Had a Good Dead Drop Idea

What’s a “dead drop” – to secretly pass an item to someone, without having to meet with them directly.

How it works – I deposit the item in a pre-determined location, then in another pre-determined location, leave a signal that I have done so. Maybe this signal is a chalk mark on a wall, a pot of red flowers on my balcony, or I blog something specific.

So!

What if the dead drop was a supply closet, inside a bathroom, inside a retail space?

Both genders could enter without arising suspicion, and there cannot be cameras inside a bathroom.

Would an employee ever find a USB key in here? Nope.

Tada!

 

 

Using a Freezer Faraday Cage to Protect from Theft

New York Times journalist Nick Bilton’s Prius was almost stolen electronically three times, so he goes looking for an answer. He finds a clue from a Toronto Police warning, which leads him to a guy in Switzerland, who explains what likely happened.

The attack – boost the car’s keyless entry signal range to trick it into unlocking.

The defence – store keys in a makeshift Faraday cage (like a freezer) where signals cannot get in or out.

This was my Friday news story for the paper.

Read it online at Autonet.

Blog tag = Auto Security

 

 

Cadillac’s CT6’s 1st-of-its-Kind Security System

Found on Cadillac’s all-new flagship luxury sedan – the CT6.

How it works:

It uses the many cameras mounted around the car’s perimeter.

When the security sensors detect either the sound of breaking glass, or the car being moved, the cameras record 360-degrees around the car, then save the footage to the car for later retrieval to a memory card.

Seems obvious how to defeat the system – the thief deletes the footage. However, GM is at the forefront of WiFi in cars, so I expect soon for the video to be uploaded to the cloud, or sent to the owner’s phone.

Read it online at Autonet.

For more on auto security, see either the blog tag Auto Security, or the security section at the newspaper, I own it

 

 

Why Change your Password Every 3 Months?

At work, you’re probably required to change your password every 3 months or so.

Why? To restrict access.

It’s to kick out an attacker that may already be inside your system.

That’s it; simple and logical eh.

Because remember the golden rule – it’s not IF you’re compromised, it’s WHEN (more here)

Small business owners – it’s good practice to do this at least once every 3 months, ideally more. And when you do, be mindful of this sad stat – the more often employees are required to change passwords, the higher the chance it will be both written down, and super crappy, example: Summer2014 and Winter2015

A good password looks like this:
M{c^TJ.`?W@Y?I6i1@O%yq4?o

Blog tag = passwords

This post has been brought to you by Nuix and KeriBlog.

Meet Nuix here.

 

 

Today is World Backup Day

Although really, everyday should be backup day. Here, I made a list:

The Minimal to Backup

– password manager file (you have one right)
– contacts
– calendar
– bookmarks

Things to remember:

– always backup twice – here

– do big backups in chunks  – here

– if you’re using the cloud, here’s what your data looks like this

– and if everything goes west, data can still be recovered from this