What are /r/cybersecurity's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

I don't have any evidence that specifically calls out Nord as bad. Just a general distrust of "privacy" VPN providers. All you're really doing is switching who you're trusting from your ISP to some VPN provider. Will that "we collect no logs" VPN provider have a breach and reveal all of your network traffic, maybe. Will it be revealed in the next wikileaks dump that NordVPN is actually a front company ran by the <insert 3 letter agency> to the tune of billions of tax dollars, maybe. Are the VPN provider's end nodes tapped by intelligence agencies? If you're backhauling your traffic to a foreign country, do you really trust that foreign country? Do you really know that said foreign country hasn't required the VPN provider to secretly collect logs on their behalf, of which logs are then sold to your home country? Seems like a pretty shady industry with a flawed past to me.

If one reads the actual post on the Signal blog, the author notes the Windows-based Cellebrite software includes s couple Apple DLLs, apparently in violation of Apple licensing.

The blog also says they're not putting landmines on every device, just randomly placing them on a small percentage of devices.

A couple quotes from Signal...

Just funny:

> By a truly unbelievable coincidence, I was recently out for a walk when I saw a small package fall off a truck ahead of me. As I got closer, the dull enterprise typeface slowly came into focus: Cellebrite. Inside, we found the latest versions of the Cellebrite software, a hardware dongle designed to prevent piracy (tells you something about their customers I guess!), and a bizarrely large number of cable adapters.

About the DLLs:

> It seems unlikely to us that Apple has granted Cellebrite a license to redistribute and incorporate Apple DLLs in its own product, so this might present a legal risk for Cellebrite and its users.

About the landmines:

> In completely unrelated news, upcoming versions of Signal will be periodically fetching files to place in app storage. These files are never used for anything inside Signal and never interact with Signal software or data, but they look nice, and aesthetics are important in software. Files will only be returned for accounts that have been active installs for some time already, and only probabilistically in low percentages based on phone number sharding. We have a few different versions of files that we think are aesthetically pleasing, and will iterate through those slowly over time. There is no other significance to these files.

PIA has been served papers with which they were unable to comply, which is a good sign.

I like Nord, PIA, and Mullvad, personally.

Edit: not sure what the downvotes are about. Downvote, kids, then write. I'll upvote you for the sake of debate.

The only trusted VPN is one you control.

I use Mullvad, personally, but the only thing I use it for is keeping my network traffic from being tracked by my ISP and encrypting my traffic when using public WiFi.

I'm not a tin foil hat person, but I'm gonna go with no shit dot jaypeg down this rabbit hole.

ExpressVPN, NordVPN, SurfsharkVPN, 97% of these fuggin things are owned by spooks, and the ones that aren't, are either complying with them, or are Liberation Army fronts doing "business as usual" out of the British Virgin Islands.

I'm no expert but I would assume they got your details from some random breach (take a look here https://haveibeenpwned.com/) and are simply spamming out these emails to try and scam people. Note how they say "an adult website you visited" because this basically applies to everyone - rather than giving a specific one.

they are trying to scare you with the language they use. Change your passwords, starting with your master email account. I doubt anything will actually happen to you even if you don't to be honest - they will have sent out thousands and thousands of these emails hoping people will be afraid and pay them.

you should be able to avoid a keylogger by writing your new password out of order - e.g. type out 'ssword' then click back to the beginning and type 'pa'. So that's something to try

I'm a big fan of education...a Masters will help you with some of the soft-skills at the executive level of companies. I've found that people with undergraduate and graduate degrees are better at client deliverables and generally getting stuff done.

If you want to do vulnerability research, I'd recommend Reverse Engineering malware now...you don't need a degree for this. Check out Ghidra: https://ghidra-sre.org

I always get ads for NordVPN, so I adamantly refuse to use their service, but I have never seen a single one for Express. I went with them for my first VPN because they seemed like the best option at the time given my limited understanding of what was on offer (that was two years ago).

Not trying to defend myself or Express, just saying we all do the best we can with what we have, and different people might be working from different knowledge sets.

Keepass works with local databases [Bitwarden](bitwarden.com/) stores encrypted muddle on its servers. You can self host it, then you store encrypted muddle.

Just use one like those two and you're protected against that

>"How would you convince a prospective candidate that we're still an ethical company who believes in internet privacy [sic] when there are stories on top news sites saying 'ExpressVPN CIO Helped United Arab Emirates Hack into Phones, Computers'?" one person added.

Good Question.

>Daniel Gericke, an executive at VPN company ExpressVPN, worked on a United Arab Emirates (UAE) spying and hacking operation called Project Raven. Gericke and two other defendants reached a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) with the U.S. Department of Justice, meaning prosecutors would drop charges against them, but the group would have to pay a financial sum, agree to a list of restrictions on their employment, and cooperate with U.S. authorities.

Trust is a LARGE part of security. I wouldn't trust them.

Oh cool. Another one of those apps linked to real world identifiers. No way I want it linked to my phone #, and I don't necessarily want everyone I want to message to have my damn phone number. Once again, the masses flock the wrong way.

Should be going to matrix.org / element.io.

Decentralized, e2ee, and anonymous.

