The Two Burials In Beowulf Essay Example for Free

The Two Burials In Beowulf Essay The focal point of this essay is to present a clear and original argument in relation to the two burials that begin and end Beowulf. Scyld ScÄ“fing’s burial at sea in lines 24-46, and Beowulf`s burial in lines 2755-2796. It would be evaluated and analyzed the difference of these two funerals and probable reasons behind the difference and the details of two methods of burial that depict about the two men and about their cultures. However, it would also be ascertained whether these differences are just aspects of two different cultures of the basically same landscape but modified over a huge period of time frame. The journey undertaken by Beowulf is not only personal journey of self-discovery, but journey that establishes the values of the culture. While the personal adventure and situations are unique, the travels of Beowulf are representative of each human’s quest to find meaning and purpose in life. As epics of the oral tradition, Beowulf did not appear in writing until many years after the stories originated. Through the many retellings of the tale, probably changed significantly over time; however, the essences of the society and the culture have survived. In many ways, Beowulf is not only epic and myth from their time period, but also serves as historiographies of the society and culture of the time and the funeral ceremonies depicted in the epic, first the incident of Scyld ScÄ“fing`s burial at sea and then the narrative of Beowulf`s burial, are enlightening enough for understanding the nature of customs and funeral rituals. (Lamb, 378, 2-4) At the time of the earliest telling of Beowulf, the people were pagans. With the acceptance of Christianity, â€Å"God† provided the people of Beowulf’s time with an explanation for good and evil and an afterlife for the souls of those who followed God. As Breizmann points out that later generations attempted to incorporate their Christian beliefs, the text â€Å"abounds with inserted narratives† (Breizmann 1030). When Grendel terrorizes the mead hall, the explanation is that, â€Å"He was spawned in that slime, /Conceived by a pair of those monsters born/ Of Cain† (104-106). This Christian theme reappears several times in the epic, and when Beowulf is dying, he says, â€Å"I can die, here,/ Knowing the Lord of all life has never/Watched me wash my sword in blood/Born of my own family† (274-43). . Because he has been good and has served his god and his people, when Beowulf dies, â€Å"Almighty God Himself, was moved, / To let him enter† (3056-7). This influence alone drifted initial purity of the epic from its initial cultural originality. The funeral of Scyld ScÄ“fing appears to be more concerning the original ritualistic rites of the actual time when the epic was composed. In Scyld ScÄ“fing’s case it was found that the rituals includes placing various arms and armors with other valuables with the dead and drifting the body in the sea on a boat or burn it. In this case, the boat was drifted away. This is specifically a Scandinavian ritual and was well in practice when the epic was conceptualized. We can find this funeral rite in lines 24-46 of the epic. The text reads. â€Å"His people carried him to the sea, / which was his last request. / In the harbor stood / a well-built ship, / icy but ready for the sea./ They laid Shield there, / propped him against the mast / surrounded by gold / and treasure from distant lands./ Ive never heard / of a more beautiful ship, /filled with shields, swords, /and coats of mail, gifts / to him for his long trip.† (Naik, ed. 182-183) this is in stark contrast with the funeral rites of Beowulf. Here we find that â€Å"Wiglaf ordered / the brave warriors / to carry wood / from far and wide / to the funeral pyre / for the great leader†¦. There they laid / the famous prince / and lamented / that beloved lord. / Warriors then built / the greatest of fires. / Wood-smoke ascended, / dark black over the flames.† (Naik, ed. 294) This form of funeral is basically aligned with the Roman concept of ritual ceremony that the Christian community initially took and implemented in this epic. Thus it is obvious that this part was changed and incorporated in a much latter stage. (Lamb, 379, 5) While the rituals and adventures of Beowulf are pleasant tales of quests, the real value of the epic is the glimpse they provide of ancient cultures and peoples. In addition, Beowulf is links between the past and the present and between the values all cultures seem to share. Although the cultural and historical contexts change, certain human truths do not, and in the end, like Beowulf, all men leave their earthly existences, perhaps with the hopes that the myths they leave behind will provide lessons for those who come after them. This is more aligned to the Christian learning than ancient pagan thought process. These incorporations result in the intermingled format of affairs in terms of cultural identifications. (Lamb, 380, 1-3) Thus in the ultimate conclusion it can be well ascertained that the influence of different culture and religion affected the original epic with various additions making it juxtaposed within the different cultural aspects spread over a huge time period. The funerals depicted in the epic are just result of these changes and thus it is unable to tell us anything specific on the topic of funeral rituals during the era when this epic was composed initially. References: Breizmann, Natalia. â€Å"Beowulf as Romance: Literary Interpretations as Quest.† MLN 113.5; (1998): 1022-1035; JSTOR; Retrieved on 23 February 2007 http://www.jstor.org Naik, S; The legends of the North: A compilation of ancient epics; National Book Trust; 2006 Lamb, Davis; Cult to Culture: The Development of Civilization on the Strategic Strata; National Book Trust. 2004

Types of Communication Barriers

