Threat | Program Threats cont’d

• Remote control programs

  • Allow remote control of local workstation
  • Effect may be known (presumably benign) or unknown (presumably malicious)
  • Ex: PCAnywhere
  • Ex: BackOrfice
  • Ex: Zombie (compromised PC does what its master commands)

• Buffer overflows

  • Exploits unintentional vulnerabilities in programs, oftentimes less-tested error-recovery routines
  • Sophisticated hackers able to cause their data (really hand-crafted instructions) to overflow internal data structures into control registers