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matthewivezaj · 5 years ago

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How likely are you to get hacked? Cyber security and you

Equifax is a name that is popping up now and then because of their poor cyber security habits and irresponsibility they have shown to their clients, also adding to the list of organizations are names such as Target, Yahoo, JP Morgan, and Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center. Honestly, everyone is vulnerable to an attack, no matter what you do, how skilled you are, or however high your IQ is *clear throat Trump * excuse me, where did that come from. As 4-star Admiral Michael Rogers, Director of the NSA, leader of its Military components, the Central Security Service, and Commander of United States Cyber Command has said, “Vulnerability is an inherent nature of the technical world that we live in today, and if your desire is to live in a world without vulnerability, I would say that is probably highly unlikely”. A common bad habit that many people practice is using a “weak” password, in respects, passwords should be at minimum of 12 characters in length, they should include a combination of; numbers, letters, and special symbols; using a different password for everything, and please remember that a password should be kept up here (point to head), not written down on a sticky note. While browsing the web, do make sure to check to see if the lock emblem is in the address bar to ensure of a site’s secure connection, configuring routers can allow for access for your IP address only, using VPNs, Using wired LANs vs wireless LANs, it does not hurt to search up cyber security news to keep yourself informed on particular topics, and with that, a plethora of other things that I won’t get into now, those are just your basics to staying semi-safe. Ivezaj 2 Many of you probably think of hackers as bad, but not all hackers are bad, here are the main categories of hackers; Black hats, which are the ones that commit crimes such as robbing a bank; Grey hats, were black hats, now consider themselves turned, but are still loose cannons; red hats, who act as security consultants whom serve the roles of hacking/penetration testing; Blue hats, who are part of a firm outside of the organization that conduct attacks on a system before the launch; Suicide hackers, these individuals are so driven that they will sacrifice everything to complete the mission at hand, whether hacking the political system, operating a terrorist heist, or personal gain; White hats, who are the good cyber professionals whom serve to protect, bringing the fight to push back criminals, aka ethical hackers. Then each member of one of those groups are sub-divided in 3 categories of their own, based on skill set; Script kiddies, who rely on programs to do their hacking and have no idea what is going on in the background; Intermediate hackers, whom of which understand some of the concepts that are going on in the background, but like the script kiddies, still rely on programs; Elitists, these are the professionals who often write programs for the script kiddies and intermediate hackers to use in their attacks, these people can hack someone and make it look like someone else did it. The way they make it look like someone else has committed the hack is through MAC (Media Access Control) address Spoofing, which changes your devices physical IP address on the NIC (Network Interface Card). Ivezaj 3 A MAC address is a sequence of 6 octets of 2 characters containing a combination of letters between A through F and/or numbers (different than IPv4 which has 4 octets containing 3 digits in each octet except that an IPv4 address can be out of 32 bits in size (2^32), containing 4,294,967,296 IPv4 addresses, IPv6 which are 8 octets of 4 characters, a combination of letters and numbers, following the same rules that a MAC address is limited to, and is 128-bits which can contain 240,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 (that is over 240 octotrigintillion) IPv6 addresses; IPv4 communicate with IPv6 through dual stack configuration, for those of you wondering). Now this is pretty interesting, MAC address spoofing is also used to gain privileges of the intended device which you spoofed. Now, a pretty interesting thing that I learned back in the fall is that you can spoof a MAC address belonging to a device from home to use your cables internet on the go, provided the device is turned on, however keep in mind, it does suck that we can hit our usage caps at about 20-30%, however there is a way to broadcast your own Wi-Fi using a modem, router, switch/hub, and a few other components, which would make cable pointless because you could just use a Roku, firestick, or one of those types of devices for free TV with your self-broadcasted Wi-Fi (however there maybe are a few components missing from that and one of my Old Professors said he would let me know what those are when he gets time), though you did not hear that from me. Another plus to MAC spoofing is when you get IP blocked for entering many incorrect passwords which I know that many if not all of us do at times, if you spoof your mac address, your physical IP address changes, causing the system to think another computer is connected from a different location, allowing you to try again. Lastly it is a useful technique that works by keeping yourself anonymous online. Ivezaj 4 An example of a notable hacker (AKA hacktivist) that did not use his abilities for evil is Aaron Swartz, who fought to make the world a better place by allowing all excess of information to flow freely, here is a quote from Aaron “Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations.” In case you don’t know Aaron, here are some facts about him, at age 12 he created a website named “The Info”, which is the precursor to Wikipedia and that won him the first-place prize from ARS Digita, At age 13, Aaron helped to Co-Author RSS, lastly at age 19 he Co-founded Reddit, making him a millionaire. Aaron was charged with 13 counts of wire fraud, all for trying to make information free and accessible for all. His crime