Types of Communication Barriers Communication is the process of transferring information and meaning between senders and receivers using one or more written, oral, visual or electronic channels. The essence of communication is sharing-providing data, information and insights in an exchange that benefits both you and the people whom you are communicating (Bovee and Thill, Excellence in Business Communication, Ninth Edition, 2011). Effective communication helps businesses in numerous ways. These benefits include: Stronger decision making based on reliable, timely information. Faster problem solving- less time is spent on understanding problems and more time is spent on creating solutions. Communication barriers can interfere with or block the message you are trying to send. Managers should: Recognise the barriers to communication which prevent messages being sent and received successfully Develop communication skills to overcome these barriers. Types of communication barriers There are many different factors that can create barriers to effective communication. Language barriers Language barriers occur when people do not speak the same language, or do not have the same level of ability in a language. However, barriers can also occur when people are speaking the same language. Sometimes barriers occur when we use inappropriate levels of language (too formal or informal) or we use jargon or slang which is not understood by one or more of the people communicating. Often the situation in which the conversation is taking place, and whether or not people have prior experience of the matter being discussed, can also contribute to such barriers being formed. Overcoming language barriers Remember that preparation is an important part of communication. Think about: who you are communicating with what their language needs may be. Using visuals (photographs, drawings, diagrams and so on) can help to overcome language barriers as can using appropriate non-verbal communication. Be aware, however, that different situations and different cultures (including workplace cultures) have varying interpretations of non-verbal communication. What is acceptable in one culture may be offensive in another. What is clear to you may not be clear to others: a nod for ‘yes’ may not mean the same thing in another country! See ‘Take care with gestures’ in Section 2 for more examples. The quality of your voice is also important for clear communication. Be sure to speak with appropriate volume for the situation and use clear diction. Listening actively to other people and letting them know that you are listening (nodding, asking questions etc) is an excellent way to overcome language barriers. Conversational bad habits There are many bad habits we can have in conversation: Sometimes we judge the other person by criticising them, calling them names or diagnosing them (for example, ‘you’re stupid’ or ‘you are only saying that because you know you should have spent more time on it’). Another bad habit is sending solutions to the other by threatening, moralising, asking too many questions or advising them. For example, ‘You should apologise.’ ‘If I were you†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢. Another common, but very negative, conversational habit is avoiding the other person’s concerns by changing the subject, offering a ‘logical ‘ argument or reassuring the person, ‘It’ll be ok. The same happened to a friend of mine†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ Often people just want you to listen. Prejudging helps no one. People have the right to make mistakes. In the workplace, the important thing is to get the job done and to help each other to do this. Sending solutions may not always be your business and will often not be appreciated. People must make their own decisions. We often reassure the person because we are embarrassed about facing others’ emotions. Cultural awareness Communicating with people of different cultures and backgrounds means becoming aware of the differences in values, beliefs and attitudes that people hold. Empathy is important for overcoming barriers to communication based on culture. Empathy means sensing the feelings and attitudes of others as if we had experienced them personally. There is a common expression that describes how you can develop empathy: ‘You need to walk a mile in another person’s shoes’. There are many techniques involved in creating empathy. We can try: respecting other’s feelings and attitudes using active listening skills encouraging involvement of others by asking questions while respecting personal privacy using open body language and an encouraging vocal tone taking other people’s fears and concerns into consideration. refraining from giving unsolicited advice. not blaming, instead working towards a solution. Environmental barriers Not all barriers to communication are caused by people. There are many environmental factors affecting the effective communication process. Messages can be blocked by environmental factors, such as the physical setting or the situation where communication takes place. Managing environmental factors Here are some points to help you manage environmental factors for effective communication when in teams. Team meeting rooms should be cool but not cold. A warm room makes participants sleepy; a cold room can make them very unhappy! Make sure that the environment is comfortable and secure. People need to feel safe before they will listen or offer suggestions. Check that nothing behind or near the team member will cause distraction (for example, activity seen through an open window or door; a television screen). Turn off your mobile phone when you are communicating with other people. Wait until machinery (or any other distracting noise) is turned off before you even try to communicate. If this is not possible, move to a quieter location. Use accepted format in any written communication (letters, memorandums and reports) and, if it’s important, check with someone beforehand that they can understand it. As a communicator, you need to think about what are the potential and real environmental barriers in your workplace or community Bias, generalisations and stereotyping These behaviours can cause communication barriers. Having these attitudes and not confronting them is not just wrong, it’s bad for business. In the workplace, such attitudes can cost the organisation time and money. Stereotyping occurs when you assume you know something about a person because of their cultural or social background. Your views may come from a bias you may have against a particular behaviour, appearance, possession or even a particular geographical area. An example of generalisation is where you know one person from a particular background and then generalise that all people from that background are the same. Your situation, appearance and behaviour may contribute to other people’s stereotyped views. This could contribute to communication breakdown. Learn to treat everyone as an individual. You will open up the channels for communication and overcome the barriers based on discrimination.

