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  Geebo 10:57 am on January 4, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: cnn, fake news ( 12 ), fallout, hacking   

  CNN uses video game footage to portray Russian hackers 

  

  As we’ve shown on this blog, one of the hot topics of 2016 was the tide of fake news that plagued the internet at large. What makes the fake news so acceptable these days is when cable news channels inadvertently engage in it.

  Recently, CNN was discussing the spate of news regarding so-called Russian hackers. In order to portray the alleged hacking CNN used a graphic of a green computer screen that appeared straight out of the early 80s. The problem was that the graphic CNN used was actually a clip from the video game Fallout 4.

  For those of you unfamiliar with the Fallout franchise it’s a series of games that take place in the alternate history of a post-apocalyptic 22nd century. For some reason in this alternate timeline, computer science never progressed past the 1980s. Throughout the game are these ancient looking computer terminals that the player has to ‘hack’ in order to open locked doors. The hacking consists of guessing already displayed passwords.

  So why is this a big deal? Well, how can we dismiss fake and misleading news when supposed legitimate news outlets are seen making preventable gaffes like this?

   

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  Geebo 11:02 am on January 2, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: hacking, malware ( 26 ), power grid ( 2 ), Vermont   

  Has the power grid been hacked? 

  

  Over the New Year’s weekend a story made the rounds that the power gird in Vermont had been hacked by foreign aggressors, Russian hackers to be specific. As is usually the case with these stories the cyber-devil is in the details.

  Much like the claims that the Russians hacked the 2016 US election the truth is somewhere in the middle. In the so-called power grid hack it was reported that Russian hackers had gained access to the power grid in Vermont. That turned out to be not the case. Instead, it was revealed that Russian malware was found on a laptop owned by a utility company. The laptop itself had no connection to the power grid, not to mention that Russian malware can be a misnomer.

  Russia is a haven for hackers and malware, this doesn’t mean that they are necessarily state sponsored. Also, not only is malware for sale to whoever wants to pay the price but any computer can be infected with it regardless of who owns it. For the most part malware is usually injected into computers when the user clicks on a risky link or email attachment. It’s normally used to cast a wide net to infect as many people as possible rather than singling out a single machine.

  So as it stands right now the power grid is relatively safe from Russian hackers. There’s a better chance of it failing from its own decay.

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  Geebo 11:27 am on December 15, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: hacking, technology ( 7 ), yahoo ( 13 )   

  Is there even any point to keep using Yahoo? 

  

  Here we are again, discussing the Rasputin of the internet. No matter how many times someone tries to kill Yahoo, it’s still here. Once again the former king of the internet has announced that it’s discovered a new hack. Along with the 2014 hack that disclosed over 500 million user accounts, there has been an additional hack that took place in 2013, and exposed more than one billion accounts. That’s right, billion with a b.

  So why are we still using the services of a long dying brand? From most reports, the only services that Yahoo still excels at are stock reports and fantasy football. Yet hundreds of millions of people continue to use Yahoo mail even though they’ve been hacked multiple times. Both Google and Microsoft offer superior products in GMail and Outlook.com and neither service has fallen victim to major hacks like this.

  The reality is that while we see many people talk about privacy on the internet, but for the most part we don’t really care about security and privacy. What we really want is ease of use, which is why so many of us have passwords like ‘password’ and ‘123456’. Not only that, but one could imagine that the majority of Yahoo users are legacy users since Yahoo has been such a huge player on the internet even before Google.

  However Yahoo’s problems are really their own fault. They’ve failed to evolve in an ever-changing tech world with new threats emerging everyday. With security not being a priority for Yahoo they continue to be the butt of many jokes in tech circles. However, user complacency and apathy continues to keep this tech Titanic afloat.

   
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  Geebo 10:55 am on December 13, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: hacking, hello kitty, identity theft ( 107 ), personal information ( 2 )   

  Why hackers want your kids’ accounts 

  

  We’re used to hearing about companies being hacked and personal information being stolen. Usually it’s a tech monolith like Yahoo or a retail giant like Target. However, it seems that some hackers are targeting sites and services used by children. Popular Mechanics has reported that children’s sites like V-Tech and Hello Kitty are being hacked for their users information, and their users are children.

