Book Review on Mirage by Cynthia Barnett Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Book Review on Mirage by Cynthia Barnett - Essay Example S. through a combination of historical storytelling as well as exploring the issues from a technical perspective. The author is a renowned journalist with expertise in freshwater supply problems in the eastern United States. The book reflects the author’s ideas that greed and an overarching urge to develop new frontiers led Americans to exploit the eastern water system to sustain new activities such as larger populations and agriculture. Analysis and Evaluation Barnett traces the evolution of the current freshwater supply problem and blames human greed squarely for the resulting squalor. The author tends to blame historical titans such as Walt Disney and the Rosen brothers for wasteful development but it must be realized that these developments can be best analyzed in terms of their historical context. The development of the railroad and agricultural land in Florida closely resembled activities taking place nationwide in the Gilded Age. Expecting people from the late nineteent h century to anticipate modern problems of prodigal water use is asking for a bit too much. The wasteful attitude of the Floridians in general has also been brought into question such as the useless consumption of freshwater spurred by golf courses all over the state. Even with an abundant water supply, Florida faces water shortage by 2020 due to water expenditure on agriculture, urbanization and golf courses. The role of water as a political tool has been questioned as well by the author (Barnett, 2007, p. 44): â€Å"Those who control water control the destiny of a place and its people.† Barnett’s stance that most of Florida’s current water problems emanate from wasteful consumption is largely justified and can also be proven in fact. The author adeptly traces the political relationships between freshwater supply and globalization, population booms and real estate development. The role of the Army Engineer Corps has been presented as both positive and negative – the drainage of the Everglades produced ecological problems and changes in weather patterns (Barnett, 2007, p. 58) but the associated structures helped saved the lives of people living in Florida. This remains a unique perspective on the issue and tends to trigger an ontological egg and chicken debate on the role of the Army Engineer Corps. The author contends that the role of the Army Engineer Corps is debatable, yet it cannot be denied that their actions set in motion the current ecological failure of the Everglades and wetlands. Barnett blames both scientists and non scientific factions for causing water supply problems. The non scientific factions are able to bypass laws and continue with real estate and agricultural development while scientific factions are unable to counter these moves (Barnett, 2007, p. 64). A quick look at history and contemporary national and global politics reveals that scientists or green thumbs have been unable to stop the march of consumption ( Lind, 2013). The author tends to over assume the role and influence of scientists in any given governmental structure. Tradition proves that scientific opinion has been unable to stem the growth of personal vested interests and Barnett’s stance on the issue is unjustified. The author’s investigation of Bob Graham and his family’s role in the current crisis also deserves praise. Graham’s family has been criticized for exacerbating the situation by sugar farming, cattle ranching and urbanization based

Using of Windows 2000 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Using of Windows 2000 - Essay Example There is a dire need to protect such information from prying eyes. (Scambray et al., 2003) The reputation of a company might be at stake if such information would be divulged. Moreover, people’s privacy would be compromised on a grandiose scale too if such information went public. There is also the risk of exploitation of such information. In order to protect these computing systems, numerous systems have been developed but loopholes still remain. This text is centred on an exploit for port 443 for a Windows 2000 based domain controller. Table of Contents Abstract 1 Introduction 3 Vulnerabilities in Networks 3 Delineating HTTPS and Port 443 4 Case Study 4 Assumptions 4 Way Forward 5 Analysis of Assumptions 5 Gathering Intel for Attack 5 Accessing the Server 6 Reason for Buffer Overflow 8 Securing a Foothold 8 Conclusion 9 Bibliography 10 Introduction Windows 2000 was developed by Microsoft as a business solution to host data and other services. A total of four different editio ns of Windows 2000 were released which were Professional, Server, Advanced Server and Datacentre Server. Other limited editions were also released by Microsoft in 2001 but the baseline of Windows 2000 being a business machine persisted. (Pastore, 2003) On its release, Windows 2000 was marketed as the most secure Windows ever built. (Microsoft, 2000) However security flaws within the Windows 2000 framework continued to plague the system right till the lifecycle end in July 2010 when Microsoft stopped issuing new security updates. (Microsoft, 2011) Vulnerabilities in Networks Windows 2000 has been likened to the eggshell concept. Similar to the egg’s shell, the exterior security layer is robust yet vulnerable. However, as soon as the exterior security layer is breached, the inside of the network is â€Å"mushy† and easier to manipulate. This general principle is not limited to Windows 2000 based network servers but to networks in general too. (Ethical Hacker Network, 201 1) In general various vulnerabilities exist on network machines especially in respect to ports that can be scanned and accessed for intrusion. The possible exposed ports all have the potential to be converted into vectors for an attack on the concerned machine. The most common ports utilised by various applications on a typical Windows based machine are listed below to delineate vulnerability. (Ethical Hacker Network, 2011) TCP Port Applications 20 FTP data channel 21 FTP control channel 23 Telnet 25 SMTP 53 Connection oriented DNS (resolution on UDP 53) 80 HTTP 88 Internet Key Exchange (IKE) 110 POP3 (mail) 135 Windows RPC Endpoint Mapper 137 NETBIOS Name Service 139 NETBIOS Session 389 LDAP 443 HTTP/S 445 Common Internet File System / native SMB on Windows 2000 and higher 636 LDAP over SSL 1433 SQL Server (1434 if the port scanner can perform UDP too) 1723 PPTP 3268 LDAP to a Windows Global Catalogue Server 3389 Remote Desktop Protocol (Windows Terminal Service) It must be kept in mind that these ports are available for Windows based machines. If other OS are being utilised, the machine’s vulnerability may lie at other ports which would be open. (McInerney, 2000) This investigation is concerned with port 443 used for HTTP/S services and so it will be looked into in more detail. Delineating HTTPS and Port 443 HTTPS (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) is a combination of the simple HTTP with an additional SST/TLS security layer. This helps to encrypt data being moved through web pages. Generally this protocol is used for online payments and transactions.