Internet attack mechanisms
A. Padgett Peterson · Network Security · 1996
Current media is filled with theoretical attacks, vulnerabilities and malicious activities, but the problems that make the news are rarely the ones that result in the common, day to day losses. A Mitnick might be able to mount an obscure sequencing attack against a perceived adversary, but such attacks will fall against virtually any firewall since it depends on a network finding nothing wrong with an internal machine suddenly appearing on the outside. Similarly, a SATAN/SANTA attack will quickly reveal holes but only if you happen to be running Unix with RPC and NFS active. This is not to say that such attacks are not common, just that they require a specific configuration to exist at the attackee's site.