DefCon

DefCon is in full swing now here in Las Vegas.  While it was originally a small, spontaneous gathering of hackers in Las Vegas, it is now a full-fledged annual event with tens of thousands of attendees each summer, complete with hackers, feds, security folks, and the curious.

If you are a hacker, or even marginally interested in tech/hacking/black hat stuff/white hat stuff, the event's website offers a plethora of resources and information on everything from how to hack voting machines to 'disrupting robotic homeostasis and artificial intelligence systems with electromagnetic pulse'.  Needless to say, the center Strip of Las Vegas is currently a hotbed of lines (as usual), hacking activities (don't use an ATM in the area or your cell phone), and parties (of tech geeks but fun nevertheless).  Even if you can't attend in person, there are plenty of ways to reap the rewards of all of the information generated by the event...

• Start with the DefCon site (you could spend days, maybe even weeks, downloading torrents/videos/workshops from this and previous year's events).
• An interesting prep guide for this and related events can be found here.
• To get a feel for the event you can peruse the official faq as well as the unofficial faq.
• Twitter and other social media sites like reddit and Instagram are good ways to follow the action in real time.
• Hackers have already posted quite a bit of info on their personal sites (example) and the media reports won't be far behind (example).
• And apparently they are already breaking Vegas.

After you have ingested so much technical information your brain hurts, you can always check out the bear cams in Alaska.

Hackers and You

Hacking can be anything from a minor annoyance to a major personal crisis depending on how you are impacted by such an event.  Next week we will welcome(?) thousands of hackers to Las Vegas with some high-level hacking challenges, a boatload of educational opportunities, and probably a bit of mayhem (like the easy peasy hacking of voting machines they did last year...this was an above-board hack as part of the conference, not a clandestine, illegal hack).  You can bet the Feds were very interested in the event as a whole as they are each year.

On a large scale, there isn't much you as an individual can do about hackers and their hacks that generally affect tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of people in the US each year.  But there are many things you can do to protect yourself as an individual from these hacks of the systems you use everyday...

• Keep your cell phone/tablet/computer password protected (and don't forget to log out of secure things like bank account apps after you use them).
• Use two-factor authentication on all of your online accounts.
• Don't use the same password/pin number for every single account you have.
• Use encryption if possible with your emails, messaging, and other online communications.
• Use a (highly rated) VPN whenever you use public wifi.
• Regularly change the password on your home wifi router.
• Don't download any files you did not request or receive from someone unknown to you. 
• Don't open scam emails.
• Keep your software and security programs up to date.
• When you pass on your old digital devices (cell phones, tablets, computers) get rid of all of your info on these devices.  Do a factory reset or wipe the hard drive to ensure your personal info is erased.
• Come up with false (but memorable to you) answers to security questions (things like your mother's maiden name is easy enough for a hacker to find online).
• Log into each service separately (instead of using Facebook to log into many of your online services, for example).
• If you have highly secret information, consider using an "air gap" computer.
• Always keep back-up copies of important digital files, password protected of course.
• Be sure you do your online shopping through reputable companies (and be sure if you log into one of these sites you have the actual real website address, some scammers will take a popular site and change one letter or the domain suffix to catch the unwary).
• Never give your passwords/user names/account numbers/other secure personal information to anyone who calls or emails asking for this information no matter who they say they are.

10 Hacking Issues You Should Be Aware Of

In no particular order...

1. There has been a lot of back and forth in the media about whether airline flight controls can be hacked.  This articles points out that it may be possible.
2. Your car is basically one big computer these days.  Unfortunately there are a number of ways these computer systems can be hacked.
3. When you consider how tightly bound you are to the country's infrastructure (everything from relying on the electric grid to assuming that there will be gas at the gas station each time you go there), it is no wonder that these high value targets are a major area of hacking activity.
4. While the title of this report is kind of cutesy--Hacking Medical Devices for Fun and Insulin--the underlying premise is pretty scary (ie: if you have a medical device that you rely on for your very life having it hacked would make for a very bad day).
5. Of course, hackers can steal your entire identity (or just parts of it) and ruin your week (...or month...or year... or decade) as well.
6. The newer the tech, it seems the greater the hacking thrill.  Such as 3d printer hacks, Apple watch hacks, and Starbucks card hacks.
7. Another type of new technology that has become a hacker target...drones.
8. Of course cell phones are relatively old tech but they are still a nice target for hackers.
9. Of course hackers like money and what better way to get money than via hacking a variety of financial institutions.
10. Finally, the world pretty much revolves around social media these days so you can just imagine how hacked social media accounts could result in bad things happening.

Cyber Attacks...They're Getting More Dangerous

Forty years ago there was no such thing as cell phones, social media, and the internet.  We all had things to worry about back then, of course, but the range of worries was rather small--money, the weather, family, work, medical issues.  That's about all.  These days the number of things we need to worry about has grown exponentially.

With the advent of social media and the internet, suddenly problems half way around the world have become our problems.  Also with social media and the internet, no matter how prepared you keep yourself and your family, some idiot in a cyber cafe in a third world country can start World War III with a bit of hacking.  Here's some things to consider:

• There was a recent cyber attack on a German steel company that caused massive damage.  Not only did this damage the business but imagine the ripple effects--people out of work, steel orders unable to be fulfilled, less economic activity in the area affected because people aren't going out and buying new TVs and new vehicles if they don't even have a job to go to, etc.
• The Sony hacking scandal had world wide repercussions as people pondered how a hacker (or hackers) could bring an economic powerhouse to a dead stop.  Suddenly, because of the massive embarrassment caused by the release of hacked emails, a multi-million dollar movie wasn't going to be released.  It brought into focus the intersection of corporate decision making, free speech, and the power of one, or a few, people to make the decision about what kind of media the public can or can't see.
• If I were wearing a necessary-for-life medical device, I would be worried.  Hackers now have ways to hack into these devices and the outcome with a concerted hacking effort could be deadly for many, many people.
• The recent mass murder at Charlie Hebdo in France once again throws free speech, religious fanaticism, and social media into the blender and out comes the ability of a small minority to cause panic on a world-wide scale.  Now, with the click of a mouse, a group of people can recruit and direct people all over the globe to perform acts of terrorism and mass murder.
• And then there was the recent hack that announced World War III had begun on what are considered reputable Twitter feeds.  Knowing how people are likely to react first and ask questions later, this could have ended very badly.
• Then there was the ode to knee jerk reactions which started the whole "hands up, don't shoot" movement.  Immediately after the Michael Brown shooting, the social media universe jumped on the bandwagon to portray police as crazed killers and this poor black teenager as a victim who had his hands up in surrender and got shot anyway.  So major sports stars and TV personalities were throwing their hands up in support of a "victim" who had actually just committed an armed robbery and tried to murder a cop. 
• Finally, while many of the above issues may have little actually to do with you, there are the hacking events that can affect you directly such as the Target hack which hit a lot of everyday citizens where they lived including yours truly.  Shortly after this event I went to Target to buy a couple of TVs and my debit card was refused there.  When I called my bank to figure out what was going on they said they were not allowing any charges at Target for the immediate future.  Good thing I always carry cash on me but what would happen if someone was trying to buy food before a major storm, they didn't have any cash, and due to a hack, their perfectly good bank card was rejected?

These are just a few of the ways that the world can intrude into your perfectly ordered universe and cause quite a bit of headaches--if not more serious damage--at the click of a mouse.