Section 3.5 discussed sniffing software, which is software that records activities and information that a hacker can use to their benefit later. One example that the book gives is a program that simulates the operating system's login procedure - this program gives vital information, such as usernames and passwords, to whoever planted the imposter program. This reminded me of something relevant to many of our lives today - phishing on social networking sites.
Students at Hope - and college-aged students everywhere - are avid users of social networking sites. It seems as though a large number of people i know have been victims of phishing scams - myself included. For me it was several years ago, on MySpace. I was redirected to a login page which looked just like MySpace's login page. It said I had been logged out and needed to type in my information again. Soon after, I discovered mysterious advertisements and odd links on my page that had been placed there by whoever was running the phishing operation and had gained my username and password. Thankfully, I have been more careful about this since then, and I haven't fallen victim to any of the phishing scams recently prevalent on Facebook - or, more importantly, any attempt to gain access to my bank account, or even my operating system!
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