Who are the bad guys?
On 2012/01/23
Wednesday evening, January 25, 2012, I am presenting Being Safe in a Digital World to the Cotton Club Greenwich, a Greenwich, CT group. The talk is intended to help tighten up one’s mental and digital defenses against digital data and privacy loss. My preparation got me thinking, “Who do we need to defend ourselves against?”
[...]
Security on a budget, done right!
On 2012/01/15
Your encrypted Wi-Fi signal is easily cracked
On 2012/01/11
We all knew that WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy or Wireless Encryption Protocol) was worthless. WEP can be cracked in minutes by a knowledgeable cracker. But WEP was replaced with the WPA and then by the better WPA2 protocols. (WPA stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access.) If you have an encrypted [...]
Cell carriers add insult to injury
On 2011/12/18
The Carrier IQ pre-installed keylogging rootkit software has been a big item in tech security news ever since Trevor Eckhart of Torrington, CT unleashed his analysis on his WordPress blog a few weeks ago.
Cell phone carriers, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, but not Verizon, installed this software on Android [...]
Did you hear about the one-armed phisherman?
On 2011/12/09
Wikipedia defines phishing as,”…an attempt to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. “
Can you tell when you are being lured by a phisherman’s bait? It’s not that hard but it takes effort and diligence. If you want to test your [...]
What’s a certificate authority? Should you care?
On 2011/11/13
We depend upon certificate authorities (CAs) every time we go to an https website, like those of our bank, our email website or when we buy something online.
Secure websites use a cryptographic system that employs both a public and a private key. The private key is usually generated from your username [...]
Kindle Fire – Secure or security nightmare?
On 2011/10/03
[Updated: 2011-10-22]
Amazon announced the Kindle Fire touch screen tablet last week at a NYC press event.
My immediate reaction was I want one. Many people will have that reaction.
The $199, 7-inch (diagonal) color touchscreen device has built-in WiFi, weighs only 14.6 ozs, and has a reported battery life of 8 [...]
Password security — entropy and length
On 2011/07/26
There are two ways for bad guys to get your passwords.
They can ask. This is known as social engineering. It may take many forms, from a simple request for you to disclose this information, to phishing exploits or even to keylogging.
A brute-force attack is the [...]
Krebs’s simple rules for online safety
On 2011/06/01
Brian Krebs writes about security. He has three rules for online safety that bear repeating.
If you didn’t go looking for it, don’t install it! If you installed it, update it. If you no longer need it, remove it.
If you want to understand more about these rules, the original post [...]
A client, who was recently scammed out of a significant amount of money via a stolen email account, received the following message, purporting to be from the FBI, this morning. It clearly is a continuation of the scam. Note the misspellings: they were in the original email:
[some information has been obscured]
From: JOHN [...]
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