1. Don’t assume that your long password is fine. There is absolutely nothing safe about your ridiculously long password. There is what we call a dictionary attack, and the elder brother which is the brute force attack. The very first thing that is usually considered during hacks, is the fact that passwords are usually words that people come up with; words they know they cannot forget. In the cases where numbers are used, it is usually a number that is so close to home, it’s dangerous. Birthdays, anniversaries, etc. A best practice scenario is using such passwords as: singularity, spelled as S1ngul@r1ty. We often think that we have nothing to hide or lose. Maybe, but I have experienced hacks that were carried out based on this carelessness, and credit card information was stolen. The easiest to do is location tracking. Let’s not aid kidnappers.
2. Do not use a device because it looks impressive enough to be used. At most times, it is also not really advisable to use a device because it is cheap, so to speak, to get. We do not usually know when we are presenting a security risk to ourselves, or those around us with sensitive data. A research was carried out that showed that ISP’s and phone companies gather our data and sell it to the government and in most cases, most of our devices have the data on them being gathered constantly. If you can, get reliable (to reasonable extent) information about the device you are to get.
3. Networking is not as simple as we think.
i. Free Wi-Fi is just you telling the provider that your phone is a tunnel for whatever they want to use it for, as long as the internet doesn’t stop. A DDoS attack for instance is a good example. I as a hacker could use your phone, and a group of other phones to attack someone else’s website or computer… This is part of what slows down most people’s devices but it seems too unreal for us Nigerians to even consider possible.
ii. Setting up CCTV cameras around our houses are very good, yet, other than actually paying for good services, it is always best to understand the inner workings of the network structure and devices used. I could come to your house and borrow your Wi-Fi only to re-route protocols and monitor your CCTV from wherever I please.
iii. File sharing apps can never be fully secure. Xender for instance, as at May 2020, has an update that tries at times, to forcefully install the “More” app which sits on your phone to give you news but is actually a potential information gathering or DDoS tool.
iv. The internet is a large place, and because basically the whole world has migrated to it, compared to 2007 when I started my personal escapades, it is very very EXTREMELY dangerous. Trust nobody, not with your cards, not with your personal information, not even with your voice.
v. If you can, go back and retrace your steps and delete every social media account you’ve created that is currently dormant. Facial, voice and behavioral pattern recognition are the strongest hacking tools I personally know.
4. Don’t ever download a program, mobile or desktop if you don’t need or understand it.
Be it paid or Free, the world is digital. Everybody is a control-freak because money is more important than we realize. Don’t give someone unnecessary access to your device.
Most times, movies exaggerate hacks but very few and rare times, they get it right. Take the movie, Unfriended: Dark Web for example.
5. If you will, when banking or using sensitive computers, physical encryption and decryption keys are always the best, e.g. tokens, encrypted USB devices that store our passwords.
6. Social engineering is one of the strongest forms of hacking till date. Studying people’s behaviors and actually using them against themselves is very effective. A person with a habit of downloading any and everything could plant a phishing software unawares on their own device and all their keystrokes are recorded all day so some hacker just sits in his/her house and gets someone’s list of passwords and conversations from the comfort of their own house without really trying.
7. It doesn’t matter how much you trust a person “physically and emotionally” so to speak, not everyone is careful. Most people carry compromised devices all around without even realizing it. The worst thing that could happen to a device is not a virus, there are many in the numbers.
8. ANY-AND-EVERYONE is a potential hacker… Or a serious security risk to you. It would interest us to know that even the banks don’t have up to 80% assurance of our own data security.
The thing about hacking though, is not always that we have some useful or incriminating information about us that someone can use against us. Most times the targets are usually friends, family members, contacts on our contacts lists, our bosses, organizations, etc.
If one person can steal your social media account or ATM password, or even phone password, there is every possibility that those around us are the main targets. Security is lax and laughable in Nigeria but people suffer for it every day in the form of kidnaps, loss of money and even death but we don’t take it seriously because we feel it is not all that serious.
Let us please, be guided.
Comments
Post a Comment