The Password Achilles' Heel (August 1998)

PDM proselytizes in favor of changingpasswords regularly. An example of one possible hacker's attack is described.

How the Trojan Horse hack works. The Trojan Horse password hack involves writing a program that emulates the login screen, and leaving this running on the unsuspecting user's machine. Along comes the aforementioned dupe, logs in and signs away his or her password which is then emailed to the hacker. A screen with a plausible error message invites the user to try again. Modern operating systems such as Windows NT require a warm re-boot (Ctrl+Alt+Del) before login to pre-empt such attacks. Such hacking is really level zero on the scale of computer security attacks. A more sophisticated use of programs masquerading as what-they-are-not is evidenced in Internet IP spoofing whereby a computer on the Internet uses similar techniques to appear to be what it is not. Once you are up spoofing, you can capture all the traffic that is routed through the spoofing machine.