"Hugo Cornwall "The Hacker's handbook"" - читать интересную книгу автора

current share prices, deliberately delayed by 15 minutes, historic
price data, which can be charted by the user's own computer
(typically an Apple or IBM PC) and historic 'morgue' type company
news and analysis. Extensions of the service enable customers to
examine accounts of companies in which they are interested. The bulk
of the information is US-based, but can be obtained world-wide via
packet-switching networks. All you need are the passwords and special
software.

Business Information

Business information is usually about the credit-worthiness of
companies, company annual reports, trading opportunities and market
research. The biggest electronic credit data resource is owned by the
international company Dun & Bradstreet: during 1985-86 it is due to
spend г25m on making its data available all over Europe, including
the UK. The service, which covers more than 250,000 UK businesses, is
called DunsPrint and access is both on-line and via a viewdata
front-end processor. Another credit agency, CNN Services, extensively
used already by the big clearing banks, and with 3000 customers
accessing information via viewdata sets, has recently also announced
an extended electronic retrieval service for its own called Guardian
Business Information A third UK credit service available
electronically is called InfoLink.


In addition, all UK companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange
and many others of any size who are not, have a report and analysis
available from ICC (InterCompany Comparisons) who can be accessed via
on--line dial--up, through a viewdata interface and also by
Datastream customers. Dun & Bradstreet also have an on--line service
called KBE covering 20,000 key British enterprises.
Prodigious quantities of credit and background data on US
companies can be found on several of the major on--line hosts. A
valid phone number, passwords and extracts from the operations manual
of one of the largest US services, TRW--it has credit histories on 90
million people--sat on some hackers' bulletin boards (of which much
more later) for over twelve months during 1983 and 1984 before the
company found out. No one knows how many times hackers accessed the
service. According to the Washington Post, the password and manual
had been obtained from a Sears Roebuck national chain store in
Sacramento; some hackers claimed they were able to alter credit
records, but TRW maintain that telephone access to their systems is
designed for read-only operations alone, updating of files taking
place solely on magnetic tape.
US market research and risk analysis comes from Frost Sullivan.
Risk analysis tells international businessmen which countries are
politically or economically unstable, or likely t become so, and so
unsafe to do business with. I once found myself accessing a
viewdata-based international assessment service run b a company