NCR-95223 15 PI: Richard Pethia In response to computer security threats, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) has established a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) to support users of the Internet. The Internet CERT coordination center is located at Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute and has been active since November 18, 1988. CERT is chartered to work with the Internet community in detecting and resolving computer security incidents. Since its inception, CERT has responded to continuous stream of security incidents. The incident rate and impact on Internet sites has grown steadily as the Internet user population has grown. As the incident rate has grown, so has the sophistication of the intruders. Where intruders once focused on exploitation of weak passwords and widely known vulnerabilities, they have now progressed to examining source files for new security flaws, exploiting protocol flaws, and using tool kits to automate their attacks and increase their impact. CERT is expanding its program to increase its emphasis on incident prevention through a combination of technology improvement, security awareness and training, and security assessment activities. This expanded program includes two areas where CERT can provide special help that will facilitate the orderly, secure progression to the next stage in the Internet evolution: 1. Collaboration with router manufacturers 2. Collaboration with network service Providers