was sneaking into an MIT closet and downloading a bunch of free journal articles to release to the public, this involved MIT, JSTOR, and Aaron. Charges from JSTOR, whom suffered the most damage had been dropped, MIT stubbornly stood their ground even though they did not face real damage, plus MIT supports hacking. The Attorney General of Massachusetts had incurred charges on him, namely Stephen Heymann, the assistant Attorney General, he compared Swartz to a notable hacker of the name Jonathon James, who at 15 hacked into the department of defense, he later committed suicide. Aaron was given two plead deals that spanned a few months to a half of a year, he declined them, so, the United States government gave him a final offer of…35 years to make an example of him to all future activists. Aaron hung himself, not from the fear of having his freedom taken away, but because he wanted to serve in the Secret Service and Ivezaj 5 you cannot serve if you have a felony against you, that I know well. I know that he broke the law, making him bad, but his intent was pure. Here is a quote from Elizabeth Warren, the senator that would not have been elected if it were not for Aaron, “When I met Aaron Swartz in 2010, I discovered a young man who was passionate, sharp, a little shy, and, above all, warm and good natured. He seemed like the kind of person who couldn’t hurt a fly — he just had that kind of presence. Aaron made remarkable contributions to our world, and his advocacy for Internet freedom, social justice, and Wall Street reform demonstrated both the power of his ideas and the depth of his commitment. The world is a poorer place without Aaron.” Lastly, Here is a passage that Aaron wrote, “I think deeply about things and want others to do likewise. I work for ideas and learn from people. I don’t like excluding people. I’m a perfectionist, but I won’t let that get in the way of publication. Except for education and entertainment, I’m not going to waste my time on things that won’t have an impact. I try to be friends with everyone, but I hate it when you don’t take me seriously. I don’t hold grudges, it’s not productive, but I learn from my experience. I want to make the world a better place”. I’m sure that many of you have heard of Aaron, you may not remember it now, however, the night of January 11 th 2013, social media blew up with everyone paying respects to Aaron, I chose to talk about Aaron because I believed he offered a lot to the world, and in a lot of respects, I find that we are very similar in our thought process, and look pretty similar in terms of appearance, also, at least that is what I am told. In conclusion, the future is bright for those who wish to journey in the realm of Cyber Security, with according to many news organizations, around 1.5million jobs predicted in the United States, and according to organizations such as Forbes, 6 million predicted unfilled spots Ivezaj 6 by 2019, globally. Especially for women, I honestly think that the world of Cyber would look a lot better if there were more women in the ranks of the Cyber Security lineage, because women only make up around 10% of Cyber at the moment and bringing more of a variety to the field is in great need. Here is another quote from Adm. Rogers, “So to me, I urge people look, don’t be intimidated by the technical aspects, don’t be intimidated by this is different in some ways than the traditional fields some of us have experienced, because I argue, Cyber is an operational domain in which we do a variety of…missions and functions, many of which are very traditional, we do Reconnaissance, we do fires, we do maneuvers, we have key terrain, all of those things that I was constantly going back, hey, how can we frame this in a way that brings a broader sense of recognition and makes it easier to integrate this, don’t make this thing so special and so unique that it just gets pushed to the side, that will sub optimize our ability to perform cyber operations and negatively impact, at least in my view anyway, the operational outcome, which is the whole reason we are doing this in the first place, if it doesn’t have operational outcome, it is a waste of time and a waste of an investment”, and it goes on for a while, I just wanted to include that. Some important topics in Cyber that I think to go over are understanding; Linux for everything is Cyber because it is used to conduct administrative control in networks, is used in routers, a ton of programming resources, free support, accounts for over 70% of the worlds servers, a false statement that some say is that Linux is less secure than windows because of vulnerabilities, which is undeniably false, but if that were actually the case, why would Edward Snowden have used Linux Tailes to evade the NSA during the time that he did? Linux users are also monitored by the NSA in further depth, using Tailes automatically gets you marked as an extremist. Once malware gets on a windows system it can automatically spread Ivezaj 7 to every other file on the partition, whereas in Unix like operating systems like Linux, stops at individual packages, because Linux breaks programs down into packages and Windows offers them as bundled suite; I think that you should also know, IP protocols, configuring routers for security, everything on IP addresses/subnets, SSH commands, utilities, probably learning how to use SSL and TLS connections to a server and to encrypt/decrypt messages (with terminal or command prompt, whatever your weapon of choice is), understanding ports, and a variety of other things, I’m not going to bore any of you any further however. Work Cited Ivezaj 8 Rogers, Michael “NSA Chief Adm. Mike Rogers asked about Apple vs. FBI, encryption “, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9miS0fwmdE, 5 April 2016. Swartz, Aaron Albright, Jane “How likely are you to get hacked? Cyber security and you” http://www.wral.com/how-likely-are-you-to-get-hacked-cyber-security-and-you/17266197 18 January 2018. Warren, Elizabeth “Aaron Swartz’s Suicide Triggers Response from Top U.S. Lawmakers http://business.time.com/2013/01/16/aaron-swartzs-suicide-triggers-response-from-us- lawmakers/

