DEF CON Archives - Foster Institute

Hacker Convention Starts Later This Week

Mike Foster — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 13:00:02 +0000

Expect to see an increase in interesting news stories about what can be hacked this week. The big hacker convention DEFCON starts this week and lots of new announcements will be made as part of the program.

If you will be in Vegas, leave your laptop and phone at home – lest you end up on the infamous wall of shame for being hacked. The website is defcon dot org

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Ransomware Statistics and Expect Hacking on the News

Mike Foster — Fri, 05 Aug 2016 19:10:04 +0000

In 2015 alone, companies had to pay 325 Million in ransom to recover their data. There were 407,000 attempted ransomware attacks. These statistics confirm how organizations just don’t understand what to do to protect their company. Please spread the word…

The most effective protections are all free: Use application whitelisting, click-to-play, and take away local administrator rights. If you have any questions about any of those, please ask.

On a different topic, today is the first main day of DEFCON, the big hacking convention in Las Vegas. Expect the news to be full of stories about new hacks as they are announced during presentations at DEFCON. You may have seen the announcement about how hackers can defeat the new chip-and-pin protection on credit cards. More to follow…

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Hackers Can Kill You

Mike Foster — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 14:43:46 +0000

Am at the famous DEF CON ® Hacking Conference. One of the presentations today is entitled, “I Will Kill You.” A skilled hacker will show how he can do so by creating a doctor’s medical document showing cause of death, how to create a funeral director record showing that your body was disposed of, how to get a death certificate, and so on.

What if someone is angry at you, and they create your “death” and you wind up, so far as the government and business world knows, dead. Just try to apply for a loan or insurance after that! Am not sure if you will still have to pay taxes though… even after you are officially, but not really, dead.

Not only would this devastate you personally, the ability to forge someone’s death will create a whole new world of nightmares for businesses and governments alike. Imagine HR implications in your own organization. Insurance, accounts receivable, the list goes on…

But, all is not lost. He will also demonstrate how to create a new birth certificate. He shows how hackers can create a whole new identity.

And, related to identity theft, the hacker asks the question: If someone steals the identity of a person who isn’t a person, is that a crime since there is no victim?

How will it affect your organization if you don’t know who is really alive or dead, and if you can’t tell if people exist or never existed in the first place?

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