[TriLUG] Geek....privacy and data security ------------was: Re: TriLUG Digest, Vol 3940, Issue 1

[Samir Faci via TriLUG]

Others more or less answered this but the big mistake you're making is
assuming that someone is sitting down and saying, "Oh I know I'm going to
target Bob (no relation to any RL Bob you may know) He sounds like a good
target"

Rather it's let's run this script that does apply these exploits wherever
it can find a vulnerability and see how I can take advantage of the
situation once I have access.

Usually it's.

1. Hiding code to use your computer resources as part of a botnet to run
attacks and other malicious activities you're unaware of.
2. Stealing personal information like credit cards, banks etc as it
monitors your computer.
3. Holding your computer hostage and not allowing you access to your files
unless you pay some $$ value to unlock it.

Now for the disclaimer:

  A. Security is something every software engineer should know a bit about
but it's not really my area of expertise so take my comments with a grain
of salt but I still think it's good advice.
  B. Security is a very important concept, but the topic I posted about was
privacy and data ownership.  Though very frequently privacy and security
are related it's not specifically the focus of the panel.

Hope this helps.

--
Samir Faci



On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 1:53 PM Bill Trautman via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org>
wrote:

> What Brian Said.   These twerps can use your system to stage porn etc and
> some of that will get you in deep do do with the law.   You really don't
> want to find yourself in that sort of a mess.
>
> On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 1:24 PM Brian Henning via TriLUG <
> trilug at trilug.org>
> wrote:
>
> > > I feel I am such small potatoes that hackers are not going to spend
> time
> > > on me and my machine.
> >
> > I can comment on this, because I have had this argument with my dad many
> > times over.
> >
> > Hackers don't care how big or small a target you are, because their work
> > isn't focused on *finding you*.  That's all done automatically by
> programs
> > that do nothing but scan huge swaths of internet addresses looking for
> > vulnerabilities.  Those programs don't know or care who owns the computer
> > they found; they just know "machine at address X is vulnerable."
> >
> > Secondly, a big hacking tool is still DDoS -- distributed denial of
> > service.  This is done by having huge numbers of individual machines all
> > over the internet all try to access the same server at the same time.
> > Those "huge numbers of machines" are colloquially known as "bot-nets."
> > Having your machine in his bot-net is a benefit to a hacker, whether your
> > machine is an Amazon Web Services host or a Raspberry Pi in a tiny IoT
> > project.
> >
> > Security matters, regardless of "small potatoes".
> >
> > Cheers,
> > -Brian
> > --
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