I don't see how this is "stunning". We've seen the videos and pictures. We know they got in. This doesn't really tell us anything more than that, and that people will never understand that sharing data on social media can be dangerous, because you never know when that data can be dumped or hacked.

What scares me is the thought of messenger application/sites being hacked and having all that history become available to the world.

I've never liked that prospect, but seeing this happen has made me dislike it any more, even with most of the e2ee chat programs, I loathe the idea of their requirement for identifying information, like phone numbers or e-mails.

I'm glad there's matrix element.io, I just wish that when people would finally get sick of policies of things like whatsapp that they'd make better decisions of where to flock. Signal is actually pretty good, but not when they require a phone number - that's a no from me.

I’m currently reading this book, and would highly recommend. It tackles the questions you’re talking about and champions a more empirical approach.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Cybersecurity-Risk/dp/1536669741

I just passed recently, used some info I got from /r/cissp for materials, here are my four recommendations

• The Eleventh Hour - It's a 250 page book that's real digestible and covers a lot of the key concepts

• Boson's Practice Tests - The hardest and closest to the CISSP I've seen for practice tests

• The official CISSP Prep book by Sybex. This is good for all the stuff you find yourself not finding in the eleventh hour and constantly getting wrong on the exam.

• https://www.cybrary.it/course/cissp/ This is also a good set of training videos to watch that covers concepts pretty well.

Edit: Adding in some more details

Been in Security for around 6 years. I have GCIH, GPEN, Sec+, CCNA RS, and am in the process of finishing out my B.S In Cyber Security while I work as an ISSO. I put around 200 hours or so into studying before I tested. This is including practice tests, videos, and reading. I found myself doing at leaast 2 practice tests a week, and changing the test source when I could to avoid only getting to know that test bank.

The last recommendation I can give for the test itself is that usually you can eliminate two, and most of the time there is one that is either more managerial or one that is much better worded than the other, it's usually that one.

It’ll be what they always are, sanctions. It’s what Obama did (if you can even call it that with China), it’s what Trump did, and it’ll be what Biden does. Behind the scenes, they’ll continue to gather intelligence, put NSA, CIA, DIA on these groups, executive order, and if he’s really following the game plan some new agency with a billion dollar budget who just finds out these compromised organizations aren’t following best practices and reminds them NIST exists.

If you’re interested, the book @War , is a great source.

Mullvad has never let me down. I find basically no impact on speed (unless I'm gaming), cost is 60 euros a year. Their logs are minimal as fuck and they allow you to pay in Bitcoin AND actual hard cash for complete anonymity and they have something like 300 servers in 50 countries.

Mullvad is based in Sweden which is part of the Fourteen Eyes but they have had a security audit conducted on them, verifying their minimal-as-fuck-logging policy and their servers are also using Qubes (which... yeah). I trust them even beyond ProtonVPN.

If they're not open source, it's impossible to verify that.

With the number of shady people working in the VPN space (especially Kape Technology who own ExpressVPN and PIA amongst others), I wouldn't trust any commercial VPN unless it was completely open source.

They have access to all your data if they want it.

There has been enough VPN problems at this point you're better off not trusting any of them and using your own methods of encryption instead.

October 2019 NordVPN

February 2021 SuperVPN, GeckoVPN, and ChatVPN

April 2021 Pulse Secure VPN

July 2021 LimeVPN

September 2021 Fortinet VPN

When it comes to security products, price and performance should not be your primary (or only) consideration.

You need to choose a product that is secure by design and has a reputable team standing behind it because VPNs (and password managers, etc) are attacked all the time.

So, ExpressVPN is a great choice because:

• It does not sell your browsing history to raise revenue
• A reputable firm (Bishop Fox) has evaluated its security and gave it high marks

You can read their review here:

Note, protecting your privacy from prying corporations is one thing. But, if you are trying to evade surveillance by a government, then you’ll need to work much harder.

For example, let’s say you are a journalist covering the oppression of foreign citizens by their government. You better be following all these procedures published by the The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF):

Remove Stalkerware From Your Devices With Kaspersky's Software

Just to be clear: Using Kaspersky might be trading one evil for another. There is a great deal of speculation, but AFAIK no evidence, that Kaspersky is tied to the Russian government and if she’s doing anything with state secrets would be a bad idea.

If anyone's interested in seeing the actual transactions.... Idiots, idiots everywhere.

https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh

I recommend using this site https://www.cybrary.it/ i use it and it's extremely helpful they have tons of free videos on getting certified, if you need any books send me a message I have a few PDFs my professor gave me for Linux certified and other classes.

Hard for them not to. I swear almost every major YouTuber I watch promotes ExpressVPN. I've started leaving comments about the recent news to encourage people to stop, but it's hard to be heard when you're one comment among 10,000.....

Checkout Mullvad. They claim to be log free and don’t require you to make an account. Instead they assign you a randomly generated account number. You can even pay in cash by mail if you’re really trying to stay hidden.

Just wanna say something, internet and especially reddit is FILLED with shills for VPNs. Especially NordVPN, but a lot of others as well. Entire webpages paid for to give high scores. One of the top search results for "best VPN" is a "review" site which is actually owned by NordVPN. On YouTube you have YouTubers paid for advertising those VPNs personally. It's like 90% of their budget is spent on paid articles and influencers. It's shady as fuck.

