Yesterday: Infomercial about people stealing your home titles, life lock type of sales pitch from the back of the covered wagon. Anyhow, get the mail and open yet another “ breach of medical information “ from facilities easily hacked. So what good was life lock again kids?
@MidnightRider After 25 years in IT I came to the conclusion that nothing online is ever, truly, safe and secure. You build a tighter system and hackers just build a better hacking system. We got hacked a couple times while I worked at MSU and I know they did the best they could to secure the data.
@MidnightRider You just have to read the newspaper or follow the news online to see this. I do remember having to tell a coworker, (several times) not to fill out those pop up ads, but she wasn’t an actual IT person, she was one of the people they needed a position for when they disbanded centralized data processing. Security to her was the need for a card to get into the department. She was just waiting to retire.
@cjcrew I used to have what looked like a credit card that would change number sequences every n30 seconds. That was the only way to sign into the company mainframe was to match those numbers. It was very secret agent at that time, I liked it.
@MidnightRider Oh yeah! We had those when I first started there. I still have mine around here someplace. Those were pretty cool.
@MidnightRider Sorry, centralized data entry not processing. It’s time for me to try to get some more sleep before I have to go into work. Insomnia sucks.
@cjcrew @MidnightRider my attempt at security is less apps and software, only what I really need. Not having everything connected and using different devices for different purposes. With everything on lockdown and fingerprint enabled to unlock anything. I’m dangerous to my self in the opposite direction of just a security I’d card. 😂😂
@SatuUnelmia @MidnightRider Nothing wrong with too much security. It’s better than being too lax about it, which I find myself doing sometimes.
@cjcrew I called on a hospital near there a few times when I lived in Michigan, I don’t remember the nam but I remember driving by that campus.
@MidnightRider Sparrow Hospital? All three hospitals were under the Sparrow name when I left, they’re pretty decent. At least I didn’t have any major issues with them. I miss my old doctor but he retired so going back isn’t an option. I do miss the fact that having two major Universities (UM and MSU) with medical schools in the area really help back them up. I liked Sparrow Hospital. I wish I could have brought them with me because down here it’s iffy. Scary iffy.
@cjcrew @MidnightRider This is why I keep my passwords simple, just letters and a few digits. I tried making them relatively secure, using upper & lower case letters and special characters, but I eventually realized that it's pointless if the platform itself isn't secure - and none of them are. Every week or two, I see reports that one major website or another has been hacked and user info spread on the dark web. Often, it's not the first time. So, what's the point?
@POOetryma @MidnightRider You gotta try, and I think changing it up in a relatively short time period is probably best.
I have so many passwords between health care, work applications (for retirement benefits) and personal use, that I do have them written down. I know that defeats the purpose but damn, I’m old and I can barely remember my own name sometimes.
@cjcrew 35 is not "old," youngster. Wait 'til you get to be my age. 😉😛😄♥️
@POOetryma Where did 35 come from? I’m 66, I just wish I had those 35 year old joints back.
@POOetryma Mine are a mess in a spiral notebook. Only the important ones matter to me. I love the IPad finger sign in. Face it there’s profit in data so air tight security will never exist simply because $$$$ is made in it not being solid.
@MidnightRider @POOetryma
Please... Y'all need to try a password manager like 1Password or BitWarden... Let it keep your passwords... Then install the app on your phone and the extension on your browser...
One password is all you need remember after that. Your vault will hold the rest...
It can autofill whet you need them...
And off you want to see one, just open your vault and reveal it to yourself...
Even on busted sites your password will be hashed so will take time to get.
@MidnightRider @POOetryma
And you can just change it before that happens....
It realty is the best way...
@InvaderGzim I have some of that up on the I pad
@MidnightRider @POOetryma I have a binder with all of mine along with all documents my son would need if I passed away suddenly. Accounts for my bills, my will, deeds, insurance information. I keep it hidden where he knows to find it. I had a loved one die young 20 years ago and we couldn’t get into some important things that were on his computer. It made things hard and painful so I do keep it written down.
@cjcrew @MidnightRider My perspective on security, as someone who's done *some* IT work in the past (not a lot) is anything that doesn't have to be Internet-connected shouldn't be, anything that doesn't have to be networked shouldn't be, & anything that doesn't have to be computerized shouldn't be.
At least from what I've seen, the best way to avoid data breaches is to minimize attack surface... computers, networking, & the Internet all respectively expose progressively larger attack surfaces.
@cjcrew @MidnightRider Physical security is a problem with much more reliable, tried-&-tested solutions than digital security... & I suspect that's not just because it's a much older problem.
A large part of it seems to be because physical vulnerabilities are, to a certain extent, visible & naturally intuitive; digital vulnerabilities aren't.
You can review every aspect of facility design & security measures, whereas most of the time it's not feasible to review every line of code you're using.
@cjcrew @MidnightRider I think the problem of computerized, Internet-connected systems being functionally impossible to fully secure may eventually prove fatal to the connected world we know today.
With cybercrime placing a rapidly-increasing burden on society, I think it's entirely possible that we'll reach a point where companies & organizations start deciding the juice isn't worth the squeeze, & start disconnecting their infrastructure from the Internet.
And that may only be the first step.
@IrelandTorin @MidnightRider Always possible, I won’t see that but younger people might.
Personally I’m thinking we’ll lose power and all our data with it. But then I never recovered from MSU putting the card catalo online and then completely doing away with the physical cards. It’s gonna be hell to rewrite all those cards! 😎
@cjcrew @MidnightRider I feel the timing may end up being a lot sooner than anyone expects.
AI has the potential to turbo-charge cybercrime; it has relatively few defensive applications, but is a very powerful offensive tool, whether that's finding zero-day attacks on-the-fly for people who aren't anywhere near skilled enough to do it themselves, powering social engineering tools that produce vast amounts of "perfect" output even trained eyes have trouble differentiating, or other things.
@cjcrew @MidnightRider Imagine a world where every public-facing corporate email account on the planet is getting hit every few seconds with extremely convincing / sophisticated messages trying to convince them to inadvertently share sensitive information or unwittingly download ransomware...
So much crap that for every legitimate message, there are 100+ messages from fully autonomous attack toolchains capable of not just infecting computers, but full on over-the-phone renting servers to use...
@cjcrew @MidnightRider That's just the tip of the iceberg of what seems likely, from my perspective.
People and investors have such high hopes for AI - but I think it may actually be the equivalent of signing a death warrant for the global Internet; the degree of utility it provides cybercriminals is... unprecedented.
It's a scammer's wet dream - instead of having people write a few hundred messages per day, they can run inference on a commodity compute cluster and write millions+ *per hour*.
@IrelandTorin @MidnightRider There’s a saying in IT, garbage in, garbage out. AI is a tool, but humans tend to break their tools. In the wrong hands AI could be dangerous, and the wrong hands always show up eventually.
Just my opinion, I don't trust well..
@IrelandTorin @MidnightRider I just dealt with getting slammed by spam. I mean I was getting at least twenty pieces of spam daily, something that had never happened to me before. I tried blocking the email addresses but those are computer generated and impossible to block because it’s never the same twice. I finally started deleting games I had downloaded, a few that I’d been playing for years. It’s finally died down. I also realized my virus software had lapsed, doing that later this week.
@cjcrew I’m not surprised and even with less exposure than you to the technology I came to the same conclusion.