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darkarfs · 7 years ago

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On Thursday night, President Donald Trump flew to Montana to headline a rally for Matt Rosendale, the Republican nominee against Sen. Jon Tester (D) this November. Trump's speech was, like most of his addresses, a remarkable mix of stream-of-consciousness thinking, fact-challenged claims and demagoguery.

Normally, I go through the transcript of Trump's speeches to pick out 30 or 40 (or 50) of the most eye-popping lines, the sentences that stood out most to me for whatever reason. I tend to take a light-hearted approach to this exercise because Trump's word-salad tendencies when speaking extemporaneously are exacerbated when reading a transcript of his speeches.Today, I am going to take a different approach.Trump's speech on Thursday night contained a number of genuinely dangerous lines, lines no president before Trump would even considering uttering among a small group of friends -- much less in front of thousands of people. Below, then, are the 11 most dangerous lines Trump said last night -- and why each one poses a real risk to the body populace.

1. "She gets special treatment under the Justice Department. ... Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. She gets special treatment under the Justice Department." Trump is talking here, of course, about Hillary Clinton. He's interrupted in his attack by chants of "lock her up" from the crowd. Trump's undermining of the Justice Department -- which he has done on an almost-daily basis since winning the White House -- is deeply dangerous to how people perceive those who are tasked with enforcing our laws. When the President of the United States insists the Justice Department is biased and can't be trusted, it erodes one of the long-standing pillars of civil society. 2. "It's a rigged deal, folks. It's a rigged deal. I used to say it. It's a rigged deal. It's a disgrace." It's not entirely clear to me what Trump is referring to here -- whether he's reiterating that the FBI is biased or, more likely, casting aspersions on the whole system of government. Either way, he's fomenting (for political gain) the resentment that lots of people feel toward their government and toward societal establishment more generally.Trump is provoking people to believe that there is some "they" out there working to keep you down. And enjoying doing it.