Given what I just wrote I can't give you a recommendation as I would sound like a shill myself. Do your research. Don't trust anyone even in this thread. It took me a whole weekend of reading discussions and researching articles to finally pick one.

10 year Cyber Sec guy here.

Do you want security or privacy because some of those aren't nesecary for security.

Firefox is fine, Chrome has the most CVEs of any browser, but that doesn't make it the most vulnerable. It still containerizes everything which is what makes it most secure.

Duckduckgo is not better than Google in terms of security but is better in terms of privacy. I'm not a big fan of Duckduckgo's engine so I'd recommend startpage. You get Google's search engine but someone else if running the search and just giving you the results.

Https everywhere is a must.

Ublock origin is a great adblocker and the one I highly recommend.

I don't know what setting Mullvad recommended you change but remember a VPN is only barely a security tool, it's mostly a privacy tool.

You could add something like noscript to your browser to stop the most common web exploit (XSS), but you'll need to do a lot of tweaking it to make sure it doesn't break everything.

Bad but not as bad as Aus. This August they passed a bill that gives the government the right to take over your accounts and even modify past communications records. Companies who don't participate can be treated as criminal organizations with leaders landing in a cell.

https://tutanota.com/blog/posts/australia-surveillance-bill/

If it's your laptop, and assuming Windows 10 as the operating system, what I'd recommend is to use something like O&amp;O Shutup 10 to disable at least most of the Windows telemetry. Yes, even if you disable what they let you, there's still crap that phones home. This can be turned off in the "enterprise" edition because, guess what, companies don't like it when you spy on them, but these things cannot be turned off normally in your home edition. Since Windows Home and Enterprise use the same rules, they can be turned off - the switches are just not installed.

There are also a few things that Win10 doesn't want you to simply uninstall, but there are ways to get rid of that junk too.

Here is a link to the podcast if anyone is interested beijingspacetech was referring to:

Defensive Security Podcast - Malware, Hacking, Cyber Security & Infosec https://player.fm/series/defensive-security-podcast-malware-hacking-cyber-security-infosec

Wear-leveling built into the drive makes multiple pass overwrites not work the way you would expect them to on SSDs. Most drive manufacturers have specialized software that will securely wipe the drive (and generally within minutes instead of the much longer overwrite process).

If you need to do this regularly on a variety of drives, GParted is a good tool that has been able to handle dozens of HDDs and SSDs for me over the years.

Alternatively if you don’t need to reuse the drive, physically destroy it with a shredder. I’ve used commercial services to do it, takes seconds and costs a few bucks a drive.

It's got no password? Weird. It's possible it's a guest network on your router. Unplug it and see if it persists.

Still there? Download the phone app "Fing" and scan ips to see if there's anybody/anything on it. If there is, that needs more investigation I could help you with.

To find the source, if it's not your own network, you could download an app like This wifi analyzer and try to find it by its signal strength, or you could go to your circuit breaker and start turning off rooms until the network disappears.

Some spy cameras broadcast a wifi network, so if it's not yours, don't ignore it.

To expand a bit. For learning Linux in a fun interactive way check out overthewire.org the bandit section is great for beginners and you won’t need to install anything.

Also check this out if you want to take some useful classes. Hint: all the material is free. You must be enrolled to get credit though. https://www.udacity.com/georgia-tech

(This is quite nearly exhaustive, despite their stated humility.)

I would add the concept of layers.

Also, there is a massive threat map out there and it's growing every day. There is a portion of this threat map you will never be able to beat (zero days, NSA, etc.) and you are going to have to accept that.

There are plenty of free resources online for self-study.

Cybrary is one example.

There are also testing centers in South Africa for CompTIA certifications (such as the A+, Netowrk+, and Security+). Those are great places to start to get the skills and resume you'll need to get into the field.

Firejail on linux uses “restricting the running environment of untrusted applications using Linux namespaces and seccomp-bpf. It allows a process and all its descendants to have their own private view of the globally shared kernel resources, such as the network stack, process table, mount table.”

It has profiles for most applications and has a very small memory footprint

https://firejail.wordpress.com

A solid response and worthy of note. Increased audits and an absolute willingness to show their integrity means they’re taking this seriously. I’d feel about as safe using ExpressVPN as the rest of the big vendors based on this.

No worries at all. The safe bet though is: if the VPN company is free, they are probably selling my usage data or something else to make money. I have used expressVPN and NordVPN and both are premium services. Had no issues with either though. They will not protect you from going to a malicious site and inadvertently downloading malware. The VPN clients job is to just be the middle man and forward everything down that tunnel to you, and vice-versa. If you were just wishing to bypass some geo-location issues then sure, a VPN will help with that. E.g a show you like is not on your local netflix. But it is on Canadian netflix, well just set your VPN to connect to a server in canada, open netflix and bada bing bada boom there's that show! Easy as that!

+uBlock Origin (echo @behaliel)

+DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials

Lastpass and NordVPN are great services (I use both of them) but classifying them as the "best" is an opinion. There are many other reputable password managers and VPN services out there a consumer can choose from. yeah, Nord is the best :P (no logs=win)

I'm NOT a security professional. I use Firefox & DuckDuckGo. I also use https everywhere and adblock extensions, as well as changing a few of the settings recommended by my VPN provider Mullvad.

