Trojans and Backdoors

Thu, Mar 07

This week we will take a deep dive into the world of trojan horses, backdoor applications, and exploits for Windows and Unix systems of the 1990s. As we explore the techniques and artifacts of the period, we will also discuss the social scene and the hacker groups involved, such as the underground-famous Cult of the Dead Cow, one of the most important representatives of the hacker community from the mid-to-late 1990s.

The digital artifact for this week is the remote administration program for Windows: BackOriffice (a play-on-words on Microsoft Backoffice).

In today's class you will learn:

1. About the design of trojan and backdoor applications;

2. How remote code execution attacks are deployed and for what purposes;

3. And, most importantly, what is the relation between this period in the history of hacking with the creation of the commercial practice "information security" and "hacktivism".

The slides for the class can be found here.