Unjected Shows Nothing But Contempt For Their Users
Apr 12 2024 Gabriel
Earlier this week, I hastily recorded a video for the substack newsletter to dennounce the astounding behavior by Unjected in response to news breaking of their site being found to have serious vulnerabilities. Instead of informting their users of the risks of their information being vulnerable, the company instead would prefer to downplay and dismiss any concerns and mislead their users about what steps they should take to protect their private information.
Data Shedding
Jan 11 2024 Gabriel
The following video is a summary of a report on how programmatic advertising can be weaponized for mass real-time surveillance. This report is highly troubling but not particularly surprising. If you want to learn how it’s being used, read up on the mastodon thread made by one of the report’s authors. Links: Mastodon Thread Europe’s Hidden Security Crisis Report Further Reading: The Military Origins of Facebook How Palantir Conquered the World Total Information Awareness Understanding Malicious ads
Securing your Data: Backups
Jan 05 2024 Gabriel
Backups can feel like a chore, but they’re actually very empowering. Beyond the peace of mind knowing that you’re much less likely to lose data, you’re also in a better position to make changes. Many tasks, like moving from Windows to a Free and Open Source operating system, are much easier if you’ve already got your own backups. Keeping your data safe can be as simple as making copies and distributing them, all the way up to running your own cloud.
Applied Cyberwar: Hardware Exploits
Oct 19 2023 Gabriel
Recently a rumor that the tragic Hamas attack was enabled by a potential lack of backdoors accessible by western / 5 Eyes intelligence. Despite this, I wouldn’t recommend rushing to order a Huwawei phone for privacy reasons. If my threat model called for investigating hardware attacks, simply changing providers would be insufficient to keep them at bay. Understanding hardware exploits requires a bit of understanding about how systems run, so let’s take advantage of this teachable moment.
DIY Cyber Audit
Sep 30 2023 Gabriel
It’s good for people to take their own cybersecurity seriously. It’s a huge topic, and it can be difficult to decide what’s worth starting with, or expending a lot of effort on. This guide is intended to walk you through some of the basic “bare-minimum” steps one would want to take in improving their online security. In addition to pure security goals, this piece aims to emphasize how to reduce your dependency on systems that seize control of your information and workflows.
Account security best practices
Dec 19 2021 Gabriel
The best way to protect data is not to record it Almost everyone has at least a dozen accounts and it can be quite a disaster if your password gets published in yet another data breach. Passwords aren’t the only information worth stealing and the best way to protect important information is never to collect it. In general, it’s best to avoid making an account with a service if you don’t need to.