Can someone who is a security professional tell me if this is solid?

Hmm, interesting situation. Maybe you're really overthinking it, but I understand what you mean. You can always use a VPN for encrypting your online traffic and keeping your personal information private. Do you know something about VPN's in general? If not, they compare providers with each other here.

Well i guess one solution would be this https://www.cloudflare.com/dns/dnssec/root-signing-ceremony/

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It's all about your trust, can you choose some people to have parts of the key so you need >1 of them to decrypt the root cert? Backups can be stored in safes or bank vault.

Go to Gmail, scroll down, and click details for last login. There should be IPs associated with all logins and devices. You can use that with some IP geo-location tool just by googling it, but it will give you an approximate location, potentially and ISP, or a wrong location if they used a VPN or another form to conceal their location.

It is illegal for people to break into your account, but it is hard to charge them unless there is concrete evidence (your local police are going to have a hard time understanding a lot of the tech aspects).

You may suspect that person, but also check https://haveibeenpwned.com/ with your spouse's email. If they reuse passwords, then the password may have been taken from somewhere else, and used there.

If you know that someone is targeting your accounts you need to follow best practices: 1. Use different emails, usernames, and passwords for different sites 2. Sign up for two factor authentication 3. Get in the habit of changing passwords from time to time

The simplest things are:

1) Update your software. Auto update on the OS, whether Linux/mac/windows. And Auto update on anything else you can, Chrome, Java, etc. Don't forget your router.

2) Do not use the same password for different sites. Many times hackers will just get into an easy site and use the same login on other more lucrative sites. A password manager is the only realistic way to manage this. Once you get good at it, this actually makes your life easier, you only need to remember one password. You can prioritize which passwords to change first, banks, online shopping, email, etc.

3) see if your information has already been leaked: https://haveibeenpwned.com

4) Multi factor authentication for the accounts that matter. Your primary email accounts are a must have for MFA because that is what is used to reset the password for any other site.

5) Be sensible with websites and email links. If an email asks you to login to your bank because of suspicious activity, be suspicious of the email. Read the link by mousing over it, check the email from address. Try not to open attachments from random people.

Outside of these, there are many things you can do, but the risk/reward ratio is just not great.

1. Listing out what he's doing, and why she thinks that would be helpful.
2. Use a password manager. Goto lastpass.com, signup, and use it. Change passwords on EVERYTHING to some random 30 character phrase (or max). Set the main password for lastpass to something long, complex, and she has never used anywhere else. Set a different long, complex, and never before used password on her main email. Now she will have secure logins to everything she uses, but only has to remember two passwords.

Changing passwords on everything to something never before used and too complex to guess will stop the majority of problems from cyber stalkers. If she's using Apple products, make sure to change the icloud password as well. A lot of people overlook this because they never login to the web side, but everything is backed up there, GPS tracking, etc. (Same with Samsung.com account if she has a Samsung phone, and Gmail for any Android devices.)

And why not use KeePass (https://keepass.info/) which is opensource with many functions not only for online resources passwords? You can "add" online sync using any cloud services from big companies: Dropbox/Google/Microsoft/Amazon/etc. https://www.howtogeek.com/165882/how-to-use-keepass-in-your-browser-across-your-computers-and-on-your-phone/

Mullvad are a good sort. Definitely top-tier in terms of trustworthiness. It's all relative IMO and there are so many factors to take into account. You'll never have a perfect VPN service, you'll never have a perfectly secure / private / anonymous system, but the companies striving toward that goal should get some recognition and a bit of respect.

>The three defendants have agreed to cooperate with US authorities and pay the fine in exchange for deferred prosecution, according to a Justice Department release. The three have also forfeited foreign and US security clearances and face future employment restrictions. The agreement comes a day after ExpressVPN announced it had been sold as part of a $936 million deal to former adware distributors Kape Technologies, a company co-founded by an ex-Israeli surveillance agent and a billionaire previously convicted of insider trading.

Remember, this software originated in Israel:

This purchase it to cover the tracks. The three still got paid and now Mossad can buy it out and continue business as normal.

NordVPN, because it offers good servers, even when torrenting, cost is relatively low in comparison to others, had no letters from my ISP about torrenting also tested myself, if the vpn leaks - doesn't. Not sure what do you mean by availability.. they do have a lot of servers, so probably will have one in your country.

Private Internet Access. It has apps for phones and computers, and you can also flash DD-WRT on your routers so that everything from your home network is encrypted rather than just traffic from your individual devices. But, the apps let me use public WiFi without worrying. Also, the PIA VPN servers don’t log any of their activity, so I like that. I’m not doing anything criminal, just value privacy. $30/year. Pretty cheap, especially because the service isn’t much slower than my actual Internet speeds.

It was hosted on GoDaddy, they don't know what they are doing. There are a lot of wordpress hosts, hell wordpress.com that can provide something pretty secure out of the box.

Your first mistake was reusing a password. You live, you learn. Stop what you're doing right now, get a password manager: https://www.privacytools.io/software/passwords/ , and start using it today. No excuses. Forgive your past mistakes. Today is a new day.

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As to your eBay login problem, check with eBay support. They should also have a 'Forgot $credentials' option. You may have to provide some additional information. If you have credit card information saved there, you can also approach your cc issuer to de-authorize eBay. From there, you can start a new account.

