Sniffing in the sun: History of a disaster
Sarah R. Gordon, I Nedelchev · Network Security · 1994
On the February 3rd, 1994, Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) issued the following warning. What followed was a flurry of activity by the media, system administrators and users. CERT came out with a software ‘patch’ to detect the sniffer which had brought about this panic. Rumours and accusations flew: How accurate was the warning? What's going on? Is the Internet under attack? Users are still suffering the consequences of the sniffer attack, now, some 6 months after the announcement by CERT. This article profiles the people, players and code involved.