An overview of Internet security

The Internet has brought an enormous advance in permitting access to a large variety of data and in enabling a large number of activities to have a global reach. Its growth has been explosive and new uses for it are being found every day. In this moment one of its most serious problems is its lack of security, some high-profile recent incidents have made users wary and perhaps delayed their use of the Internet. We analyze here security aspects of the Internet. We start by providing some basic definitions. We then consider specific types of generic attacks, followed by an analysis of the reasons for these vulnerabilities, followed by possible countermeasures and strategies to improve this situation. We end with a discussion of topics for future study.