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Now stop reading this and get your passwords better managed. ;)

+1 on LaTeX. Would like to add that Overleaf is a free online LaTeX editor that’s really useful.

Here’s a pretty good, standard template: https://www.overleaf.com/latex/templates/jakes-resume/syzfjbzwjncs

Also remember hiring managers care about content, not aesthetics.

We see MSPs as a very strategic focus for our future success. We actually just brought on an industry veteran to help build that out (shoutout to u/jeremy-blumira!) We’re already doing our best to support the community as a whole. We’re sponsoring some of our MSP Partners to attend an upcoming Level Up: The MSP Security Training Challenge.

Since we understand that our MSP partners like to drink their own kool-aid when it comes to technology, our program starts with free-for-internal-use NFR licensing so that you can see the value in our solution for yourself and operationalize it in your business before making the decision to add it to your services practice.

>If so, what makes you different from a product like Skout or Perch?

Skout is a SOC managing many different 3rd party offerings, while Blumira is a product company. The core of our SaaS solution is a SIEM. In that way, we’re more like Perch. Both are good offerings to be sure, and we’re friendly with both. However, the idea with Blumira is that all of the security expertise needed to get value out of that solution is done by our SecOps team and is included in the delivery of the product. We’re a security product for IT people.

To make Blumira affordable for SMB clients, we offer 1 yr log retention and 24/7 SecOps support for urgent inquiries baked in.

-- Matt Warner

I would recommend the FOSS alternative of KeePass over a closed-source password manager personally, then install a plugin into your browser of choice to make it work for websites transparently.

https://keepass.info/

Important to note though, if you want to access your password file across devices, this may not be the best option for your use case. (edit: it appears there are cloud sync plugins available for this as well)

Okay, proper look at com.swanlock: The app seems to do everything it claims.

The app itself is a Cordova-based app (https://cordova.apache.org/). Author did a nice job putting all of the child/parent/device data into a firebase db hosted in Google, instead of building their own API and having to wrestle other problems. All access to that is encrypted-in-transit (https/tls), and even when pairing the child to the parent, it seems to generate a uniqueID, and a randomized secret (this is what the QR code contains). The secret is generated from sjcl.random.randomWords(8).. which is 32-bytes of random (256-bit). I don't see any evidence they store the secrets locally at all (yaay), and most certainly not in plaintext. The pin is then stored in firebase db online, encrypted using triplesec library, which is authored by a pretty reliable group.

There's not much to find fault, folks who built this are not rookies. Sorry for the false alarm on the other app!

As per WhatsApp’s privacy policy they most certainly do collect IP addresses of their users, along with a lot of other information.

If you are looking to find the IP address of a user who messaged you then that is not possible.

There's no fundamental analysis here, just some random numbering. NordVPN was breached 2 years ago, and yet has a higher score than more trustworthy alternatives?!

If people are looking for VPNs, they're better off consulting this Wirecutter review:

You should report it to the authorities and to TunnelBear; you shouldn't expect either to solve anything for you.

Blocking the IPs at your firewall still won't help you mitigate a volumetric attack. I would recommend hardening your platform against misuse and deploying it behind an anti-DDoS provider of your choice so you can monitor and control traffic as desired.

My recommendations for a path I to security would be:

A+

Net+

Sec+

AWS Solutions Architect Associate

AWS SysOps Admin Associate

AWS Security Specialty

AWS Advanced networking Specialty.

Add in a proficiency in Linux, Python, and SQL.

As far as the exam itself for A+, there are great study guides out there as well as practice tests. Wiley/Sybex comes to mind, as I use their books in tandem with video courses for most of my certification course work.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1119515939/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_KS48BP71BRC53YJH8EYR

I see alot of people flaming the university. You have to think about it more deeply. Universities run on a budget that's often very tight. On top of that cybersecurity events like these are not a matter of IF but WHEN. The whole point of hippa and PCI-DSS is to ensure that companies take into consideration security at all. It is simply impossible to create impenetrable systems. Even if you could there is no one in the world with that kind of money to spend on security and other business operations. Even security companies get hacked. Recall NordVPN having intrusions due to the data centers not following guidelines. Not their fault yet a breach nonetheless.

Furthermore, the cost of restoring data from scratch if they had not paid i can ensure you would have been far greater. We are talking loss of student records, restoring entire university infanstructure from scratch, and corruption of custom apps. On top of that you must pay for sanitization of the network, review of company policies, etc. IMO I would have done the same.

I recall a mock excersise in school I had done where my pseudo company was infected by ransomware and I ended up paying the ransom. I asked my friend who had not. If you guys want to have some fun take a guess at who payed more.

And thats why we use ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is one of the fastest VPNs there are. With over 100 servers all across the world, you are now safer than ever. Check it out in the link below. * Ltt intro plays*

And if the monitor the data flow who cares. I don't, use onion sites and even if you use and clear net website even then it should use HTTPS TLS 1.2 or 1.3 to encrypt your data.

--- Edit ---

In my eyes this is just a propaganda from VPN providers. "Reliable and fast VPNs are not free" I mean wtf do you even OpenVPN/ProtonVPN bro.

