Are your keystrokes being recorded?

It's always nice to set the scene for these subjects it helps my over active imagination to write better, so lets sit back and imagine the following: you are browsing the internet, firstly you look up a few weird and wonderful subjects, then you tip over to that dodgy website your wife doesn't know about to catch up on that online affair you have been having. You ask how did you know? well if you have been watching any tech related news in the past week you would have seen a headline or two stating things like "popular sites record your every keystrokes" and the rest.

So you ask what does that mean, websites are recording my keystrokes so they have a bulk file filled with code and text and links right?  Well technically yes but someone also though it would be a good idea to create a software that plays back all of this stuff in a film like format, sound scary? well it is and as you can see from the video below were your "keystrokes" to get leaked you might be in a whole pile of doo doo pretty quickly.

Researchers from Princeton University's Centre for Information Technology Policy (CITP) analyzed the Alexa top 50,000 websites in the world and found that 482 sites, many of which are high profile, are using a new web-tracking technique to track every move of their users.

Dubbed "Session Replay," the technique is used even by most popular websites, including The Guardian, Reuters, Samsung, Al-Jazeera, VK, Adobe, Microsoft, and WordPress, to record every single movement a visitor does while navigating a web page, and this incredibly extensive data is then sent off to a third party for analysis.

"Session replay scripts" are usually designed to gather data regarding user engagement that can be used by website developers to improve the end-user experience. However, what's particularly concerning is that these scripts record beyond the information you purposely give to a website—which also includes the text you type out while filing a form and then delete before hitting 'Submit.'

If your starting to get cold sweats after reading the above then here are a couple of sites where you can educate yourself a bit further on this topic.

https://thehackernews.com/2017/11/website-keylogging.html

https://thenextweb.com/security/2017/11/21/hundreds-of-websites-record-your-every-keystroke-without-you-knowing/

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/websites-record-keystroke/

Security Meets Cost

I was recently asked by a small business how could they secure their IT on a budget this made me stop to think about that tricky subject "security meets cost". It is in these terms that a business must be practical, you need to stand back and identify your actual financial loss were a cyber attack or unforeseen event to occur resulting in the loss of data. And to be quite honest if your spending thousands on perimeter controls and don't have anyone in your business who can properly configure, monitor and maintain these devices then your really just throwing money down the drain.

After going through the business I advised them to put in place a number of steps that would go a long way towards protecting them. It must be noted that the business in question did not deal with any payments card information (PCI), personally identifiable information (PII) or personal health information (PHI) if your business is dealing with the above then you will need to put more controls in place.

My plan for the business was pretty simple and I will lay it out below.

1) Education:
This is one of the fundamental roles that small businesses neglect, there are hundreds of services out there that will do training days on different areas in an easy to understand and education manner. If you can train staff to identify Phising, Smishing and other everyday threats then you are starting to win a war on the front line. Education helps get employees to think before opening an attachment or giving out "harmless" information over the phone. For the more adventures small business there are packages available for you to run harmless attacks that contain educational videos when clicked. PhishMe would be one such company that comes to mind in that regard.

2) Backups:
This one is quite simple but often forgotten, with the rise of ransomware every small business should keep daily or weekly backups. These backups should be occasionally tested to ensure that they can restore systems in the event of an emergency such as a ransomware infection.

3) Business Continuity Plan:
 Every business should have one and should test it, you can work on building this up over a period of time but you need to start somewhere. EG. if the building floods are our desktops on the floor? Maybe we should elevate them to mitigate this problem. During this flood do employee have the ability to work from home? Yes we have remote access to the building over our companies VPN.

The above are just suggestions but you get the drift if you start to disect your company and compare it to potential events you might be surprised what you come up with. Fail to prepare then prepare to fail.

4) Virus and Anti- malware protection:
Again this is simple but neglected in many small businesses, buy a good antivirus and anti-malware package and set the updates to times you know your employees wont shut them down eg lunch time or after working hours. A good antivirus and malware solution is like having a security guard in your network throwing out all the bad guys.


5) Enable Bit-locker or the equivalent:
Bit-locker encrypts your disk so if someone breaks in and robs your physical machine in theory bit-locker will keep that information safe, unless of course the thief is Homeland security or the equivalent in which case your data is the least of your worries.

6) Password Policy:
Put in place a robust password policy that includes the rotation of passwords regularly and password history check to prevent the re-use of passwords.

7) Third party checks:
If you are using a third party to store data or to provide remote support ask them to provide you with a list of controls that are in place to protect you from a security point of view. If they tell you they are super secure and you need to trust them get worried because this means they haven't got anything to give you and your cloud solution is some guy with a laptop and 15 housemates that use it to stream illegal movies.

8) Document everything!
You should document all of your procedures and workflows because if one guy has all this information and gets hit by a bus your knowledge is dead. Good documentation is key to smooth transition and helps aid security through clarity.



If you get all the above in order you will have made a decent move towards securing your business at a minimal cost, of course there is plenty of room to do more but the hardest part is always to make a start.

Protecting against phishing

Phishing (pronounced fishing) scams are among the most prevalent forms of cybercrime, targeting unsuspecting victims. Although phishing is widespread, it is possible to identify and prevent. Apart from ensuring you install security software, the best way to combat scams is to educate yourself to what these scams are and how to identify them. I found the below video from Meridian Banking that explains phishing very well, and even though its aimed at Meridian customers you should get the idea.

Now that you have an idea of what phishing is and what forms it can take lets go through some addition steps you can take to protect yourself. 

1) Be wary of emails asking for confidential information - especially information of a financial nature. Legitimate organisations never look for this information over email or the phone, if you get such a call or an email you should contact that organisation independently using know contact information from previous correspondence such as a statement or contract.

2) Make sure you when signing up to a new website's that you read there privacy policy. The majority of commercial websites have a privacy policy, which is usually accessible at the foot of the page. In this policy look for the website's policy on whether it will or will not sell its mailing list. If the site in question does sell its mailing list see do they have a policy that allows you to sign up and opt out of this feature if not you might want to consider do you really need to join the site in question. The majority of spam and potentially dangerous phishing emails you receive come from sites you have signed up to that have sold your mailing information to another company or companies.

3) Make sure you maintain effective software to combat phishing. Most Internet Security suites automatically detect and block fake websites. Some will also authenticate major banking and shopping sites. I have also stated in another blog how you can add security plugins to your browser that will help identify dodgy sites and links.

4) Never use links in an email to connect to a website unless you are absolutely sure they are authentic. It is very easy to add a fake link or hyperlink text that will bring you to a fake site or similar looking website. To avoid this open a new browsers and type in the url subtle differences could bring you to a fake site (eg) ww.aib.ie is the AIB banking site what if the link you received was www.aibbank.ie would you know the difference?

5) Never submit confidential information via forms embedded within email messages. This is not a secure practice and all reputable companies know this. If the form is part of a phishing attack the senders are often able to track all information entered.

6) Think twice about opening attachments from senders you are not familiar with eg. getting an email off an unknown address with an attachment labelled as "invoice". If you are not expecting an invoice and you don't recognize the sender chances are the attachment is carrying a malicious payload delete it!

7) I will end with my pet hate, clicking articles on social media that are clearly made up just so you will click on them. eg  BREAKING NEWS: Pamela Anderson shoots president Obama over views on healthcare! This is clearly a bullshit article don't click on it, you can be guaranteed you are entering a world of spam and malware.

I recently came across a bluebird care campaign surrounding cybercrime and the elderly. As part of that campaign they had an infograph that I think is a super informative and can be viewed by clicking here.