19 June 2014

MIS750_4: Alien Software

Ever watched the blockbuster movie called “Independence Day” (ID4) recently shown in Astro, starring Will Smith? In the movie, an alien mothership enters Earth's orbit and deploys several dozen saucer-shaped destroyer spacecraft, each about 24 km wide in circumference.

However, a MIT graduate computer geek devises a plan and introduced a computer virus and disrupted the force fields of the destroyers, and the aliens were defeated. In a not related circumstances in Chapter 9 of MIS750, there is a topic on Information Security and the many types of software attacks including the term alien software.

Among the types of alien software for humans like us are as follows:
  1. Pestware: Clandestine software that uses up valuable system resources and can report on your Web surfing habits and other personal information.
  2. Adware: Designed to help popup advertisements appear on your screen.
  3. Spyware: Software that gathers user information through the user’s Internet connection without their knowledge.
  4. Spamware: Designed to use your computer as a launch pad for spammers.
  5. Spam: Unsolicited e-mail, usually for purposes of advertising.
  6. Cookies: Small amount of information that Web sites store on your computer, temporarily or more-or-less permanently.
Back to ID4, during the movie screening, back in mid 90s the audiences (in America) were standing up in cinemas to cheer the trailer, which showed such US landmarks as the Empire State Building and the White House being obliterated by giant flying saucers. The truth was, ID4 was never going to be anything else but a massive box-office hit of over US$800 million.
However, once you've got past the “too much” explosions and the astonishing amount of vehicular, architectural, and airborne carnage, ID4 is basically a boy's own adventure with soap opera elements that has an entire species of technically superior aliens bested in all departments by good old Uncle Sam (an American) and his can-do (Amerika Boleh) spirit.

Sources:
New York Times, IMDB, BBC1, Wikipedia, Information Technology for Management 6th Edition

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