  So what would hackers want with the user information of children? A lot of it is what some would call a long con. Hackers could hold on to this information for years until the child turns 18. Then they could use that information to do the usual with stolen personal information. They could open banking accounts, take out loans, apply for credit cards, etc.

  So while you may think that your 10-year-old’s current personal information may currently be useless, that’s not to say that it can’t be eventually be used for bad intents. What you can do is what most adults do. When signing up your kid for some website or service, use false information. How many sites do we adults sigh up for and give the service fake names and addresses. I’ve lost track of how many services I’ve signed up for where I used the address of 123 Fake Street. Also, I think it goes without saying that you should never let your young children sign up for services on their own as they tend to freely give out their personal information. Plus, this would be a great teaching moment to your kids as to why and how their personal information should be protected.

   
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  Geebo 9:46 am on October 24, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: ddos ( 2 ), Dyn, hacking, internet of things/ ( 7 )   

  Why you couldn’t access the internet over the weekend 

  

  Starting this past Friday, a large part of the country were unable to access popular sites like Twitter and Netflix. What had happened is that unknown actors attacked an internet service called Dyn. To put it simply Dyn is a large backbone of the internet that handles the massive traffic to major websites. Dyn was used my so many websites that attacking Dyn is almost like attacking the entire internet.

  Dyn was attacked in what’s called a denial of service attack or DDoS for short. Think of it as millions of phones trying to call the same phone number at once. Even with services like Dyn only a certain number of people can get through to a website at the same time. This could crash any website and can cause a massive amount of damages in lost business.

  Normally in a DDoS attack a computer is infected with malware and whomever is pulling the strings of the malware will cause all the infected computers to send traffic to a website, unknown to the computer’s user. This new massive DDoS attack used devices from what’s called the internet of things (IoT). These devices include peripheral webcams, smart home devices like smart thermostats, or just about any other internet connected device that isn’t a cell phone, computer or tablet.

  The problem is that a lot of these devices don’t have the best security installed. Many of them have easy to guess passwords that don’t even require a password to be changed when installed. Unfortunately there’s not a lot that us, the end users can do. This record-breaking attack may have come because we’ve given up on security for convenience.

   
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  Geebo 10:01 am on October 12, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: hacking, Verizon ( 10 ), yahoo ( 13 )   

  Yahoo kicking itself while it’s down 

  

  It was bad enough when it was revealed that Yahoo had been hacked to the tune of 500 million users, now it turns out there nay have been more. Many AT&T and SBC-Global email accounts were set up through Yahoo servers and many users have been reporting that they’ve been unable to change their passwords.

  Then, in what could be considered a bad PR move, Yahoo has temporarily disabled email forwarding. That means if you were leaving Yahoo and wanted your email forwarded to your new address, you wouldn’t be able to do that now. It can be understood that Yahoo would want to stop hemorrhaging users, but to use technical sleight of hand to prevent them from leaving is questionable at best.

  So it should come as no surprise that with all of Yahoo’s problems, Verizon is asking for a $1 billion discount in the asking price for Yahoo. Can you blame them? It shouldn’t come as a surprise if Verizon even decided to back out of the deal.

  If Yahoo continues to have these kind of controversies it may find itself in the ever-increasing graveyard of tech companies that failed to achieve their full potential.

   
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  Geebo 11:08 am on September 23, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: hacking, passwords ( 5 ), security ( 46 ), yahoo ( 13 )   

  Yahoo hacked again. What you need to do 

  

  Yesterday, Yahoo announced that 500 million accounts had been stolen by a state-sponsored hack back in 2014. So if you use Yahoo Mail, or any other of their services like Flickr, it’s time to change your password once again. Even if you’ve changed your password since the hack took place it is recommended that you update your password again. This inevitably brings out the articled and blog posts about how to keep your passwords secure, and this is one of them.

  First, you should try using a passphrase instead of a password. Also you should really consider enabling two-factor authentication for most of your accounts. Some tech experts also suggest using a password manager. Personally, I don’t care for password managers for one reason, they require a master password. That means that all your passwords can have a single point of failure. If you lose your password manager’s password then all your passwords could be lost. Conversely, if someone were to access your password manager’s password they’d have access to all your passwords. However, your results may vary.

