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In Your Classroom: World War 2.0
by In the World War 2.0 segment, various banks, police and government organizations, and businesses throughout Estonia were subjected to a variety of attacks via the Internet. Specifically, Estonia was attacked by a botnet - a set of computers all controlled by an outside computer attempting to access a single server and flood it with requests. As noted in the article, a similar attack against the United States, grown proportionately, would effectively cripple the country. As such, it is imperative that we learn at the very least basic techniques that can be used to counter such an attack, as well as the basics of how such an attack worked. One solid way of doing this is to set up the proper security within a classroom computer lab, as well as set up other items brought up in the episode.
The first line of defense is to make sure some sort of firewall is set up on the computers. As you can read right here, a firewall is a system designed to prevent unauthorized access to or from a private network. In this case, each individual computer is considered a private network. The most convenient firewall we can use for most PCs comes with Windows XP - the Windows Firewall. To start Windows Firewall:
1. Click "Start"->"Control Panel".
2. Double-click "Security Center".
3. Select "Windows Firewall".
4. Select "On" in the "General" tab.
5. Click the "Exceptions" tab, and check everything currently used for computer-to-computer communication (LANSchool, FTP, etc.).
6. Hit "OK" and hit the red "X" at the top right of the Security Center window.
A tutorial video for Windows Firewall can also be researched.
Another free firewall is the Comodo Firewall. In addition, there are other pieces of software that serve as excellent lessons in computer security for students. One example is a free piece of anti-spyware software called Ad-Aware; there is an online tutorial for this software as well.
Ad-Aware specifically checks for worms, Trojans, spyware, etc. Similarly, a second excellent piece of software is called SpyBot - Search and Destroy. Like Ad-Aware, Spybot - Search and Destroy scans and fixes spyware. There are tutorials available online for Spybot - Search and Destroy.
One of the ways the Estonian government fought the attack was by blocking any internet traffic that did not come from Estonia. You can determine where internet traffic is coming from by the IP address of the requests; an IP address, or Internet Protocol Address, is a unique set of numbers used in communication between two computers to locate each other. A computer's IP address is very important and vital information; someone that knows your IP address can access and manipulate your computer.
There are other uses of IP addresses that are both more legal and useful to students. It is possible to determine, for example, where an e-mail is coming from based on its IP address; a tutorial on this can be found on the internet.
One interesting exercise with this involves an IP address scavenger hunt; challenge students to find a number of e-mails originating from different areas of the world ("Ten e-mails from the US Southwest", "Five e-mails from Europe", "Twenty e-mails from outside of Texas", etc.).
A second legal and educationally useful usage of the IP Address is to connect to another computer. In fact, you can connect to a computer at home from a computer in the classroom; this may be very handy for teachers. Windows XP allows this as well, using its Microsoft's Remote Desktop Connection; you will need to note the IP address of your home computer. Instructions for doing this can be found on the Internet. The basic steps to establishing a Remote Desktop Connection include:
1. Enable Remote Connections in the Remote tab of the Properties of My Computer.
2. Add your account to the list of accounts that allow remote access.
3. Verify the IP Address of the source computer.
4. Establish your Remote Connection from the destination computer.
Finally, one of the methods of communication noted in the episode was chat rooms; it is speculated that the attackers utilized the chat rooms to organize the attack. A better usage of chat rooms include general classroom communication; provided with proper supervision, students can work together to help each other with difficult ideas and assignments. There are free Internet chat rooms available, including Chatzy. Similarly, many instant messaging services offer chat room services, including AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Instant Messenger, and Yahoo Instant Messenger. You can also create your own instant message service as part of a class assignment.
Additional WIRED Science Video Segments
Don't forget to check out our Video Section for other segments from WIRED Science that you can use in your classroom.
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