I'm assuming Windows. Personally, nowadays you can get away with using the preinstalled Windows Defender. I don't recommend Norton, Kaspersky, or any other of those big names. They worked great back in the 2000's but now Windows Defender stays on top of nearly everything. If you want a 3rd party application I recommend Malwarebytes, it's lightweight and one of the best out there. Many other AV applications will use a lot of resources.

As for VPN, that's up to you. iVPN and ProtonVPN are great. Mullvad or AirVPN if you're paranoid. Look for VPNs who use Wireguard protocol vs OpenVPN, because Wireguard is much faster.

The days of being a narrow specialist are past. The future is in being a generalist -- competence or even specialization in a wide range of areas. David Epstein's Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World is worth the read. For instance, consider why companies are how preferring a team of full stack engineers over separate back end and front end specialists. It's all about flexibility and adaptability in a fast changing landscape. A key feature of being a generalist is effectively using experience and concepts from learning past competencies to quickly learn new competencies.

The phrase "jack of all trades, master of none" is more typically used as a derogatory term, referring to someone who's dabbled in a bunch of things but never gained competence at any of them. You never really want to be described as a "jack of all trades."

Nothing is secure. Paranoia is your friend. Taking how VPN works, even with HTTPS traffic, your VPN provider can profile you with other various things. - Servers and websites you visit. - DNS queries you make. - Operating system you use. - Hours you connect to their system.

NordVPN guarantees no-log-policy. () ()

In short. It means only the data that are necessary to make purchase and make you able to use their service are claimed to be processed.

Here comes trust. You have to trust them in this policy. You cannot verify it.

I personally use their services. And I accept the risks. I do not recommend doing the same without understanding the risks and taking them.

Sorry, I'm not a security professional but I also use Firefox and Mullvad ! I don't use DuckDuckGo but Startpage. I use HTTPS Everywhere and as an "ad-blocker" I use uBlock Origin. That way, you're sure not to be tracked by Facebook and Google on every website you browse.

Are you also using ghacks ?

Yes, public Wifi is still dangerous. It's still really easy to access all your information while you are on public wifi. Try using a VPN if you really value privacy. Get one that doesn't collect logs like NordVPN and you will be alright.

• An email with a false sender is not evidence of an email server breach.

• In this case somebody gets a phishing email and posts it on Facebook, and now it's news? And we are supposed to believe that PayPal email servers have been breached? Um, no.

Pro Tip It's real helpful to look at the email sender (e.g. the email message headers) as anyone can spoof the sender name.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-scammers-target-your-paypal-account-how-to-never-fall-for-it/

When you get an email from PayPal, always check the “From” field to see who sent it. Many times, you’ll find ridiculous yet confusing things like , , etc. Sometimes it will even be “”, but looking carefully will reveal this is just the name of the sender, and the address is quite different.

Welcome. Bitwarden is the top recommended password manager on privacytools.io. I generally won't trust anything to be secure unless it's open-source (which Bitwarden 100% is).

I do personally recommend KeePass more. KeePass is completely free and completely open-source, uses really good encryption methods (can encrypt with Master Password, Key File, U2F, etc). The UI is a little bit shoddy but it does the job. And you retain control over the database entirely. But, at the end of the day, you gotta use what meets your needs :)

I know you specifically asked about two products, but this the internet so you get more than you asked for sometimes 🙂

https://wazuh.com/ might be of interest to look at.

I haven't played with it yet, currently looking at velociraptor, but it's a different use case to your needs I think.

Which ever you pick, ensure you monitor the dashboards for alerts, it is crucial to actually look at them.

You would think it would be obvious...it is not, I assure you.

Good luck with which ever choice you make.

On the lines of downloading, I would also add don't download anything that a website offers to download in order to view the site better. For example, if a website says "Hey download this font in order to view the site properly" or "Hey your Adobe Flash is outdated, click here to update" do not download those files. If you really need or want those programs go directly to the developer of the program (ie, Adobe for flash) Another note is I suggest going to the site https://www.privacytools.io/ they have some really good suggestions on privacy tools that could also increase some security also.

>I'm using a Mac so is it even possible for it to be hacked?

Biggest piece of advice would be to not fall into the trap of thinking anything is immune from being "hacked".

Never click on email links, and if you can help it don't even open the email if you suspect something is wrong. Opening alone is enough to at least get your IP - which by itself is not the end of the world, but if you're being targeted it's certainly not ideal. Mark them as spam or phishing.

If they were able to get access to so many of your accounts it is possible that a) you have your usernames / passwords saved in the browser (not great and they can be accessed in plain text much of the time), or b) you reuse the same password across many accounts. Both of these issues can be easily solved by using a password manager - my go-to is always Bitwarden.

Moving forward you should be very weary of any emails - you don't have to be paranoid, just use a healthy amount of caution.

Good luck!

Not sure if you can save the password on the cloud, but Bitwarden sounds good enough for what you are looking at. It’s open source, free and if you want you can pay 10$/y to have more option such as the 2FA and offers a family pack and so on. I’m using Bitwarden for 2 years now and I will never change except if they are selling their souls to a big tech company which I don’t think it’s their plan : https://bitwarden.com/

I‘d start with the free Elastic Security and Kibana right where it‘s being deleoped at - https://www.elastic.co/training/free

Afterwards, blogs like https://logz.io/blog/custom-kibana-visualizations/ will allow you add some spicy sauce, and last but not least: "kibana dashboard github".

