Tag Archives: Charlie Sanchez

Could hackers use your GoPro to spy on you?

It turns out that baby monitors are not the only weak point in our digitally connected homes. Earlier this week, security researchers Pen Test Partners warned that Internet enabled GoPro Cameras were vulnerable to hijacking.

As reported on the BBC, the researchers gained access to a GoPro Hero4 camera, even though it appeared off, and could see and hear through the device, as well as delete videos stored on it.

According to the report, the attacker could “wake” the device, turn off its recording lights, and then video-stream what the device could see to his own mobile phone.”

According to a GoPro statement, the issue is not an issue of security but rather of poor password choices by their users. “We follow the industry-standard security protocol called WPA2-PSK (pre-shared key) mode…. We require our customers to create a password 8-16 characters in length; it’s their choice to decide how complex they want it to be.”

Clearly, this is a potentially harmful risk to privacy and security, so the first and most important thing that you should do if concerned by this attack is create strong passwords.

The following infographic has three simple steps that you can take to help create a strong password that will help keep your devices and personal data safe.

New “Porn Droid” ransomware hits Android

Researchers at ZScaler have discovered a new variation of the “Porn Droid” ransomware that affects Android devices.

Once the device is infected, the malware sends the user a message, apparently from the FBI, accusing the user of watching child pornography. It then demands a $500 ransom to restore the device to normal.

fake FBI alert

 

Infection:

After masquerading as a Google patch update, the malware then asks for a number of powerful permissions including “Erase all data” and “set storage encryption”.

Fake Google Alert

 

Clearly, the message is not from the FBI and the victim should not pay the ransom.

Porn Droid

 

How to stay safe:

Always check permissions

Apps are the lifeblood of our Android devices and make them the powerful and useful tools we know and love. Apps help us stay in touch with family and friends, guide us, educate us and sometimes simply entertain us. But how much attention do we pay when we install an app? In the case of this ransomware, an alert user would never have granted those permissions to an app.

For a list of permissions to look out for when installing an app, check out this AVG Academy video from Michael McKinnon.

Video

Make sure you check these app permissions

 

Have up-to-date security software

One of the simplest and most effective ways of keeping your device safe from malware such as “Porn Droid” is to have up-to-date antivirus protection.

By scanning links and attachments before they are loaded onto your device, security apps like AVG’s AntiVirus for Android can help keep your device free from randomware and running in top condition.

 

 

Watch your data! 80% of UK identity fraud is happening online

A new report from  the UK fraud prevention service, Cifas shows that incidences of identity fraud rose by 27% in the first three months of 2015 with nearly 35,000 confirmed cases.

In fact, identity theft was so prevalent that it very nearly constituted half (47%) of all recorded cases of fraud.

The report also highlighted the fact that 80% of all identity fraud in the first quarter was attempted or perpetrated online and that credit card and bank account details were the most common targets for attackers to pursue.

As Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Clark, from the City of London Police explains “By following some simple procedures, such as creating strong passwords, protecting internet connected devices with up-to-date security software and not sharing too much personal information online, we can make life much more difficult for the identity fraudsters.”

 

How can you help keep your data safe from fraud?

Creating a strong password

Creating a strong and memorial password doesn’t need to be difficult. We’ve created an easy to follow infographic that explains exactly how it’s done in three simple steps.

AVG’s Michael McKinnon also has some great advice on simple mistakes you can easily avoid when creating a password.

Video

Four Password Mistakes to Avoid

 

Get up-to-date security software

Like Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Clark explained above, having up-to-date security software is important on all of your devices. Importantly, protecting your devices is neither expensive nor complicated. AVG has a number of free security solutions that can help protect your PC, Mac or Android device. AVG Zen also makes it incredibly easy to manage the security, performance and privacy of multiple devices all from one screen.

 

Don’t give up your personal information

While you should try not to “overshare” online anyway, taking the time to learn about “phishing” and how to avoid it can you detect scams and hoaxes online so that you don’t unknowingly hand over your valuable information to an attack.

AVG’s Tony Anscombe has some great advice to avoid phishing:

Video

How to Avoid Phishing

Three reasons to be excited about: drones

Much like selfies, drones have a love/hate status with the public. On one hand, they are fun and useful tool for hobbyists and scientists but their popularity has been hampered by privacy and security concerns.

Several large scale public events such as the Super Bowl have announced they are “No Drone Zones” and the reasons are certainly understandable. The highly affordable nature of drones and their ability to carry a payload (either a camera or something more nefarious) can be a major security concern for officials.

While authorities and companies grapple with the complexities of bringing drone services to the market and how to legislate them, it leaves us some time to contemplate the exciting ways that drones could be used in the future.

 

Transport:

Just this week a Canadian broke the Guinness World Record for the longest hover-board flight standing on a large drone.

Video

World Record Hover Board Attempt

While this is still some way away from being a viable transport alternative, the proof of concept shows that humans, as much as anything else, can be viable cargo for drones.

As we continue to look for viable and more environmentally friendly personalized transport, drones could well hint at a solution.

 

Conservation:

One of the most inspiring use for drones that I’ve seen in recent months is the Air Shepherd project in Africa where rangers are using drones to help combat poaching of big game animals such as rhinos and elephants.

Faced with a limited budget and vast swathes of land to protect, drones have become a vital tool to help conservationists patrol boundaries, track animals and crack down on illegal hunting and poaching even at night.

Video

Air Shepherd Project

 

Business:

Companies like Amazon have brought drone delivery into the public conscience and it’s easy to see why they are keen to get the service off the ground. Using drones to deliver goods and services to clients brings a whole raft of new opportunities for businesses and a new world of convenience for purchasers.

