Posted in Current Events, Informational, Research, Topic

Privacy in the Digital Age:

Roe v. Wade

Again, had a post planned and instead news caused a different post.

Even before the Supreme Court officially struck down the Roe v. Wade decision and sent reproductive health issues back to the states there were stirrings questioning how incoming changes might effect health apps and data collection.

Living in today’s world people might not worry about how much of their information is readily collected or available. Perhaps, they’ve resigned themselves to the fact that they can’t stop their data being collected. There has been very little headway made in crafting some type of national privacy law, so it makes one feel like this is just inevitable, online privacy is your own concern.

For months before today reading through Twitter brought calls for women to remove period tracking apps and be more cognizant of how their data might be collected and in the future possibly subpoenaed as proof of some ‘reproductive crime’..

“Democrat lawmakers along with privacy advocates are now growing worried prosecutors in these anti-abortion states will use subpoenas to demand tech companies help them identify which users have visited an abortion provider.” -Michael Kan, PCMag.

I would definitely consider myself a privacy advocate. I think the majority of infosec people are concerned about privacy to some degree. It’s concerning that it really took something so dramatic to bring this conversation about data collection back to the foreground.

It can be proposed that perhaps we all just became too complacent in many ways…

How all this unfolds and develops is something to keep a definite eye on.

Posted in Cons, Covid, Goals, What I've Used

@CyberjutsuCon 3.0 – 2022

My First Post Covid Con

I’m currently sitting in the basement of a coferemce center, because my battery need a recharge. It’s not quiet, and people a near, but I’m sitting alone and just kinda soaking it all in.

I’m at Cyberjutsu Con which has the distinction of being my first ‘post’ Covid conference as well as my first conference as a speaker (albeit my presentation was pre-recorded and presented online).

Can I just say: Join the professional groups!! They are here for the community and networking everyone says we should be doing. I can definitely appreciate the Cyberjutsu folks for being down-to-earth and pretty chill. Everyone is helping everyone and the talks have been excellent.

I’m glad that they chose my talk and hopefully people are digging it.

Now let me get on my second presentation for this conference season….1 hint, via Las Vegas…..

Posted in Informational, InfoSec History, Research, Vulnerabilities

There is no Safe Haven: Mac Attacks

I was all set to write about an interesting job in infosec today and then I woke up and saw reports of a new attack: ‘Pacman’, being leveraged against Apple computers. This report got me thinking about a conversation I saw on Social media where a connection was asking about what laptop to buy. One of this person’s friends mentioned getting an Apple because they are ‘safer’ than Windows machines and ‘antivurs wasn’t needed’ (no one but us tech geeks recommend Linux it wasnt even in the running). I recall thinking that laypeople are just really unaware that Apple systems are getting targeted at higher rates in recent years . So here we are talking about Mac Attacks.

As a disclaimer I’ve got no real dog in whatever battle exists between OSes. As a tech-head I have systems that run Windows, MacOS, and several flavors of Linux. The job isn’t to safeguard a specific type of system it’s to safeguard them all.

We can say, oh MacOS and Linux OS distros have less know vulnerabilities or are attacked less often, but to say that one or the other doesn’t have any or doesn’t get attacked is untrue. All systems are opened to be attacked.

Some Recent Apple Malware:

  • Pacman
  • Silver Sparrow
  • XLoader
  • GoSearch22
  • Thiefquest

A more in depth look at some Apple vulnerabilities and malware can be found here or here.

I will always advocate for user to protect themselves. Defense in depth isn’t just for enterprises it also means that users shouldn’t assume that the systems are just inherently ‘safe’. When people say security is everyone’s business I can support that because your end security should be your business which includes setting precautions to overlap where initial software and hardware might fall short.

Posted in Cons, Goals

GOALLLLLLLLLSSSSSS!!!!

So, one of my goals was to try to network more and kind of work on my personal brand as well as contribute to the infosec community.

I always said I don’t in any regard want to be famous, but I do want my name to be well thought of and regarded. Luke I want my name to be synonymous with efficient, high-quality work. You can’t really have that type of regard and not attend conferences.

So, my plan is to hit at least 2, but maybe 3 ir 4 infosec conferences this year. I’d been to Hacker Halted before, but not for a couple years.

Another goal is that I want to get more comfortable with speaking in public. I’m like super introverted and public speaking has always been my kryptonite, but I can’t allow something that seems so simple be so debilitating.

That being said I’m presenting (although in both cases prerecorded) at 2 conferences this summer, so yay me!

More to come in an after blog….