CopperheadOS works on Nexus5 and Nexus6P.

LineageOS has a pretty long list of supported cellphones. Just don't install the google extras.

masscan is said, to be able to do 1.6 million packets per second. This is probably the fastest scanner out there. If you want to scan a single /64 with masscan, it'll take

bc -l 2^64/1600000/60/60/24/365 365589.01084692002029426686

365589 years with one packet (say ICMP echo request) per address.

So, while you can do it, maybe you should not. There are tricks to discover hosts on the LAN (like sending to all-hosts multicast address, NDP or DNS), but the naive approach will not work.

I would recommend looking into Surfshark VPN, It's a perfect VPN for a first time user (really simple to understand and use). The price is acceptable, at least for me. They let you connect an unlimited number of devices, so I just share one account with the whole family. They have Black Friday deals right now, for example, this one https://surfshark.com/black-friday?coupon=blackshark

You don’t do malware analysis on bare metal.

This is what you want.

https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2017/07/flare-vm-the-windows-malware.html

There’s also totally online sandboxes.

https://www.hybrid-analysis.com

I wrote a python script that went to wireshark’s display filter reference list, ripped all the different filters names and then pulled a Wikipedia synopsis about each one... only do this if you have lots of hair on your chest

Setup packet capture on your network interface: https://www.wireshark.org/docs/wsug_html_chunked/ChCapCapturingSection.html

Then export objects: https://www.wireshark.org/docs/wsug_html_chunked/ChIOExportSection.html

Bitwarden is a great service imo. It is eay to use, has a good ui and all the necessary features. It also supports yubikey. On top of that, it is free and open source, which is not the case for lastpass. Bitwarden 2 - lastpass 0.

AES is only as good as the KDF protecting the key. Looking at the github mirror of its code (updated march 2019), it seems to be using PBKDF2-SHA1 with 1,000 iterations. That's actually really bad because SHA1 is weak, and 1,000 iterations is very low.

I could be wrong about this, as the documentation says its encryption implementation uses a "SHA256-based" KDF, and I hope I am wrong, but I can't find any PBKDF2-SHA256 code anywhere. Neither did I look at any of the AES code, so who knows if that's been done correctly! Maybe I missed something, but based on what I'm seeing here, you'll be safe if you base64-encode 33 random bytes and use that as your password.

Did they say how they wanted it encrypted?

If not:

GnuPG would be the best option if the recipient is willing to set it up on their end and you can encrypt it just for them vs just putting a password on a file. This also allows you to safely send encrypted content without having to give them a password via some other communication channel.

Assuming you are using Windows GunPG for windows is known as GPG4WIN.

https://www.gpg4win.org/

If you go the GnuPG route do some googling on how to install, configure, and use it. Its a bit more complex then simply adding a password to a 7zip file.

Simplest way would be to use 7zip.

https://www.7-zip.org/

Right click the file.

Add to archive.

Set password and make sure AES-256 is selected.

You would have to get them the password via some other (should be secure) method though.

I would recommend that you look into lineage os. That way you'll get rid of the bloat ware from Samsung and you will probably have a newer android version. Always install updates on all your devices. That's one easy and effective way to stay somewhat secure.

AFAIK you can decrypt your whole device with Android already, so no need for extra software.

Get a good backup solution, can recommend https://www.titaniumtrack.com/titanium-backup.html . You'll have to root your device to use it though.

If you are afraid that your phone might get stolen, you should install some device geo location software, which you can access from your pc or notebook. I think Google has something like that, which you can use.

Edit : titanium backup is one solution I know of. You might not want to root your device, and that's okay. Just make sure you backup your important data 😊

The scale of China's cyberwarfare and counterintelligence went up significantly since the early 2010s. There was at least one incident where they countered an attack on their own computers, captured the code (likely via a network sniffer) and repurposed it to attack Western governments and companies.

Chinese Spies Got the NSA's Hacking Tools, and Used Them For Attacks

Hey there, we are an open source company that does cryptographic ID services (0 knowledge).

We have an example up on Hackster dot io which shows you how to use a secure tunnel with a free SSL cert to access your Raspberry pi terminal remotely. That's at https://www.hackster.io/zeev-s-glozman/how-to-get-terminal-to-raspberry-via-ssl-from-anywhere-a94624

We are soon going to post another tutorial on how to use something new we're calling beame-insta-VPN, which is a secure VPN which uses the crypto tools on the mobile device as primary ID or multi-factor authentication layer specifically for remote access to local servers. The intro to that is here: https://www.beame.io/pdf/beame-insta-VPN.pdf

Any machine can create a personal virtual encrypted network, generating its own crypto-credentials on demand. No public IP is required on the device, and there is no client-side network configuration. Mobile clients and crypto-identities of mobile users in the network can be managed from an admin console.

Soon this whole SDK will be available in a private beta and you are most welcome to sign up. Hope that helps!

Good to know. Still don't like phone registration requirement.

element.io asks for a username and password - everything else is optional. I'll still take that. Plus I don't need a phone to use it, but there are apps for it.

