Phishing scams rely to a large extent on people not spotting small typos and therefore believing that an email or website is legitimate..............a clear example would be Google.om (which is an Oman registered domain). Believing a communication to be legitimate links are clicked, files downloaded, passwords shared etc which leads to financial loss or worse.
A recent review of the free hacking tools easily available online (passwords crackers, wireless hacking tools including the beautifully named firesheep, packet sniffers, keystroke loggers etc etc) re-emphasise the need to take online security seriously and check online communication with great care.
Monday, 21 March 2016
Tuesday, 15 March 2016
Lee Se-Dol 1 - DeepMind AlphaGo 4
Expressed in footballing terms it is a bit of a thumping. A computer powered by artificial intelligence has convincingly defeated its world champion human opponent at the intuition based board game GO. Is it possible that AlphaGo deliberately lost one game to give the humans hope and prevent us taking early defensive action ?
Deep Mind was founded in September 2010 so it has taken @6 years to defeat about 6,000 years of human development.
The network effect will allow machines to learn much faster than human biology will allow so the question is what happens next ?
From an optimistic point of view many issues that seem totally beyond our capability to solve can be sorted out (financial crisis, hunger etc etc) from a pessimistic point view we lose control and humans are seen as part of the problem.
Either way this will be pretty exciting and my money backs the humans to keep the upper hand.
Deep Mind was founded in September 2010 so it has taken @6 years to defeat about 6,000 years of human development.
The network effect will allow machines to learn much faster than human biology will allow so the question is what happens next ?
From an optimistic point of view many issues that seem totally beyond our capability to solve can be sorted out (financial crisis, hunger etc etc) from a pessimistic point view we lose control and humans are seen as part of the problem.
Either way this will be pretty exciting and my money backs the humans to keep the upper hand.
Tuesday, 8 March 2016
CyberSecurityShow 2016 - trends to watch out for going forward in cyber security
At the 2nd Annual Cyber Security Show in trendy North London a wide variety of vendors, products and services were on display and offered a good insight into industry trends.
At the apex of the industry defence related contractors such as Babcock, Lockheed Martin, Airbus and Thales offer the perception of total security for critical applications. At the next level providers such as Dark Trace, esentire, Zscaler and iboss deliver solutions into financial services and other industries. Below this some excellent but smaller scale operators such as BitNinja, ripjar, GeoLang and SHAYYPE offer more specific solutions to specific problems.
None of the providers go as far as offering a silver bullet solution and none will accept liability if a cyber attack does penetrate defences.
In a few years when the hacker community has had a really good crack at these systems we will have a better idea which ones are robust and resilient and which are signed up members of the smoke and mirrors brigade but in fairness all looked to offer genuine value in one way or another.
The stand out trend was probably the emergence of viable ways to manage remote working from multiple devices in a fairly low risk way across the cloud. A notable absentee was any technical solution to spear phishing which given the resources available to some of the attendees points to the challenge of solving this. The closest to this is DarkTrace which manages internal network threats.
At the apex of the industry defence related contractors such as Babcock, Lockheed Martin, Airbus and Thales offer the perception of total security for critical applications. At the next level providers such as Dark Trace, esentire, Zscaler and iboss deliver solutions into financial services and other industries. Below this some excellent but smaller scale operators such as BitNinja, ripjar, GeoLang and SHAYYPE offer more specific solutions to specific problems.
None of the providers go as far as offering a silver bullet solution and none will accept liability if a cyber attack does penetrate defences.
In a few years when the hacker community has had a really good crack at these systems we will have a better idea which ones are robust and resilient and which are signed up members of the smoke and mirrors brigade but in fairness all looked to offer genuine value in one way or another.
The stand out trend was probably the emergence of viable ways to manage remote working from multiple devices in a fairly low risk way across the cloud. A notable absentee was any technical solution to spear phishing which given the resources available to some of the attendees points to the challenge of solving this. The closest to this is DarkTrace which manages internal network threats.
