When we are doing post-breach cleanup for new clients, many of them ask us the question, “Our business is not that interesting, so why would anyone hack me?” They may be a restaurant chain who thinks the only items of value they have are recipes that aren’t very hard to reproduce, or they could be a nonprofit …

READ MORE ]]> Why hack me?

When we are doing post-breach cleanup for new clients, many of them ask us the question, “Our business is not that interesting, so why would anyone hack me?” They may be a restaurant chain who thinks the only items of value they have are recipes that aren’t very hard to reproduce, or they could be a nonprofit who “just does performances”.

The fact is, they all have juicy bits of data that can mean a lot to an attacker. Most of them collect credit cards from customers, they do online banking, and they have payroll information that can be used to build a fake identity that enables an attacker to do more crimes. Even if the hacker is not after your money, your computer’s processing power is valuable when attached to several thousand other compromised machines. Ten thousand computers can crack a password a hell of a lot faster than one…

The Wall Street Journal has some startling statistics in their article, here.

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Each device has its own IP address (roughly, because some devices hide behind other devices such as a firewall, which uses its IP address for those devices).

We have been …

READ MORE ]]> You mean we are running out of IP addresses on the Internet??? Yes, it’s true, sort of.  IP addresses are used by computers to find each other on the Internet.

Each device has its own IP address (roughly, because some devices hide behind other devices such as a firewall, which uses its IP address for those devices).

We have been using IP version 4 (IPv4) addresses since 1981, and way back then they thought that we would never exceed 4.3 billion devices, so that is how many addresses they created.  The problem is, many people have 1 or 2 smartphones, a laptop, a desktop, and soon will have networkable refrigerators and toilets; their companies have web servers, email servers, etc.  The last IPv4 address blocks were handed out by IANA, the top-level provider of IP addresses, in February this year to regional registries, who pass them to Internet Service Providers, such as TimeWarner, who then gives them to businesses and individuals.  They are expected to run out later this year.

IPv6 supports 340 undecillion devices, which should last until long after we are dead; by then our great, great, grandchildren will have moved on to a better form of addressing.  Meantime, do you have your IPV6 migration plans in place?  We can help you make the most of your IPv4 addresses and help you navigate your way to IPV6.

Did I say that twice? Good, maybe now it will sink in. This article from the New York Times is about spearphishing, which are emails that are targeted directly at you or your organization and usually contain a link to a website that does bad …

READ MORE ]]> Don’t ever click links in email. Don’t ever click links in email.

Did I say that twice? Good, maybe now it will sink in. This article from the New York Times is about spearphishing, which are emails that are targeted directly at you or your organization and usually contain a link to a website that does bad things to your computer. These emails are much more convincing than those from the king in Africa who wants to give you his money, which now that I think about it, he never did, the rat.

You can search by the organizational types that were breached (government, educational, financial, nonprofit) and the type of breach (unintended disclure, hacking or malware, payment card freud), the month and year it occured and in some cases it will even tell you what the damage was. …

READ MORE ]]> This website has a searchable chronology of all reported data breaches 2005 to the present.

You can search by the organizational types that were breached (government, educational, financial, nonprofit) and the type of breach (unintended disclure, hacking or malware, payment card freud), the month and year it occured and in some cases it will even tell you what the damage was. For those of you who still ask why anyone would care about hacking your business, this site is worth checking out.
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse

This Christian Science Monitor article reveals some startling information about how different nations use electronic surveillance for gathering commercial intel.  This quote from the article says it all:

“America’s real crown jewels are not our government secrets but our intellectual property,” writes former White House cyber security adviser Richard Clarke in a 2010 book …

READ MORE ]]> Who cares about intercepting your BlackBerry?

This Christian Science Monitor article reveals some startling information about how different nations use electronic surveillance for gathering commercial intel.  This quote from the article says it all:

“America’s real crown jewels are not our government secrets but our intellectual property,” writes former White House cyber security adviser Richard Clarke in a 2010 book “Cyber War”.

READ MORE

Password Security

People choose bad passwords. It’s not that they are bad people, they are busy and don’t know better. At Netflix, they will use netflix123 and move quickly on to their goal: watching movies. Or they will use the same password at Facebook, Amazon, their bank, and mysecuritystinks.com. When the latter site gets hacked, the hacker has …

READ MORE ]]>

Password Security

People choose bad passwords. It’s not that they are bad people, they are busy and don’t know better. At Netflix, they will use netflix123 and move quickly on to their goal: watching movies. Or they will use the same password at Facebook, Amazon, their bank, and mysecuritystinks.com. When the latter site gets hacked, the hacker has access to a world of books and money.

A tale of password theft from The Register is here, and one solution from Microsoft is here (article from PC Advisor).