3. "But we signed a wonderful paper saying they're going to denuclearize their whole thing. It's going to all happen." Trump's assertion that North Korea has agreed to denuclearize and that "it's going to all happen" is a massive overstatement of the facts. What Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed in Singapore last month was a sort of outline of an agreement. There was nothing binding in it. And this week we got word that

satellites have picked up what looks to be more construction at a ballistic missile site in North Korea

. So yeah, this version of the North Korea story via Trump misses some major points. 4. "They are so dishonest. Fake news. They're fake news media." 8 days ago, a man walked into the Capital Gazette newsroom in Maryland and murdered five staffers. His motives were his own -- he held a grudge against the paper for its coverage of a criminal harassment claim against him -- and had nothing to do with Trump's repeated rhetorical attack on the media as "fake." Full stop. That said, one might think that in the wake of such violence committed against reporters, the President of the United States might be more mindful of savaging the media to a crowd of his supporters. That would be the responsible thing to do. That isn't what Trump did. 5. "You know what? Putin's fine. He's fine. We're all fine. We're people." This is a dangerously naive view of the Russian president. First of all, the US intelligence community has unanimously said that Russia actively meddled in the 2016 election. Under Putin, Russia invaded the Ukraine and annexed the Crimean peninsula. Then there's the fact that people critical of Putin -- including journalists -- keep winding up murdered under very suspicious circumstances. These are not the actions of a "fine" person. 6. "They're fake. They're fake. They quote sources -- 'A source within the Trump organization said' -- a source. They don't have a source." Trump's impugning of the media's use of unnamed sources is part of a broader attempt on his part to undermine a free and independent media. For those who cheer that effort -- and insist the media deserves what they get -- I would ask you a simple question: Have you ever seen what life is like for the citizenry in a country in which the media is state-run? 7. "A vote for the Democrats in November is a vote to let MS-13 run wild in our communities." Campaign rhetoric can be a bit over the top. But this feels beyond the pale to me. Trump is purposely weaponizing fear here. Democrats do not, in fact, want to let the violent MS-13 gang "run wild in our communities." But Trump knows that the image of tattooed thugs marauding your neighborhood strikes terror in the hearts of many people. And that terror is useful to him in a political context. 8. "Democrats want anarchy, they really do, and they don't know who they're playing with, folks." Two things here. First, Trump is saying Democrats want "anarchy" -- total chaos to be loosed on the United States. Again, weaponizing fear. Second, the threat inherent in "they don't know who they're playing with" is purposeful and dangerous. If the 2018 or 2020 election is regarded by people as a war between the rule of law and anarchy or between war and peace, then there will be people out there who feel as though using any means necessary to win is totally justified. And that is a scary proposition.

Why Donald Trump hiring Bill Shine should be a much bigger deal

9. "I said it the other day, yes, she is a low-IQ individual, Maxine Waters. I said it the other day. High -- I mean, honestly, she's somewhere in the mid-60s, I believe that." What Trump is saying: A prominent African-American female politician is very dumb. And, no none of this is by accident.

10. "Winning the Electoral College is very tough for a Republican, much tougher than the so-called 'popular vote,' where people vote four times, you know. Much tougher. Much, much tougher." Study after study has shown that claims of widespread voter fraud and abuse are simply not borne out by the facts. Which doesn't stop Trump from pushing the idea to his base by insisting that people "vote four times" in the popular vote. And if you don't think trying to disqualify the results of an election without evidence is dangerous, then you aren't thinking straight -- or at all. 11. "We will take that little kit and say, but we have to do it gently. Because we're in the '#MeToo' generation so I have to be very gentle. And we will very gently take that kit and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn't hit her and injure her arm even though it only weighs probably two ounces. And we will say, I will give you a million dollars to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test so that it shows you're an Indian." Truly remarkable. In his usual riff about the questions surrounding Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's claims of Native-American heritage, Trump shows his true colors on the #MeToo movement. He seems to suggest that the movement, which grew out of a series of news stories of powerful men sexually harassing women, is about political correctness run rampant. Trump seems to think -- or at least say -- that he has to be careful not to offend the #MeToo movement by throwing a DNA heritage kit at Warren. Which both deeply misunderstands what the #MeToo movement is about and denigrates the entire idea of women feeling safe to come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct. Be afraid, folks. The would-be dictator wants his very real fascism, and it seems ever-likely that he’s getting it.

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