07/09/2024
I got this in this morning's from Kim Komando. And it reminded me that I haven't warned you in a long time...
🛰️ Something to ruin your sleep: Hackers’ newest target is outer space, where they could disable satellite GPS signals for airplanes, boats and cars … or take down all satellites providing the internet. The right mind could even corrupt planetary probe data, giving inaccurate atmospheric or water readings on Mars. Yikes.
First, so long as there's a trend to store your data "in the clouds," you're at serious risk of them not being there one day. Nothing beats keeping your life, your photos, your financial stuff and your other critical data ON YOUR OWN HARD DRIVE. While the cloud makes sense for data backups, so long as you have your primary copy ON YOUR OWN HARD DRIVE.
There's been a relentless push to move your programs and apps "to the cloud." This is simply a way for them to control your access and move from you buying the software, to you renting your software. This makes it very easy to shut you down if you don't pay your annual fees.
Things like Google photos and other services "on the cloud," simply aren't free forever.
By the way, thumb drives will all eventually fail, as well. Solid state drives fail, as well.
And well, nothing on the cloud is totally private and secured, forever.
This is not new. 40 years ago, even before the Internet went public, I had just locked down the systems at Purolator Courier in Mississauga, Ontario. I had just written and installed a monitor that watched for wrong passwords and repeated attempts. Before I locked it down, when you connected it said,
WELCOME TO PUROLATOR COURIER. PLEASE LOG IN
Then you were allowed to make repeated attempts at entering a userid and password.
When I had locked it down, people were greeted with...
..
..
Nothing. A blank screen. And I was able to see and save the origin request of the attempt. I generated a report and it was on my desk in the morning.
Turns out, one morning I actually had a report on my desk. And my first call was to the owner of the packet switching network (a precursor to the Internet).
Within an hour I was on a conference call with the owner, and the RCMP, the Mounties, the Canadian equivalent of the FBI. And they didn't have a clue what to do.
So there I was, just 30 years old at the time, training the Mounties how to "get their man." So far, no serious infraction of the law. But they were now being monitored. (You're always being monitored when you're on line).
Within two weeks, with the Mounties watching, the perpetrators arrived at the entry point of a new system, with a big banner that read something like:
WELCOME TO ATOMIC ENERGY OF CANADA LIMITED. PLEASE LOG IN.
And so they did. Easy Peasy, with a userid of MASTER and a password of MASTER.
They got in, and poked around. And they crashed the computer, and got disconnected.
The computer was the monitoring and controlling computer for a Nuclear Power Generating Station, just outside of Toronto, called Darlington.
And without the controls, I think things staring going very wrong in the reactor. I think things started getting very hot.
But there was no meltdown. There was no repeat of Three Mile Island. Because the Feds were watching everything, and got on the phone to Atomic Energy.
The first people to ever stand trial for "hacking" in Canada, and I had spotted them first, without, I may add, them ever penetrating the computer I was responsible for.
So your data, all the stuff that's important to you, or important to keep out the hands of the bad guys, it's at risk. If it's not the bad guys, it's the government spying, or it's the very present danger that "the cloud" goes away, forever, or your computer fails, or your thumb drives fail.
So what's a person to do?
Keep your computer in good shape. Firewalls, virus detectors, and regular scanning is a first step. Keeping your finances and your banking off-line wherever possible. Don't allow your financial institutions to move your statements to "the cloud." Know what scams are happening, and watch out for them.
Don't trust your data to thumb drives along. Thumb drives and solid state drives in modern computers are all eventually going to fail, and when they're dark and reset, your data is irretrievable.
So multiple backups, and for this, you can even use the cloud as one backup (of several). Thumb drives. Burn CDs or DVDs of your data. And keep a copy of everything off-site, like a safe deposit box in case your house goes up in flames (hopefully when you're not there).
Take action now.
