Group items tagged

Instead of hiring "upper-class twits from Oxford and Cambridge," A government communications agency tried a new angle on recruiting hackers. They decided to combat hackers with other experienced hackers by posting an online puzzle and offering a job interview to those who solved it.

Keep a paper trail: Print and save records of your online transactions, including the product description, price, online receipt, terms of the sale, and copies of any email exchange with the seller. Read your credit card statements as soon as you get them to make sure there aren't any unauthorized charges.

This article opened my eyes to many things, such as how many cookies can be stored on your computer from not going to many websites, how easy it is to track ones location, and how Facebook could easily recognize you in real life. It discussed ways that information is gathered and stored about someone online that I hadn't even thought of before and was very eye-opening.

Facebook already knew you would feel that way about this news.

The FCC decided Friday that it can't force Internet companies like Google, Facebook and ad providers from tracking users online.

To any future college students: Be careful of what you type on the internet or reveal about yourself in an online forum. Despite the shocking revelations of the size and scope of the government's surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden, the majority of Americans don't understand the kind of information the government has on them, have taken few steps to protect their online data, and believe that such programs don't go far enough in tackling terrorism. Ironically, these same Americans also overwhelmingly believe that consumers have lost protection of their data to companies who have used their clients' privacy as a commodity. I would advise you to be careful of what you post online, and follow a few steps, such as passwords, encryption, and clearing your cookies, to help protect at least some of your data online and allow you to remain private. These programs continue to this day, and it's important that you protect what little privacy remains.

What are the mechanisms behind surveillance? How precisely are people surveilled in the US?

The thing I found very interesting about this article is the discussion about ex-NBA owner Donald Sterling. Yes, his comments were horrifying, but he said things in the privacy of his home. I guess what I, and this article, are trying to say is that privacy is dead and all information is vulnerable.

This article provides information for how to make your personal information more private through Google. While Google does have access to a large amount of your information, this allows you to better control what is shared online.

Whether it is on Facebook, Twitter or a text on your cell phone, many will see photos and videos flying through cyberspace over the holiday season. Maybe some of these pictures and videos won't be so joyous; this is when digital decisions may have been made in haste.

With the shutdown of the silk road, the NSA has proven that it is monitoring even the most anonymous parts of the web. This raises some serious questions. Is anything that we do online really "private?"

It's a little depressing, isn't it? One solution would be stronger oversight for the NSA. We could assume they can see everything, but have stronger assurances that they're using that power responsibly.

Advice: always assume that you are being hacked; use strong passwords; don't trust security questions to protect your data

For longer ciphers, Kasiski analysis is useful for determining possible keywords using a modified frequency analysis and repetition analysis. This is an online tool to find repeat sequences in a ciphertext, and can be used to quickly decrypt a Vigenere ciphertext.

This outlines the gronsfeld cipher, which is a modification of the vigenere cipher. I like and find this cipher interesting because of it using numbers instead of letters, and I like cryptography which uses numbers.

Interesting. Gronsfeld ciphers then form a subset of Vigenere ciphers. That is, there's a one-to-one correspondence between Gronsfeld ciphers and Vigenere ciphers where keywords are formed from the letters A through J.

What really stood out to me about this article was that they said the NSA actually pays more attention to those people who use encryption. So, in order to protect ourselves and also avoid prying NSA eyes, we should encourage people to stand in solidarity with encryption. I thought this was really interesting because I always thought that encryption would undoubtedly make everything more secure, but here they're saying that it actually attracts attention (which isn't necessarily a good thing).

When I was a kid, I read an issue of Superman in which he faces Batman's villain, the Joker. At one point, the Joker tells Superman that he's kidnapped all of Superman's best friends (Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and so on) and locked them inside lead-lined caskets, hidden throughout Metropolis. Since the caskets are air-tight, they only have an hour to live, and Superman can't find them because his x-ray vision can't see through lead! That's what the Joker said. Actually, since Superman can't see through lead, those caskets *stood out* when he scanned the city with his x-ray vision, and he rescued all his friends in short order. Same basic idea.

You can find anything on the Internet: http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/superjoker6.jpg.

Interesting article on how public-key encryption is used to keep information safe during financial transactions online. The article discusses weakness in basic public-key encryption schemes and how some of these schemes have been improved.

6. Use Strong Passwords We like to beat this dead horse about making sure to utilize uncrackable passwords, but it's never more important than when banking and shopping online. Our tips for creating a unique password can come in handy during a time of year when shopping around probably means creating new accounts on all sorts of e-commerce sites.

This is the e-text of a book that discusses online network encryption and application. The chapters cover various encryption methods for the transfer of data online, as well as the application of wireless, email, IP network security

Interesting that ~35% of 1000 surveyed have upped the strength of their passwords, but only 6% turned on two-factor ID, which was a major cause of the iCloud hacks going undetected for so long.

It seems that two-factor authentication would not have prevented those iCloud hacks (according to this piece: http://www.tuaw.com/2014/09/02/think-iclouds-two-factor-authentication-protects-your-privacy/), but since Apple has now changed the triggers for two-factor to include things like iCloud access, two-factor will be more helpful going forward. So it is a little surprising that more people haven't enabled it.

I'm also reminded of the ACLU's Chris Soghoian's point (https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/lessons-celebrity-icloud-photo-breach) that one reason people have crappy Apple passwords is that Apple makes you use your password so darn often. I know I get frustrated when I have to enter my (crazy long) Apple password on my iPhone just to download a free app.

This website discusses procedure and purpose of encrypting sensitive data over the internet. SSL is a protocol which "determines variables of the encryption" being used to protect information from first names to credit card numbers. This website also tells you how to determine whether or not a website is secure or if your information is vulnerable. In addition, there is another page that delves into the mathematics and actual cryptography procedures behind online encryption like RSA and ECC.

This article, combined with the guide to staying completely anonymous on the internet linked at the end of it, suggest that one of the easiest ways to be anonymous online is to use a private browser like Ghostery, or a private search engine like DuckDuckGo. These services don't track your information the same way that Google does, making your online browsing experience more private and secure.