Cybersecruity

It’s YOUR Turn!

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We have a president who simply cares for himself. No one else. He demands loyalty and provides none. (Look at his cabinet switches or how he treats his personal fixer.)

That’s part of the reason why TheDonald is doing nothing about the Russian hacking of our electoral system. But, the Russians aren’t the only enemy. There’s also North Korea. And, both of these countries are hiring the best tech staff they can to destroy our infrastructure.

No, not our roads. That would take bombs- and would be clearly attributable to them. Which would clearly let the USA bomb the s… out of them.

Instead, these nefarious foes are using the internet. Attacking our voting machines. Attacking the networks that control our power plants. Attacking our telecommunications facilities. Attacking the systems that control our water providers. Invading our aviation control systems.

But, does the US do anything? Nope. TheDonald, despite repeated briefings from the NSA and the FBI , along with the Speaker of the House (Paul Ryan) and the Senate Majority Leader (Mitch McConnell), are content to do absolutely nothing.

And, I ask you what are you doing? Probably nothing as well.

Despite the fact that you add all sorts of IoT devices to aid (I would say control) your life. You don’t reprogram them to have secure passwords. Or, even set your network router to have a password and  proper security. (Check it out right now- I’m guessing the user for your device is admin and the password is admin (or maybe password).   So, every crook in the world is able to invade your personal space.)

The FBI “has [a] high confidence [level] that Russian state-sponsored cyber actors are using compromised routers to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks, and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations.” (16 April 2018)

And, that means these pirates, these hackers can commandeer enough devices with ease to cripple our national systems. After all, a few years ago, the Mirai hack managed to do just that. Shutting down the internet for millions of Americans.

As far as we know now, some 32 tech firms around the world (including Microsoft and Facebook) have agreed to develop and improve cybersecurity measures. Part of that also means these firms won’t help any country initiate cyberattacks against innocent citizens or enterprises. (I wonder about that determination as to who is “innocent”.)

Admin Panel, Router

And, I am asking each of you to properly program your routers. Pick a name for the device. Don’t broadcast that name, so only you and your loved ones (or friends) know it’s there. And, pick a password that is easy for your to remember, but hard for others to break. (Even the Comcast ad proclaims the password of “you should visit more often”.)

It’s pretty simple.   Less than 10 steps to protect yourself- and the rest of us from DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks.

How to set up a network adaptor

Thank you!

Roy A. Ackerman, Ph.D., E.A.

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8 thoughts on “It’s YOUR Turn!”

  1. I remember the days when Router logins (and many other devices) had the standard username of Admin and the password as password.

    It is a great theing when they started to change these to more difficult word strings!

    Most people do not turn off the broadcasting of their home network name. in fact, I have seen network names such as, “Stay Away From My Network” and “FBI -Stay Out” and “The Bat Cave”.

    It is best to just make it non-broadcastable!

    Thanks.
    Paul Taubman recently posted..State of the Word

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