Depending on whom you ask, the name of the inveterate Network File System (NFS) might really be Nightmare File System, because of its poor performance, or No File Security, because of its poor security. But all that is about to change. With improved performance, security, interoperability, and Internet access, NFS version 4 is out to silence the critics for good.
Much of the online world was caught off guard last month by the massive denial-of-service (DoS) attacks against such major Websites as eBay Inc., E*Trade, Yahoo Inc., and CNN, but Dave Dittrich wasn't. Dittrich had made the acquaintance of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) tools trinoo (aka trin00), Tribe Flood Network, and stacheldraht when some of the machines under his charge at the University of Washington were used in a DDoS attack against the University of Michigan.