I'm personally quite the fan of Matrix (protocol) / Element (client) myself.

https://matrix.org/

https://element.io/

I haven't actually used Signal personally, only read about it and visited the site. Voting Signal though since it's probably the best option out of ones specified though.

So he’s an HR rep too now? Seemingly he knows who’s a bad person to employ. Funnily enough out of the 2 of them one is a wanted man and the other isn’t. It’s fucking dull to listen to Snowden just because of the stand he took. The guy has a platform because he uncovered a lot of horrible shit and while I cannot imagine ever doing the same as him, I still respect his decision to stand up against something he felt was wrong. All that being said it doesn’t make him a genius, or even an informed social commentator. It’s telling that he calls out ExpressVPN without actually saying why he thinks the platform is less secure or less private now. If he’s calling them out from a morality point of view then I kinda get it but then that’s his opinion and has nothing to do with him being “a really talented engineer”.

Going to clear the air here. Gericke is a very smart individual has like 25+ cyber certifications. He gave up his U.S. citizenship which really raises questions on whatever he was doing in Abu Dhabi. He helped design the infrastructure in the UAE so I would question ExpressVPN as many of the rules that the FBI has placed on him doesn’t really apply since he is now not a U.S. citizen. He did get in trouble though because he was a U.S. Citizen at the time.

This is also a good opportunity to point out that you should invest in webcam covers. With the prevalence of zoom and virtual based work and school these days, cameras are becoming more of a target.

Here’s some basic stuff you can do to be generally safe:

Use a good malware program like Malwarebytes combined with windows defender and a firewall

Keep your firmware and software up to date on your router and on your computers

Change your router access so it’s not “admin” and set a strong password

You probably already have WPA2 encryption

Disable WiFi protected setup on your router

Use a VPN (check out ExpressVPN or NordVPN) to access the internet (however this can seriously lower your gaming speed and if you kid is playing competitive online games you will want that computer to not use a VPN or exempt those programs from the VPN)

Set up 2 factor authorization for your Microsoft and gaming accounts, etc.

Use/Teach your child good security practices like not clicking random links or downloads, not sharing personal data, etc.

I'd suggest using one of these three VPN listed on that website:

&#x200B;

I'm personally using ProtonVPN, pretty good but more expensive than most VPN.

One of the larger problems with security is ‘proving’ intangibles. This is a start to making probability and impact to dollars and cents. “How to Measure Anything.”

https://www.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-Business-ebook/dp/B00INUYS2U/

I went with ProtonVPN because it's free with their highest level of email, $30/month. I've been using it on my phone and laptop. Works perfectly and they're based in Switzerland so the data laws are the best available.

Anything unencrypted or not properly encrypted.

A big thing that comes to mind is DNS queries. Would be very easy to see what sites you are looking at.

Use a VPN if you want privacy from your school. Just understand that a VPN encrypts traffic between you and the VPN server. You are also placing your trust in the VPN provider. I use ProtonVPN, but there are a gazillion reviews of VPN's...

A VPN would be pretty similar to Tor in this diagram. Just think of the VPN having the same results up to the last Tor node, and that everything after that point will see that your traffic originated at "XYZ Company's VPN server" vs some random Tor exit node.

You can sign up for Mullvad with cryptocurrency or cash. They give you a number, never using your name. I think this is about as safe as you're going to get.

This guy tells it like it is.

Eli nails it, too.

Yeah, services will need to verify your new IP because it will look like you're connecting from a different location. But if you'll be using a dedicated IP then that will happen only once. It depends on what services you're talking about though because usually accounts get banned, not IPs.

NordVPN is good because they don't keep logs and have a bunch of other neat features too. The VPN will add a nice layer of security for you, but if you really want to protect your accounts then there are a few tips: don't use the same password anywhere, use a complicated one (preferably random generated), a password manager for convenience, change passwords every so often and type your emails into to see if your accounts haven't been leaked to hackers.

It depends if you'll be using VPN just for security reasons or want more features. IMO, NordVPN and Express are the best all-around providers. The companies, in general, look pretty reliable, and offer quality products. Both privacy-based providers working with streaming Netflix, torrenting and so on. I use NordVPN as it's more budget-friendly, other services might be a little overpriced, and don't live up to its price. If still not sure what to choose, look into some comparison tables, like this one for example.

Some of the suggestions here are a little tough for a regular person to implement. Here are some that'll help that may be a little more attainable.

1) Use complex passwords, avoid re-using the same password all over the place. The best way to do that is to use a vault like 1password or Lastpass. It's a ton of work to setup, but once done, actually makes your life easier.

2) For your main email account(s), setup multi factor authentication. This way you need a password, and approval from your phone for anyone to login and see your email.

3) Setting up a VPN basically encrypts your communications, and because the other person is on the same network as you, this is the easiest thing for them to observe. By sniffing your traffic, they could extract any plain-text passwords, or files. More things have HTTPs by default now, but installing and running VPN software on your device is a good idea. Private Internet Access is pretty easy to setup.

4) Many of the tools out there to really get in and do bad things are windows specific, a Macbook would make things a little easier, but is totally not required.

5) In general, auto-update your software. Turn on. Windows auto update. Mac auto-update. Microsoft office auto-update.

6) Your phone is also a weakness, update it and change your pass code just in case.

This will help with the majority of things.