Brian Pichman
Brian Pichman, Director, Evolve Project, gave a fast-paced review of security problems that can occur when using the internet. There was too much information to summarize here, so check out his presentation on the conference presentation page. Or you can read my summary of his talk at last fall’s Internet Librarian conference here, which was substantially the same. Here is an abbreviated summary of today’s talk.
When you log in to a website, the owner can learn a lot about you just by using Google Analytics. Much of this is for good purpose, but some of it is malicious.
Hacking started in the days of dialup. Most people did it because they were bored. Then people wanted to meet in person and user groups were formed, and they still exist today. Hacking has evolved because of social media. “Hacktivism” refers to people doing good things to bring down bad sites.
The deep web is what search engines cannot find. The Dark Web is where bad things can happen. Tools for the deep web include anonymizing browsers (Tor) and Silk Road. Tor anonynizes what you are doing; VPN protects your connection. You can have several protection programs running at once.
Tools to become a hacker: Use the Tor Browser, Telnet to a BBS, use Kodi. Social engineering is very useful to hackers. Try it: call the library, ask questions a bout a user and see if they give out information. This works even if you have the best security possible. Use DOS scripts; they are available by putting “DOS Hacks” into Google. Google is not always your friend–always be careful. Use dual factor authentication.
Create a security policy and change it as circumstances change.
Check out Privacy.com which gives you a credit card number that will work on e-commerce websites and which is easily changed in case of a large data breach.
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