Wednesday, 2 March 2016
Beyond Google
The industrial revolution and steam age reduced the value of physical labour. Google has now set the bar pretty high for any aspiring knowledge workers. Essentially to deliver value you have to be able to deliver beyond what Google has to offer for free. What might the hourly rate be for a professional Googler ? Would a Google Scholar Googler get a premium ?
Imagine a researcher not delivering what could be discovered on Google in 30 mins and hoping to be paid for it ? Trust has a part to play and perhaps Googling the symptoms of pancreatic cancer would not be enough to head direct to the operating theatre.............but give automated eye scan based diagnosis a few years and we might be there.
DeepMind the Google AI project will really accelerate the erosion of value in knowledge work and challenge the value of many previously well protected professions.
Imagine a researcher not delivering what could be discovered on Google in 30 mins and hoping to be paid for it ? Trust has a part to play and perhaps Googling the symptoms of pancreatic cancer would not be enough to head direct to the operating theatre.............but give automated eye scan based diagnosis a few years and we might be there.
DeepMind the Google AI project will really accelerate the erosion of value in knowledge work and challenge the value of many previously well protected professions.
Wednesday, 24 February 2016
Internet safety tips
1. Browse safely
In the same way that you would not head off down a dark alley stay away from websites that are clearly not legitimate. In the live sports area these can be listed below and contain viruses and malware.
A prominent search listing on Google or Bing does NOT in any way imply internet safety. If you do visit these sites do not click on ads or interact with them.
www.1xbet.com
www.batmanstream.com/
www.coolsport.tv
www.cricfree.tv
www.crichd.tv/
www.crictime.com
www.drakulastreams.eu
www.embedstream.com/
www.gofeed2all.eu
www.firstrows.eu/
www.footballhd.me
www.footyfree.tv
www.goatd.net
www.hahasport.com/
www.hdfoots.com
www.streamlive.to/
www.kingstreams.tv
www.liveonlinetv247.info/
www.livetv.sx
www.mamahd.com/
www.neolive.net/
www.nfl-streaming.tv
www.nowwatchtvlive.me/
www.ntv.mx
www.slipstreamtv.co
www.sportlemon.tv
www.sportsfeed.in
www.stopstream.com
www.stream2u.me
www.stream2watch.me
www.realstreamunited.com/
www.streamking.org
www.time4tv.com
www.usagoals.com/
www. vipleague.me
www.wiz1.net
2. Update passwords and don't use words you would find in a dictionary.
3. Don't open email from people you don't know and never click on the links if you have opened the email.
4. Remember you are not anonymous online - much the reverse.
In the same way that you would not head off down a dark alley stay away from websites that are clearly not legitimate. In the live sports area these can be listed below and contain viruses and malware.
A prominent search listing on Google or Bing does NOT in any way imply internet safety. If you do visit these sites do not click on ads or interact with them.
www.1xbet.com
www.batmanstream.com/
www.coolsport.tv
www.cricfree.tv
www.crichd.tv/
www.crictime.com
www.drakulastreams.eu
www.embedstream.com/
www.gofeed2all.eu
www.firstrows.eu/
www.footballhd.me
www.footyfree.tv
www.goatd.net
www.hahasport.com/
www.hdfoots.com
www.streamlive.to/
www.kingstreams.tv
www.liveonlinetv247.info/
www.livetv.sx
www.mamahd.com/
www.neolive.net/
www.nfl-streaming.tv
www.nowwatchtvlive.me/
www.ntv.mx
www.slipstreamtv.co
www.sportlemon.tv
www.sportsfeed.in
www.stopstream.com
www.stream2u.me
www.stream2watch.me
www.realstreamunited.com/
www.streamking.org
www.time4tv.com
www.usagoals.com/
www. vipleague.me
www.wiz1.net
2. Update passwords and don't use words you would find in a dictionary.
3. Don't open email from people you don't know and never click on the links if you have opened the email.
4. Remember you are not anonymous online - much the reverse.
Friday, 19 February 2016
Cyber attacks; Who carries the liability ?