Ethical Hackers And Ethical Hacking Information Technology Essay

Ethical Hackers And Ethical Hacking Information Technology Essay The Internet and the other information systems are acting a vital role in organizations today. More and more organizations have become depend on network services completely of partially. So, a single failure of the network can cause severe losses to the organization. However, due to this huge demand of Internet and network services, computer security and the serious threats of computer criminals have comes to the foreground. Computers around the world are systematically being victimized by hacking attacks every day. Most of the attacks are very organized attacks and the attackers are very well understood about the general system vulnerabilities. So if they found any of those vulnerabilities in a system, they might be able to steal everything they want from the system and completely ease their tracks within even in less than 20 minutes. That might be a huge loss for the company in term of money and reputation. Thus to avoid these kind of attacks companies should have to employ a mechanism to Identify vulnerabilities in networks, applications and systems before they can be exploited. Generally, this is the job of an ethical hacker. Ethical Hacking and Phases Ethical Hackers and Ethical Hacking An ethical hacker is a security professional who helps organization to take defensive measures against malicious attacks and usually the process he doing to find those vulnerable point is called Ethical Hacking. Sometimes this is also known as Penetration Testing or Intuition Testing. In this case, the ethical hackers are getting into the minds of computer criminals; think like them to find about innovative ways the hackers may use to get into the systems. Then organizations can take required actions to avoid those vulnerabilities. It has identified that the almost all computer systems have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by a hacker to come to do damages. This can be due to an unpatched application, a misconfigured router or a rough network device and it will be not able to detect unless penetrate the networks and assess the security posture for vulnerabilities and exposures regular basis. As the hacking is a felony in most of the countries, ethical hackers should only operate having required permission and knowledge of the organization that they are trying to defend. In some cases, to check the effectiveness of their security teams, an organization will not inform their teams of the ethical hackers activities. This situation is referred to as operating in a double blind environment. To perform productive penetration testing, the ethical hackers who are going to conduct the testing must have to have variety of in-depth computer skills. They should know how to look for the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in target systems and need to have the knowledge of the tools a malicious hackers use on system hacking. However, because not everyone can be an expert in all the required fields that an organization uses, such as UNIX, Windows, Linux, and Macintosh systems; usually ethical hacking is conducted by teams whose members skills complement each other. Generally, there are three types of ethical hacker classes. This classification is done based on the hacking purpose of the hacker. Black-Hat Hackers Are the individuals who has the necessary computing expertise to carry out harmful attacks on information systems. They generally use their extraordinary knowledge and skills for personal gains. The black-hat hackers are also known as crackers. Gray-Hat Hackers Are the individuals with a split personality. At times, this individual will not break the law and, in fact, might help to defend a network. At other times, the gray hat hacker reverts to black hat activities. Thus we cannot predict their behaviour. White-Hat Hackers Are the individuals who usually have exceptional computer skills and use their abilities to increase the security posture of information systems and defend them from malicious attacks. These individuals probably are an information security consultant or security analyst. Why Ethical Hacking is need to perform Although many people know hacking as a horrible thing, most of them not think that they would not be hacked. But this is not the real situation. Almost every computer system has security breach that the haceks could come in and for security purposes these vulnerabilities need to avoid. One of the most important reasons for ethical hacking is to find those security leaks in an organization network. To do this, companies can hire security experts who have great knowledge on cyber security and trained as ethical hackers. So they can use their knowledge to hack into the systems to find insecure areas. Then the company can take necessary actions to secure their networks easily. There are two kinds of security leaks that an ethical hacker can identify. Hacking in to systems to steel data If a company compromised with this sort of attack they will lose not only the information or money, they will lose their reputation as well. So that might be cause to lose their customers as they not feel their personal information and data are completely safe. Leaks allows to compromise to Viruses If the company network compromised into viruses, it will allow shutting down entire network in just minutes. More than that, some viruses are able to perform harmful activities like data deletions. So the company may lost important data. Thus to improve overall security posture and avoid intellectual property thefts, regular ethical hacking practise is very critical in an IT company. More importantly, that will help save company money in millions and will build the reputation as well. Also as this system penetration is performing, thinking with a mindset of a hacker who tries to get in to the system, the companies can completely rely on professional ethical hackers reports to adjust the company security posture. Framework of Ethical Hacking In order to complete ethical hacking processes successfully, ethical hacking professionals have introduced several phases to follow up. In the there, they have break down the complete process in to several phases and generally both malicious and genuine users following that methodology. Following diagram illustrates those steps and it has described in detailed below. Anatomy of hacking Source: http://www.twincling.org/twincling/slides/ethicalhacking.pdf Reconnaissance This is the first step of any hacking attempt and generally the attacker tries to gather enough information as much a possible about the target system. This process also knows as foot-printing. In may gather information on areas such as determining the network range, identifying active machine, finding open ports, detecting operating systems. There are two ways reconnaissance is performing. Active reconnaissance: Is the process of live exploration of the system to find about the information such as running operating systems and services, open