Nobody likes to have their information stolen and used, especially over the internet. From using social media websites like Facebook (News - Alert) and Instagram to playing on any online casino like onlinecasinogamesindia.in, we always want to make sure our internet security is safe when we go online. The internet has been around for a long time, so we should assume that internet security protocols have improved in that time.
Luckily, they have. As the internet has advanced over the years, so have internet security protocols. From HTTP to IRC, here’s how internet security protocols have advanced in the 21st century and what protocols we can use to protect ourselves online.
History of Internet Security
We tend to think that the internet became mainstream in the 1990s. While the internet did become prominent in the 1990s, the history of internet security goes as far back as the 1960s, believe it or not!
In 1960, Paul Baran came up with a decentralized communication system with many redundant links. This was a solution for the United States to recover from a Soviet nuclear attack. He claimed that information could flow across many different paths and allow connections even if most of the system suffered damage. It sounds a lot like today's internet, doesn’t it?
Nine years later, at 10:30 P.M. on October 29, 1969, the UCLA computer lab of Leonard Kleinrock sent the first message from what we consider to be the most important precursor of the internet: ARPANET. ARPANET was a packet-switched network funded and designed by the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency. It wasn’t as secure as they thought it would be.
In 1973, Robert Metcalfe warned the ARPANET Working Group about the ease of gaining access to the network. One intrusion he mentioned, out of several, was from high school students. If high school students could gain access to a network funded and designed by the Pentagon, then the network wasn’t secure enough.
Five years later, computer scientists Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn tried to build encryption technology directly into what would eventually give rise to the internet after several years: TCP/IP. Unfortunately, the two scientists ran into obstacles that prevented them from completing their goal, including resistance from the National Security Agency (News - Alert).
In 1983, ARPANET required its network users to communicate by TCP/IP, quickly making it the global standard. Globally, networks could communicate easily with each other. Thus, the internet was born.
The first Act passed for internet security was the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 1986. Congress enacted this bill to establish legal sanctions against data theft, unauthorized network access, and other computer-related crimes. The first person convicted under this act was Robert Tappan Morris, a Cornell University graduate student. He released several dozen lines of codes, replicating wildly and spreading to thousands of computers worldwide. 10% of 60,000 linked to the internet crashed due to Morris's actions. The courts sentenced Morris to three years of probation, 400 hours of community service, and a $10,000 fine.
The internet was finally accessible to those with little or no technical skills with the first browser Mosaic in 1993. While this grew the number of internet users and commercialized cyber communication, security threats also grew. Three years later, animation tools such as Macromedia's Flash greatly expanded browsers' capabilities, revolutionizing the look and feel of websites. However, hackers soon realized they could take remote control of computers. Flash and add-ons have been serious sources of security flaws. The former led to the discontinuation of Flash.
As the internet kept spreading worldwide, so did computer worms. ILOVEYOU spread across the internet and preyed on security flaws in products by Microsoft (News - Alert) and other companies, affecting tens of millions of computers.
The internet didn't stay on the computer. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone, revolutionizing the use of mobile devices and precipitating their rise to prominence. Google (News - Alert)'s Android operating system followed the next year. While it became easier to access the internet from anywhere, it also became easier for people to snoop and hack into people's devices.
Ways of Protection
At this point, the internet is no longer a fad: it is a necessity. Here are some internet security protocols to protect ourselves with.
HTTP
We've seen these four letters a lot when browsing the internet. HTTP, or hypertext transfer protocol, is the most popular protocol used. It's used to allow the browser and server to communicate.
TCP
Earlier mentioned with Cerf and Kahn, TCP (transmission control protocol) separates data into packets able to be shared over a network. Devices can send these packets to designated targets like switches and routers.
UDP (News - Alert)
This protocol is like TCP. The difference between TCP and UDP (user datagram protocol) is that UDP doesn’t secure a connection between the application and the server.
IRC
A text-based communication protocol, IRC (internet relay chat), works well on networks with many distributed machines. We can send messages to clients and communicate with services via software clients.