It is clear that the volume of cyber / hacking attacks is rapidly increasing whether very low tech (but effective) phishing scams or much more advanced activity.
What is less clear is who is picking up the tab when things go wrong. Given that most companies tend to outsource hosting and webdesign and frequently work with freelance IT contractors liability may be limited at the contractual level. There is also a strong incentive for existing technical providers to insist all is well to avoid clients digging too deep and realizing that they are carrying all the liability.
Insurance has a part to play here but the insurance industry seems to be struggling to determine risk premiums and the policies available are awash with exclusions.
It was widely reported that TalkTalk suffered substantial loss from being hacked but not made clear whether this was an insured risk.
If private data is held on a third party shared server and that data is stolen partly through the failure of the hosting company to implement reasonable levels of security who pays ?
Arguably none of this has really mattered in hard financial terms because losses have been difficult to quantify. This is set to change if the legislation which can fine companies up to 4% of turnover comes into force in 2017.
One way or another the issue will be clarified and whether the liability rests with the client or IT / hosting contractors. With the average cost to an SME of a cyber attack being @£190,000 the cost is material.
What is less clear is who is picking up the tab when things go wrong. Given that most companies tend to outsource hosting and webdesign and frequently work with freelance IT contractors liability may be limited at the contractual level. There is also a strong incentive for existing technical providers to insist all is well to avoid clients digging too deep and realizing that they are carrying all the liability.
Insurance has a part to play here but the insurance industry seems to be struggling to determine risk premiums and the policies available are awash with exclusions.
It was widely reported that TalkTalk suffered substantial loss from being hacked but not made clear whether this was an insured risk.
If private data is held on a third party shared server and that data is stolen partly through the failure of the hosting company to implement reasonable levels of security who pays ?
Arguably none of this has really mattered in hard financial terms because losses have been difficult to quantify. This is set to change if the legislation which can fine companies up to 4% of turnover comes into force in 2017.
One way or another the issue will be clarified and whether the liability rests with the client or IT / hosting contractors. With the average cost to an SME of a cyber attack being @£190,000 the cost is material.
Wednesday, 17 February 2016
CERT-UK shines a light on internet safety in 2015/16
CERT-UK the excellent UK government sponsored cyber resilience entity has released its overview of cyber risk in 2015.
It pulls together data from a range of sources and listed below are some key extracts;
1. The 2015 Information Security Breaches survey found that 74% of small businesses suffered a breach 38% of which was from an external attacker. So the disgruntled employee / freelancer is alive, kicking and armed with a USB stick. The average cost of breach was between £75,000 and £311,000.
2. The cyber insurance market is set for rapid expansion from £1.7 billion to £5 billion in 5 years. There is a caveat here that as the risk level is poorly understood there is some doubt in respect of whether cyber policies will prove effective until the market is more mature.
3. Top malware types (most common first were)
conficker
zeroaccess
ramnit
xcodeghost
sality
gameover zeus
neverquest
bamital
tinba
bedep
Conficker was the clear winner and represents a very serious threat for anyone still running XP or other unsupported software.
4. DDoS as a service is one to watch in 2016 potentially in combination with Ransomware.
It pulls together data from a range of sources and listed below are some key extracts;
1. The 2015 Information Security Breaches survey found that 74% of small businesses suffered a breach 38% of which was from an external attacker. So the disgruntled employee / freelancer is alive, kicking and armed with a USB stick. The average cost of breach was between £75,000 and £311,000.
2. The cyber insurance market is set for rapid expansion from £1.7 billion to £5 billion in 5 years. There is a caveat here that as the risk level is poorly understood there is some doubt in respect of whether cyber policies will prove effective until the market is more mature.
3. Top malware types (most common first were)
conficker
zeroaccess
ramnit
xcodeghost
sality
gameover zeus
neverquest
bamital
tinba
bedep
Conficker was the clear winner and represents a very serious threat for anyone still running XP or other unsupported software.
4. DDoS as a service is one to watch in 2016 potentially in combination with Ransomware.
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