect against worms. Firewall system is one of the example network security tools that we can used to protect the system.

Through this lecture, I have learned about the important of program security and also the types of viruses and worms and so on that will harm to our system. Besides that, I also learned the way to protect the system from these threats.