ports, routers and hosts. Passive reconnaissance: This involves monitoring and finding information or clues on the network using network sniffers or other mechanisms. The information can be domain names, locations, contact numbers etc. Sometimes this involves mechanisms such as searching through organizations or persons discarded materials. Following are some of clever ways or the tool, that reconnaissance can be perform against a target network. Using Google This is the most common and efficient way of finding information about a company. As the Google is the most common search engine using in the Internet, Google can be use to find publicly available information about target system. Sometimes, even though the company has removed the data from their web sites Google will be able to provide information from its caches. Thus Google can be use to begin the reconnaissance process. DNS Information tools The next best way to get information about a company is their domain name. If you know the domain of a company rest of the information such as their IP address, contact information and locations can be find easy using DNS tools. For this purpose, most common command line tools are whois and dig and they will show above DNS information in text. But the web sites like www.dnsstuff.com, www.samspade.org, www.geektools.com and www.easywhois.com will provide same information in more user friendly way. Those tools have various options and can provide information quarrying by the IP address or domain name. Also the command nslookup will map the domain name to the IP address or vice-versa. Arin Arin is a very well known web based tool to find network ranges which a company holding. Just entering a single IP address of the range ARIN can give the whole network range the company owns. Social Engineering After knowing the basic information about a company, the best way to get know more information about the company is performing social engineering. In here, hackers trick people into revel information by themselves. The common way is calling or meeting employees and tricks them to get more information. Scanning This is the second phase of hacking framework and involves acquiring more detailed information based on the data collected in early phase. This is very similar to the active reconnaissance and in this phase it tries to dig into little deep. Generally this phase includes activities such as indentifying live hosts, discovering running services and their ports, detecting the running OS. Main target in this phase is to build the blue print of the target network including the live host IP addresses, opened service ports. The hackers use various scanners in this case and few of their techniques listed below. Ping To identify the active hosts in a networks Ping is the best tool. It can provide the information such as status of the host, host name and their TTL details. It is a very simple utility uses ICMP packets to scanning. Ping send ICMP packets to a target host and if it receives the acknowledgment we can make out the system is active. There are few handy tools that can be used to automate this ping process to check the availability of range of IP address. Few examples of them are Hping, icmpenum, NetScan Tools. Traceroute Traceroute is a tool that can use to mapping the location of a targeted host. It uses same technology as Ping and shows the exact path to the target host. NMap NMap is the most popular port scanning tool and it is a free and open source utility. Both malicious and genuine users use to identify vulnerabilities on computer systems. It has many options and it is able to perform almost every type of scan like connect scan, half open scans, SYN scan etc on a targeted host. Also it is a very useful tool for task such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. NMap can scan host in a network range straight away and it is able to detect the versions of the operating system that running on the targeted system too. WAR Dialling This is a tool widely used earlier time to detect active modems in the networks. This was a common hacking tool as there were many deal-in modems available in the network to enable their employees to login into the network. The program can automatically dials a defined range of phone numbers and logs the success full attempts in to its database. But as the modem technology is getting obsolete very fast this is not using very much. Banner grabbing Another useful technique to find about running service ports is called banner grabbing. In this case the hackers tries to connect to well know port such as 80, 8080, 25, 110, 23, 22 etc using telnet. So if the trying service is running on the target server it will display the service banner including the type of the software and running version. Thus the hackers can grab that information to their building blue-print. Enumeration (OS / Application Attacks) This is the hacking technique of convincing some target servers to provide them some information about the system which are vital to precede the attack. The information the attackers normally target are resources and shares available in the system, valid users and user groups and about running applications etc. The common way of enumeration is by use of the null sessions, the sessions which usually have no username or password. Once the hacker gets into the system the he starts enumeration by using some tools to find out the data he wants. There are several tools available that uses to do these queries. NBTscan and Netbios Auditing tools are few commonly using tools. Hackers also enumerate the systems using the SNMP protocol too. Enumerating the SNMP protocol hackers can get the information they want easily. This is an easy way than using null session. But as SNMP v3 sends data after encrypting it, that data need to be decrypt before use it. SNMPutils, IP Network Browser, SNMP Informant, Getif are some of tool use for SNMP enumeration. Gaining Access As all above phases are only hacking preparation phases, this is the phase the actual attack is executing. The hacker will use the blue-print he created during previous phases. During this phase the attacker tries to launch attacks targeting the applications, operating system and the network. To do that, hackers may launches DoS attack, buffer flow attacks, application attacks and even they may insert viruses and Trojan horses to get access to the network. Another goal of the hackers is to gain the highest level privileges he can get. If so, he will able to delete all the tracks and evidence of his activities without any issue. Also if the NetBIOS TCP 139 port is open and accessible the easistt way to login to the system is guessing the password. Thus the first attempt of the attacker will be guessing the system passwords to enter with the highest level of privileges to the system. Most of the times, this step will be an easy task, because most of the users keep their password to an easy-to-remember one. Also if any information available about the user like family members names, childrens name, birthday, there is a