Unit 9

Task 1. Answer the following questions to the teacher:

1. What do you think about the following advice?

STAYING SAFE ONLINE Install anti-virus software Keep your anti-virus software up to date Install a personal firewall Use Windows updates to patch security holes Do not open e-mail messages that look suspicious Do not click on e-mail attachments you were not expecting

2. How can you define a virus? A trojan horse?

3. Do you think anti-virus soft-ware is necessary or not?

4. What software do you use? Is it a licensed or unlicensed copy?

5. Have you ever had problems caused by viruses?

6. How can you define a hacker? Do you approve or disapprove of their activity?

7. Why do people create viruses and make hacker attacks? Is it a psychological phenomenon?

Task 2. Read the text and sum up in English its main ideas in 10 sentences (orally to the teacher).

Task 3. Express in English your own opinion of the text (orally to the teacher).

Uk firms get fresh hacker warning

More than 1,000 vital UK government departments and businesses have been given fresh advice about the security threats posed by malicious hackers.

The UK National Infrastructure Security Co-ordination Centre's (NISCC) report into Trojan horses in e-mails says they are getting increasingly sophisticated. Organised gangs are using distribution e-mail lists to cleverly engineer mails that look legitimate and relevant. The Home Office said many of the attacks seemed to originate from Asia.

Structured and organised

The warning is aimed at government departments and businesses that are part of the UK's Critical National Infrastructure (CNI). The government's NISCC works with the CNI so that computer systems which run critical infrastructure, such as telecommunications, energy, and power station networks, are protected. "We have not seen anything like this in terms of the scale of industrial attacks before," a Home Office spokesperson told the BBC News website. "It is no longer hackers in their bedroom. They are targeted at gaining information and are very well structured and organised." NISCC is in constant contact with the CNI about net threats, but the aim of this report and the protection advice issued on its website, is to ensure others that fall outside the usual CNI channels of communication get the message. This would include any organisations that work with commercially sensitive information. "The reason why we have chosen to go public this way is because we have gone through the usual routes - we have flagged up¹ the threats to the CNI stakeholders. "But because of the scale and organised nature of these attacks, we have felt the need to scale up ²the footprint of this alert," he said. The spokesperson added that NISCC had "no evidence" that any sensitive information had actually been stolen via any attacks, and that the origin of attacks was difficult to pin down³. Based on internet protocol address (IP) evidence, though, they tended "overwhelming" to originate from the Far East. The number of organisations targeted was also not known, but the fresh advice was aimed at increasing awareness, said the spokesperson.