  A great resource to see if any of your accounts have been hacked is the “have i been pwned?” website. At their website you can enter your email address to see if any of your accounts associated with your email address have been compromised in the most infamous hacks that have taken place on the internet.

  Lastly, and this one can’t be stressed enough, don’t use the same password for all your accounts. That is how most accounts get hacked. Hackers will get an email address and password from one hack, such as Yahoo’s, and then will try them on other services like Facebook to try to gain even more of your personal information.

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  Geebo 10:02 am on August 17, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: hacking, malware ( 26 ), ransomware ( 11 ), security ( 46 )   

  New ransomware knows you by name and address 

  

  Ransomware is a nasty bit of malware that can lock you out of your computer or network and will hold your files ransom until you pay a bad actor to release them. One of the more infamous ransomware incidents involved a hospital in Kansas that paid the ransom in order to regain access to their patients’ records. One of the main ways ransomware infects a computer network is when a user either opens a strange email attachment or goes to an infected website.

  Now the BBC is reporting a new type of ransomware that tricks you into infecting your computer with your own name and address. In this case the scammers will send you an email that appears to be a large bill that you owe. Normally scam emails like this are generic in their presentation however this new type of attack makes the email look more official by having your name and address listed. Like any other phishing email, it tries to trick you into clicking on to an infected website. Once your computer or network is infected and your locked out from your files, the ransowmware will not only detail instructions on how to pay the ransom with Bitcoin, but it will also give you a timer that shows you how much the ransom increases the longer you wait. There has been no word yet how the attackers have been able to match up the names and addresses to the email addresses. While the malware has only been reported so far in the UK, it’s probably only a matter of time before it shows up in the US.

  The best protection against ransomware is to not click on unknown email attachments or strange websites these emails ask you to click on. It also helps to make multiple back ups of all your important files. According to Wired, if you do become infected, disconnect any infected computer from the network and try to use anti-malwarwe tools to remove the infection from the computer. They recommend only paying the ransom as a last resort as paying the ransom only propagates the attacks.

   
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  Geebo 10:02 am on August 9, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: hacking, security ( 46 ), thermostat   

  Hackers Hijack Heater and Hold it Hostage 

  

  Have you thought about purchasing a smart thermostat that you can control from your smart phone or do you already have one? You may want to rethink that purchase after what a couple of security experts were able to do to one recently. At the security conference known as DefCon two security experts were able to remotely hijack one of these smart thermostats and crank the temperature up to 99F. In theory a malicious actor could hold your thermostat hostage until you pay them money to have them release control, much like any other ransomware that could infect your computer.

  This is the second bit of bad news for the smart thermostat market in so many months.This past winter, the leading brand of smart thermostats failed after a buggy firmware update left many houses dangerously cold.

  Your best bet in either of these situations is to just get an old school thermostat from your local hardware store that you should be able to hook up in minutes. Sometimes the most secure solutions are the most simple ones.

   
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  Geebo 10:31 am on May 31, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: hacking, identity theft ( 107 ), MySpace, security ( 46 )   

  The MySpace hack could cost you 

  

  Do you remember MySpace? You know, the sparkly animated background plagued social network of the mid 2000s. Admit it, you had one but you abandoned it after the advent of Facebook. Recently it was made public that the former king of the social networking world had been hacked and hundreds of millions of usernames, email addresses and passwords have been compromised.

  So what does this mean to you? Well, that depends. Are you still using the same password that you were using with MySpace? If you use the same password on multiple websites or apps you are in danger of having all your information compromised. Internet security experts often say that you should use different passwords for all your different accounts and to aid in doing so you should use a password manager like Lastpass or KeePass to keep them all straight and passwords should be changed routinely.

  Even if you’ve abandoned your MySpace account and haven’t logged into it in years there still could be personal information attached to the account that could potentially lead to identity theft. If you no longer use a service you’re better off deleting the account than letting it sit out there as a potential target for identity thieves.