great potential to be the password one of them. Also there are lists of commonly using password and the hackers can try those passwords to login to the system. If they were unable to guess the password, the next step is to crack the password using an automated tool. There are several strategies used by the hackers to crack passwords. Social Engineering The easiest and the common method to crack password and the hacker calls or meet the user get the password from him tricking by some fraud. Dictionary cracking In here the cracking is performing using some collected words related to the user and list of commonly using password. The list is checking one by one and usually this is an automated process doing by a tool such as Legion. Brute force cracking This is an automated password cracking mechanism and this will just use combination different characters, letter and symbols to guess the password instead of dictionary words. Hybrid cracking This is a mixed mechanism of both dictionary and hybrid password guessing mechanisms. It will first try the dictionary passwords and then tries the letter combinations. Some automated password-guessing tools are Legion and NetBIOS Auditing Tool. However, the tools like L0phtCrack,ScoopLM, KerbCrack will allows the system administrators to audit there users password and let them know if anyone using such password which can be compromised to a password cracking tool. Other than above mentioned password cracking methods, hackers use keystroke loggers to intercept the uses key strokes to find their passwords. Those keystroke loggers are able to save into files or send all the user key stokes to a remote destination. There are two types of keystroke loggers. It can be either software based or hardware based. The hardware keystroke loggers must physically be installed into the system and the software keystroke loggers can be a action of a Trojan-horse. Few examples for keystroke loggers are ISpyNow , PC Activity Monitor , Remote Spy and following figure shows an example of a hardware keystroke logger. If the hackers could not able to track down the user password the hacker will try to get access to the systems using network attacks. There are several methods hackers will use to attack the networks. Following listed are few of them. Sniffing Attacks Sniffing id the process of capturing data from a network as they pass and storeing them to process offline. To this process hackers use various sniffing tools with different capabilities. Some sniffers can only work with TCP/IP while more sophisticated sniffers works with many other protocols including data link layer protocols. Also sniffing attacks can be use to grab user logins and passwords too. As the telnet, http, POP, SMB sends password data in plain text and travel around the network using sniffing attack they can be easily grabbed out. Sniffing can be either active or passive. Passive sniffing is performing at Hub networks and the speciality in there is that the all the machines in the networks sees all the traffic of the other machines. So the hackers can capture almost every data packet travels through the network. As the hub networks are not in real environments passive sniffing is very unlikely to happen. Active sniffing is takes place in switch networks and thus the hackers will not able to see other users traffics except the broadcast data. Thus the only possible attack is the man-in-the-middle attacks. In here an attacker is positioned in the middle of communications between two legitimate entities in order to capture data that passes between the two parties. As mentioned earlier, there are several sniffing tools available with different capabilities. The most popular sniffing tool is the Wireshark and it was formally known as Ethereal. It is a free network protocol analyzer and supports for both Windows and Linux operating systems. It is a very sophisticated tool and it is capable of capture traffic on the network and save it on disk, filter traffic according to the requirement and showing summery and detailed information for each packet. Few of other sniffing tools are Packetyzer, Dsniff, TCPDump, and Snort. Dos Attacks A DoS attack is a network attack that results in some sort of interruption of service to users, devices, or applications. Hackers use several mechanisms to generate a DoS attack. The simplest method is to generate large amounts data appearing as a valid network traffic. This type of network DoS attack saturates the network so that valid user traffic cannot get through. A DoS attack takes advantage of the fact that target systems such as servers must maintain state information. Applications may rely on expected buffer sizes and specific content of network packets. A DoS attack can exploit this by sending packet sizes or data values that are not expected by the receiving application. These attacks attempt to compromise the availability of a network, host, or application. They are considered a major risk because they can easily interrupt a business process and cause significant loss. These attacks are relatively simple to conduct, even by unskilled hackers. Maintaining Access By entering to this step the hacker has to be getting in to the system by any mean and this phase it is focus on to the established session maintaining. Thus the hacker is able to perform any file upload/download or any software tool inserting. In this stage hackers are trying to establish a hidden path to enter to the system next time easily. So to do that, they will insert some malicious software like Trojan-horses, sniffers keystroke loggers etc. Trojan-horses are malwares that carries out malicious operations under the appearance of a desired function. A virus or worm could carry a Trojan-horse. A Trojan-horse contains hidden, malicious code that exploits the privileges of the user that runs it. Games can often have a Trojan-horse attached to them. When running the game, the game works, but in the background, the Trojan-horse has been installed on the users system and continues running after the game has been closed. The Trojan-horse concept is flexible. It can cause immediate damage, provide a back door to a system, or perform actions, such as password capturing, keystroke capturing, executing DoS attacks. Some advance hackers writes custom Trojan-horses according to the requirement and those are very hard to detect. There are many examples of Trojan-horses like Tini, netcat, subseven, backoffice etc. Clearing Tracks This is the final step of the hacking framework and in here the hackers delete all the evidence and track of their access. Generally, in any operating system it keeps a record about the user logins, file deletes, file inserting, installing etc. So once hacker loges into a system his attempts and actions are logged in to operating system log files. So the hackers have to delete these logs. Although this is a very hard task to perform in reality, there are some tools do alternative actions such as disabling the operating system auditing, deleting all the log records, delete temporary log files