What are the threats to Internet Security?
Without a firewall, the SUNY Oswego network is wide open to attack from any of the computers connected to the Internet. Any one of those computers can scan our network looking for weaknesses and vulnerabilities. If a computer is found to have a weakness or vulnerability, it can be used to launch an attack against technology resources at SUNY Oswego or elsewhere. Therefore SUNY Oswego is susceptible to a variety of threats ranging from an attack against a single computer to a more sophisticated attack against an entire network, which is the aim of viruses and worms. Internet worms such as Blaster and Nachi that hit the Internet in August of 2003 affected networks to the point where some needed to shut their network down while they started a major cleanup campaign. These worms generate so much network traffic that a bottleneck develops and nobody can use the network until all of the computers have been patched with latest security updates.
