In the Weeds: Weekly InfoSec Round-Up 3-29-17

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Man, what a week. We lost internet privacy in the U.S. Brexit is happening in the U.K. And now using the term Cyber Attack is under attack. Here take a look:

“Words matter,” said Thomas Rid, who teaches at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. “Words affect intelligence operations; words affect military operations; words affect the behavior of allies and enemies. And of course words shape what lawmakers think and what laws are made. So if we’re not precise, we’re literally escalating a problem.” As a writer, I can hardly disagree. As Mark Twain said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” https://apnews.com/2c25d7da76f4409bae7daf063c071420/What-makes-a-cyberattack?-Experts-lobby-to-restrict-the-term

Weak encryption and Brexit: “I can’t build an access technology that only works with proper legal authorization, or only for people with a particular citizenship or the proper morality,” writes security expert Bruce Schneier, CTO of IBM’s Resilient. “The technology just doesn’t work that way. If a backdoor exists, then anyone can exploit it.” http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/blogs/great-crypto-diversion-p-2435

VPNs and browsing incognito won’t save your internet privacy after U.S. House of Representatives vote:  https://www.wired.com/2017/03/vpns-wont-save-congress-internet-privacy-giveaway/

Raspberry Pie + Mobile Phone = Zero Terminal:  http://www.techrepublic.com/article/this-raspberry-pi-powered-linux-computer-packs-a-keyboard-and-display-into-a-phone-sized-case/?ftag=TRE684d531&bhid=26093227954548321669490942282653

Give your Instagram account an extra layer of security:  http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-enable-two-factor-authentication-on-instagram/?ftag=TRE684d531&bhid=26093227954548321669490942282653

As in week’s past, feel free to leave a comment here about any of those articles. Let’s learn from one another. Okay, have pity on the noob and let me learn from you.

Have another great week InfoSec geeks. See you soon.

In the Weeds: Weekly InfoSec Round-Up 3-22-17

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Yikes! Good timing that I’m posting this today, because there’s news about Last Pass (the password vault cloud I blogged about recently). There was a vulnerability found. Now, it sounds from what I understand that you have to be doing some sketch browsing to become vulnerable, but Kudos to Last Pass for jumping on a server-side patch to mitigate the vulnerability. Here’s more on it:  https://blog.lastpass.com/2017/03/important-security-updates-for-our-users.html/

And another article that also details issues with users whose default browser is Firefox:  https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/21/lastpass_vulnerabilities/

Here’s a little gem for all you hackers that love new hardware toys. For the rest of us, it’s just good information about how not to kill your computer:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pP8TLwO_Ks&feature=youtu.be

Need a new career? Here’s a list of the jobs that have high demand in the tech fields:  http://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-10-best-tech-jobs-that-pay-the-highest-salaries/?ftag=TREe01923b&bhid=26093227954548321669490942282653

Lastly, an article that makes me grateful that I haven’t lost my noob status and am constantly asking questions and on the look out (because there is no such thing as absolute security):

People who think they’re ‘tech-savvy’ 18% more likely to be hit by ID theft

As in week’s past, feel free to leave a comment here about any of those articles. Let’s learn from one another. Okay, have pity on the noob and let me learn from you.

Have another great week InfoSec geeks. See you soon.

One Minute of Zen: Keeping Warm By the Fire

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Happy Spring! It’s still pretty cold here in the Pacific Northwest; but, we have a solution for that. It’s called wood stoves, fireplaces, and even outdoor fire circles. I love living here because all the elements are constantly close at hand. Enjoy the trance-like state you can get from just starring at a roaring fire.

In the Weeds: Weekly InfoSec Round-Up 3-16-17

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Yes, I’m late a day. Sorry, dears. This site was being held hostage and it took some time to make it work and that put every part of my schedule behind. I will blog about what happened and how it was fixed. But not today.

Today is all about our digital cowboy round-up.

I wasn’t the only one with issues this week:  Twitter accounts were hacked:  http://thehackernews.com/2017/03/twitter-account-hack.html

The Brits have a huge problem in addition to Brexit: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/14/cyber_security_agencies_ransomware_warning/

File under – I can’t believe I have to protest this shit: http://www.darkreading.com/careers-and-people/women-still-only-11–of-global-infosec-workforce/d/d-id/1328409

And if you haven’t heard this headline, you must be living in a Faraday cage:  http://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-hack-indictments-fsb-idUSKBN16N0CO

Lastly, if Siri, Google, or Alexa sound like they’ve been hacked…well, maybe they have:  https://qz.com/928201/is-siri-lying-to-you-knowing-when-a-bot-sounds-trustworthy-is-the-next-step-in-digital-security/

Feel free to leave a comment here about any of those articles. Let’s learn from one another. Okay, have pity on the noob and let me learn from you.

Have another great week InfoSec geeks. See you soon.