etc. So executing tools like that they can delete their tracks, usually with all the other log files. There for system administrator may know that system has been compromised. The software tool auditpol.exe is a such tool that able to disable OS logging. Also attackers need to hide the files they uploaded in to the systems and to do this there are few techniques available call wrappers. These wrapper tools are able to hide the uploaded data as picture file. Design an Evidence Gathering Prototype Importance of a Evidence Gathering Prototype As shown above, the possibilities and opportunities are limitless a company can be targeted by a malicious attack. Although implementing correct firewall and security policies can minimize the exposure of many systems to the hackers, it is very unrealistic to completely avoid security breaches in a comport system. Therefore, it is very important to detect intrusion activities and limit as much as possible the damage they can produce. Installing well planed and configured Evidence Gathering Prototype with intrusion detection and honeypot capabilities will do that. In generally, intruder detection systems are able to record all the system activities on a given host or a network. Thus if the monitoring system is compromised or targeted to attack, all the useful information to track the attacker, are recording in the IDS system. Sometimes they can alert the system administrators about the attacks as well. One of another feature of such kind of system is that they are able recognize violations of an organisations security and acceptable use policies such as transfers of inappropriate material throughout the companys network, or downloads of authorizes data files, accessing restricted contents, use of unauthorized application, etc. Also, some systems are able to identify reconnaissance activities which may followed by hacking attacks. As these systems are able to keep log on every said incidence, the systems administrators can use those data in there ethical hacking exercises. Furthermore, they can get idea about the techniques attackers use, attack launching periods, times and frequencies, common types of attacks they get and about the locations of the attackers and etc. One of the side advantage can have installing a IDS system is that the deterring of hacking attempts, because being aware that their activities are being monitored the hacker might be less prone launch attacks. Thus installing a system in purpose of evidence gathering is very crucial and rest of this document will focus on designing a better prototype for that purpose. For example, a hacker can identify whether an IDS is present in the system if present that attacker may first attack the IDS to bring it offline. Architecture of the prototype The general idea of this prototype is to provide new defence mechanism to networks from huge varieties of behavioural network attacks. Especially rootkit attacks, buffer overflows, DOS / DDOS attacks, SQL injections and many other types of hacking in to a network. Keeping records of malicious behaviours and providing tracking down the intruders, this system will be a whole new protection concept for current networking intrusion threats. Techniques like Intrusion Prevention Systems, Honeypot and network Sniffers can be used as first line of defence to fights again unauthorized access to networks and network resources. But it is hard to use each of them separately in a network to prevent malicious attacks. So a good system should use all those techniques in a single system. Also only one technique will not suit either, as they may have some tribulations on it. Thus, the designing prototype uses all the techniques mentioned above. It will work as a choke point between the WAN and LAN so all the network traffic should flow through it and the traffic will inspect from there. About architecture, the prototype is consisting of three Intrusion Detection Systems, Honeypot and a monitoring console. Three IDSs will be Signature based, Anomaly based and Stateful-protocol analysis IDSs. All the incoming network traffic will be inspected by these IDSs before enter in to the LAN. If IDSs are detected any suspicious behaviours, they will send an alarm message to the Honeypot. Then the malicious traffic will start to circulate among the IDSs without the intruders knowledge. Therefore an intruder will not be able to perform continuous actions because the IP addresses of the traffic are keeping changing. The Honeypot monitor all the network traffic which will be forwarded by the IDSs and keep records of all behaviours. Allowing or denying the network traff ic to enter in to the LAN will be decided by monitoring the behaviour of the incoming traffic to the Honeypot. A separate monitoring console is connected to the Honeypot which also has an online monitoring and log making system so that the sources of any malicious traffic can be identified. Following figure show the overview of the system. Major components Signature based IDSs has a predefined database of attack signatures. It compares all the network packets against the attack signatures in the database. Anomaly based IDSs compares the network traffic against a profile build by previous trainings of network traffic behaviours and continually sampling all activities occurring within the system. Therefore it can react to new zero-day attacks. Stateful-protocol analysis IDs relies on vendor-developed universal profiles that specify how particular protocols should and should not be used, on decision taking. Core of the system is the Honeypot which will monitor all the network traffic flow through it. Monitoring console with a real time log making and tracking system implemented on it. This console provides a real time monitoring and online tracking system to track down and locate the intruders source. Network traffic database will store all the information about the traffic flow the Honeypot encountered, signature database and IP addresses of all the malicious / suspicious traffic flows. Capabilities of the prototype Signature based Intrusion Detection System Knowledge is accumulated by the IDS vendors about specific attacks and how they are carried out. Models of how the attacks are carried out are developed and called signatures. Each identified attack has a signature, which is used to detect an attack in progress or determine if one has occurred within the network. Any action that is not recognized as an attack is considered acceptable. Anomaly based Intrusion Detection System These are behavior based products that do not contain databases of attack signatures. They first go through a learning mode to build a profile of normal behaviour of a system or a network by continually sampling all activities occurring within the system. These IDSs will be configured to detect the Zero-day attacks which means configured to detect new and unknown threats. All anomaly based IDSs will be trained by using accepted penetration tools such as GFILanguard, Nesses, Nmap, Retina, NetCat and Enstealth. After the profile built all the