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General Meeting
by Eric Saca - March 31, 2002 at 00:16:11:
In March, we were honored to receive a presentation by well-known network security expert Steve Gibson. Steve has performed extensive research on maintaining security on the Internet. From this research, he offers a wealth of FREE security-enhancing utilities on his website, http://grc.com. This is the website for his company, Gibson Research Corporation, which markets his popular hard drive data recovery and maintenance utility, SpinRite 5. He has developed the famous and often-used Shields Up! - a utility to test firewall effectiveness. Not only do major hardware and software vendors seek Steve's approval for their firewall and security products, but the United States government often seeks his help for national network security matters as well.President Alan Pearlman opened the meeting at about 1 PM. Before Steve's fascinating presentation, Alan reminded all members to ensure that NOCCC has their current e-mail address. This allows the club to communicate when no other methods are available. Case in point: a delay in the mail system caused the March Bytes issue to be delayed. Thus, few members had received their copies by the March meeting. Alan also announced that annual elections will be held in June 2002. Announcements were made as short as possible to allow Steve Gibson maximum speaking time.
Steve enthralled the audience with his explanation of recent Denial of Service attacks he had received through the Internet - and how he defended against them. Through these attacks, his website was literally blasted off the Web on a few occasions. He basically had to reconfigure his system security and work with his Internet service provider just to get reconnected. It was a fascinating and complex tale but with great eloquence, Steve was able to relate it clearly and understandably.
There were two major episodes in which Steve was hit by Denial of Service attacks. These are explained in detail on his website - at a level that even beginning network administrators can understand. His first attack, related as The Classic DoS Attack Report, is at http://grc.com/dos/grcdos.htm. His second and more advanced, The Distributed Reflection Denial of Service Attack is explained at http://grc.com/dos/drdos.htm. Links to both these reports can be found on Steve's home page at http://grc.com.
After explaining these attacks, Steve fielded a wealth of questions from the audience, forcing the meeting to extend into time normally taken by the Internet SIG. (Internet SIG members agreed to allow Steve to keep speaking, as the discussion related to their SIG.)
At the end, Steve had remembered a helpful Windows utility he had developed - Wizmo. This provides a simple interface to perform uncommon but useful functions, such as triggering a screen saver, adjusting the volume or powering off the monitor. There is a link to Wizmo on Steve's home page. It can be found at http://grc.com/wizmo/wizmo.htm. The meeting ultimately concluded at about 4:15 PM.
Next Meeting - SMC Networks will send Tony Stramandinoli - Director of Product Marketing - to put on a presentation of the marvelous line of Routers. He'll tell us about what's new in Wireless Networking at SMC.
Wireless is the future, folks, don't miss this meeting. We'll ALL learn where the world is going.
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