activities are compared against it. If anything which does not match the profile occurs an alarm is triggered and packets will be tagged. Stateful-protocol analysis Intrusion Detection System This is little similar to anomaly-based detection technique. But it relies on profiles that provided by the device vendors. Those profiles enable IDPS to understand and track the state of network, transport and application protocols that have a notion of state. It can thus identify unexpected sequences of commands, such as issuing the same command repeatedly or issuing a command without first issuing another command upon which it is dependent. Honeypot Honeypot is an essentially decoy network-accessible resource, could be deployed in a network as surveillance and early-warning tools. Techniques used by the attackers that attempt to compromise these decoy resources are studied during and after an attack to keep an eye on new exploitation techniques. Such analysis could be used to further tighten security of the actual network being protected by the Honeypot. All traffic entering and leaving the Honeypot is logged. Honeypot can carry risks to a network, and must be handled with care. If they are not properly walled off, an attacker can use them to break into a system. Monitoring Console This machine is to examine the intrusion methods / traffic flow used by the intruder. This analyze will be done synchronizing with the Honeypot. Those details will be used to create complete reports about the encounters. The tracking system which is installed on the console will provide a complete track of the intruder. Other Features The prototype can analyze the behaviours of the incoming traffic since all the traffic should go through the system. Any intrusions which will match to the signatures, the Signature Based IDSs will alarm immediately to the Honeypot. By recording and tracking the traffic pattern, a decision can be taken whether to drop the identified traffic or track back the source of the intruder. The detected or suspicious traffic will be redirected to the Honeypot as the final action. Make use of the online tracking and log making system, the prototype can record all the behaviours in real time and provide a tracking system to catch the intruders. Commercially available Intrusion Detection Systems Snort Snort is a free and open-source network-based IDS system and it is the most commonly using intrusion detection system. It is a software-based NIDPS and able to perform both protocol analysing and content searching. Snort has intrusion prevent capabilities as well. So it is use to both actively block and passively detect a variety of attacks and probes. It uses signature, protocol and anomaly-based inspection to intruder detection. CISCO Secure IDS This

Emerson :: essays research papers

Emerson emphasizes over and over again that in order to gain ones own independence, one must first abandon all learned things and seek to accumulate thereafter only the knowledge which one attains firsthand and deems pertinent to be assimilated into ones own truth. "Nothing is at last sacred, but the integrity of your own mind" states Emerson, because "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself" (Emerson 203). Emerson ultimately arrives at the conclusion that one must be self aware. He believes that one must come to recognize the power one has within and to utilize that power through self thought. â€Å"The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried† (Emerson). One must learn to give up all external knowledge and begin a quest for the knowledge one has within. One will never know his full potential until he attempts to think on his/her own self derived thoughts. David Gale, on the other hand, after finding himself in a harsh predicament turns to an internal quest as Emerson’s. A University of Texas professor of philosophy and capital punishment abolitionist, David Gale, finds himself on Death Row convicted of murder. Gale is a man who has tried hard to live by his principles but in a peculiar distorted twist of fate, finds himself on Death Row for rape and murder (Lim). Gale is accused of murdering his long time friend and co-activist. He was a self reliant man to begin with in some aspects because he was fighting for a cause which not favored in majority in favor of Gale. â€Å"It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect wetness the independence of solitude† (Oschman 41). He as Emerson states did not conform to society’s views but rather held on very firmly to his own. After the false charges of rape Gale lost his prestigious job as a professor at the university and was forced work in the post office. Although this may have been a blow to his pride, Gale remained consistent with his passion for his cause. Emerson states that one must realize that you deal with what you have good or bad, but one can make the world a good place even though all the evil in the world. Emerson :: essays research papers Emerson emphasizes over and over again that in order to gain ones own independence, one must first abandon all learned things and seek to accumulate thereafter only the knowledge which one attains firsthand and deems pertinent to be assimilated into ones own truth. "Nothing is at last sacred, but the integrity of your own mind" states Emerson, because "Nothing can bring you peace but yourself" (Emerson 203). Emerson ultimately arrives at the conclusion that one must be self aware. He believes that one must come to recognize the power one has within and to utilize that power through self thought. â€Å"The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried† (Emerson). One must learn to give up all external knowledge and begin a quest for the knowledge one has within. One will never know his full potential until he attempts to think on his/her own self derived thoughts. David Gale, on the other hand, after finding himself in a harsh predicament turns to an internal quest as Emerson’s. A University of Texas professor of philosophy and capital punishment abolitionist, David Gale, finds himself on Death Row convicted of murder. Gale is a man who has tried hard to live by his principles but in a peculiar distorted twist of fate, finds himself on Death Row for rape and murder (Lim). Gale is accused of murdering his long time friend and co-activist. He was a self reliant man to begin with in some aspects because he was fighting for a cause which not favored in majority in favor of Gale. â€Å"It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect wetness the independence of solitude† (Oschman 41). He as Emerson states did not conform to society’s views but rather held on very firmly to his own. After the false charges of rape Gale lost his prestigious job as a professor at the university and was forced work in the post office. Although this may have been a blow to his pride, Gale remained consistent with his passion for his cause. Emerson states that one must realize that you deal with what you have good or bad, but one can make the world a good place even though all the evil in the world.

Eating Disorders Essay -- essays research papers

Imagine a thirteen-year-old girl who weighs 60 pounds because she is starving herself. Every time she looks in the mirror, she sees herself as fat. Picture her parents watching their daughter literally disintegrating into thin air. This is the life of a family dealing with an eating disorder. Eating disorders are a major problem with the young people of today's society. While anorexia and bulimia are sociological problems plaguing the world's youth, there are also other eating disorders. This "fat phobia", or fear of being over-weight, disturbs people to the point where they are in a way, committing suicide. Eating disorders have been termed the disease of the 1980's. An eating disorder is defined as "a dangerous and intense striving to become thin (Macionis 350). Even though it has been found that "95% of people who suffer anorexia or bulimia are woman, mostly from white, relatively affluent families" (Macionis 350), "the pre-occupation and obsession with food are not limited to women" (Meadow 24). Although some men also deal with eating disorders, most research has been done on women. In 1985, 95% of women felt they were overweight, while only 25% were actually considered medically overweight (Marshall 124). By the age of thirteen approximately 53% of females are unhappy with their bodies, and by the age of eighteen approximately 78% are unhappy (Marshall 124). Are culture could be seen as a narcissist society. Narcissism is a preoccupation with one's self, a concern with how one appears to others, and with living up to an image (Meadow 127). It seems that appearance is an important factor in our everyday life. According to Michael Levine, who in 1987 said, "Our culture transmits powerful messages that, just as men can not be too rich, women can not be too thin" (Macionis 350). While all women want to look as perfect as "Barbie", for some it just isn't possible. For women, being slender is almost synonymous with being successful (Macionis 350). It is also thought that 40% of the adult US population is significantly overweight (Meadow 24). Some experts feel that eating disorders are reaching epidemic proportions and estimate the national rate to be as high as 12% of women (Meadow 24). In fact, according to the Phoenix Gazette on November 7, 1985, "... ...with an eating disorder. If you suspect that your child or anyone you know has an eating disorder you should never: tell them their crazy, blame them, gossip about them, follow them around to check their eating or purging behavior. You should also never ignore them, reject them, tell them to quit the ridiculous behavior, or feel you need to solve their problems (teenhope.com 3). Some things you should do are to listen with understanding, appreciate their openness and the risk they took to tell you, support them and be available. Two of the most important things you should do are to always give her hope, and continuously, but gently suggest counseling. Roughly two million young women suffer from the symptoms of anorexia nervosa or bulimia (Meadow 127). Eating disorders are caused by a striving to "look good". This need to "look good" is so bad that in the mid 1980's 477,000 esthetic surgeries were done, that was up 61% from 1981 (Marshall 127). Although not all is known about eating disorders, we must keep studying them, and the effect society has on causing these problems, so we can someday be able to control and prevent these diseases.

Charles Perrault Bio Essay

Charles Perrault is a famous French poet and author recognized for writing the Mother Goose fairy tales. He was the seventh child from his father Pierre Perrault and mother Paquette Le Clerc, born on January 12 of 1628 in Paris, France and then died and indefinite death which means it is undefined that was on May 16, 1703. He was a Roman Catholic. He married Marie Guichon in 1672 when she was nineteen years old, with her he had three children and when delivering the third one Marie passed while giving birth in 1678, which left them to be married for only six years. After her death Perrault never remarried. Career wise Perrault didn’t start out as a poet; he was actually a lawyer who was in charge of royal buildings in 1660. Perrault also took a huge share in the making of the Academy of Sciences and the renewal of the Academy of Painting. But then later on he worked in the Academic Franà §aise where he played an important role of literacy disagreement as many know today had to do with the clash between the Ancients and the Moderns, to which Charles coincided with the Moderns. Perrault then decided he was going to spend the rest of his lifetime promoting the education of literature and the arts. Where then he started to become a well-known as a poet with stories such as â€Å"Red Riding Hood†, â€Å"Puss in Boots†, â€Å"Cinderella†, and â€Å"Donkeyskin†. â€Å"Donkeyskin† is a famous French literacy and was republished by Perrault in 1697 with a little help from Andrew Lang another popular poet. â€Å"Donkeyskin† was the French version of Cinderella. There are plenty of versions of â€Å"Donkeyskin† but Perrault’s is the most well-known and made him popular.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” Essay Outline

1. Only recently did women begin to get recognized as equals to men and in some places they still are considered as inferior. Men are typically dominating and controlling, while women are more submissive. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, uses confining imagery, belittling dialogue, and stereotypical characters to demonstrate the gender roles in nineteenth-century America. 2. The imagery in this short story conveys the feelings of a person confined and trying to break free.Jane is a woman whose imagination is limited by the patriarchal society. a. â€Å"The windows are barred,† (Gilman pg. 8) there are rings in the wall, and â€Å"the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered† (Gilman pg. 11). i. She is staying in a prison, symbolic of the way society is a prison to her creative inner self. b. Through the barred windows, Jane can see the open country, which only makes her reflect on the freedom she does not have (Shumaker pg. 596). c.The wallpaper is an image of the barrier she must put up between the women society expects her to be and the women she wants to be. 3. The belittling and condescending way in which John speaks to Jane reflects the way that men dominated over women. a. John calls Jane â€Å"little goose† (Gilman pg. 10) as though she were a baby. John is superior to her. b. John calls her mental illness a â€Å"fancy. † He does not really believe she is sick and is only playing along the way a father would play along with his child’s imagination. . Finally evolves into John speaking in a calm, careful tone as to not frighten Jane when she finally goes crazy. 4. The carefully constructed character of a typical man and women show the roles society expects of John and Jane. a. The names John and Jane are carefully picked out to portray a standard man and women. They were very popular names back in the day and when an unknown corpse was brought in they were given the standard name John Doe or Jane Doe. b.The characters of the rational doctor and imaginative wife help portray assigned gender roles. Women are imaginative and creative, while men are rational and like common-sense things (Shumaker pg. 590). c. John was a physician and so was Jane’s brother. It was a man’s job and women are only good for household jobs. 5. â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper† was clearly written during a time when men dominated society and women were thought of as silly and imaginative. This short story demonstrates how some women had the feeling of confinement in a patriarchal society.