Video

Amazon Prime Air

The idea that within moments of placing an order online, whether for a tin of paint or for a pizza, a drone will be sent directly to your exact location carrying your order is nothing short of incredible.

The days of having to stay home to take a delivery look numbered and very soon anything we could need will be just a click away from flying directly to us.

 

What are the uses for drones that most excite you? Let me know on Twitter or on Facebook.

 

Title image courtest of The Volt Report

Is your “secret answer” hard to guess?

When it comes to recovering our account details, we are all familiar with questions such as “what is the name of your favorite sports team” or “what city were you born in”. Know the answer to this question and you’re well on your way to resetting a password and getting back into your account.

However, Google has just released a paper documenting its findings after analyzing the strength of hundreds of millions of secret questions and answers.

The findings led the search giant to conclude that secret questions are neither secure nor reliable enough to be used as a standalone account recovery mechanism. That’s because they suffer from a fundamental flaw: their answers are either somewhat secure or easy to remember—but rarely both.”

The most obvious example of a weak secret question in action was the answer to “what is your favorite food”, giving hackers a 19.7% chance of cracking it in a single guess among English-speaking users.

On the other hand, just as with passwords, secure answers to secret questions are often very difficult to remember. One example of a strong secret answer was “what is your frequent flyer number” but that only had a recall rate of 22%.

So if easy to remember answers are too simple and secure answers are too difficult to remember, what should we do?

The most important recommendation that Google provided to adding extra security to the account recovery process was to add an SMS or secondary email address. Just like adding two-factor authentication for a password, including one of these two extra steps will help dramatically reduce the risk that an attacker could maliciously recover your account details.

For more information on Google’s report check out the infographic below:

Google Secret Answer Infographic

 

 

 

 

 

Three reasons to be excited about: 3D printing

The fledgling industry has grown rapidly and is estimated to be valued around $16 billion by 2018. Now it seems that almost anything is possible. Here are some of the three great uses of 3D printing technology emerging today.

 

Clinical testing

Cosmetics company L’Oreal has started developing 3D printed skin to help them test cosmetics without the need for animals or real human skin. Working in collaboration with bio engineering company organovo, L’Oreal said “Our partnership will not only bring about new advances in vitro methods for evaluating product safety and performance, but the potential for where this new field of technology and research can take us is boundless.”

This is clearly a big step forward for a whole range of cosmetics and can help build a future less dependent on animal testing.

3D Skin

Image courtesy of BBC

 

Fashion and textiles

While it most fashion conscious people may take some convincing before they agree to don a garment made out of 3D printed fabrics, the emerging industry shows a lot of promise and potential.

The opportunity to create custom pieces, built to specific physical dimensions could potentially give clothes of the future a convenience and suitability rarely found in traditional clothes.

It doesn’t stop there though, when you consider the market for fashion bags and accessories, the possibilities for customization and personalization are as broad as they are deep.

Video

3D Printed Fashion Accessories

 

Body Parts

Perhaps the biggest success story for 3D printing thus far has been in the area of prosthetic limbs and body parts. Recently, a seven year old California girl received a new 3D printed prosthetic hand that was created for only $50.

Video

3D Printed Prosthetics

Clearly this is one of the most inspiring and uplifting ways that 3D printing technology can touch lives for the better, but it’s not just for humans.

In the last few days, a loggerhead turtle that was gravely wounded in an accident with a boat propeller received a brand new 3D printed jaw. Without its brand new 3D printed titanium jaw, the turtle would have had to spend a lifetime in captivity, unable to fend for itself in the wild.

3D Turtle Jaw

Photo: BTech Innovation

 

What most excites you about 3D printing. I’d love to hear from you on Twitter or Facebook.

Title image courtesy of CNN.com

Three reasons to be excited about: 3D printing

The fledgling industry has grown rapidly and is estimated to be valued around $16 billion by 2018. Now it seems that almost anything is possible. Here are some of the three great uses of 3D printing technology emerging today.

 

Clinical testing

Cosmetics company L’Oreal has started developing 3D printed skin to help them test cosmetics without the need for animals or real human skin. Working in collaboration with bio engineering company organovo, L’Oreal said “Our partnership will not only bring about new advances in vitro methods for evaluating product safety and performance, but the potential for where this new field of technology and research can take us is boundless.”

This is clearly a big step forward for a whole range of cosmetics and can help build a future less dependent on animal testing.

3D Skin

Image courtesy of BBC

 

Fashion and textiles

While it most fashion conscious people may take some convincing before they agree to don a garment made out of 3D printed fabrics, the emerging industry shows a lot of promise and potential.

The opportunity to create custom pieces, built to specific physical dimensions could potentially give clothes of the future a convenience and suitability rarely found in traditional clothes.

It doesn’t stop there though, when you consider the market for fashion bags and accessories, the possibilities for customization and personalization are as broad as they are deep.

Video

3D Printed Fashion Accessories

 

Body Parts

Perhaps the biggest success story for 3D printing thus far has been in the area of prosthetic limbs and body parts. Recently, a seven year old California girl received a new 3D printed prosthetic hand that was created for only $50.

Video

3D Printed Prosthetics

Clearly this is one of the most inspiring and uplifting ways that 3D printing technology can touch lives for the better, but it’s not just for humans.

In the last few days, a loggerhead turtle that was gravely wounded in an accident with a boat propeller received a brand new 3D printed jaw. Without its brand new 3D printed titanium jaw, the turtle would have had to spend a lifetime in captivity, unable to fend for itself in the wild.

3D Turtle Jaw

Photo: BTech Innovation

 

What most excites you about 3D printing. I’d love to hear from you on Twitter or Facebook.

Title image courtesy of CNN.com

Google introduce new Chrome extension rules to help protect users

Google has just introduced new rules for Chrome extensions to help crack down on unwanted and malicious extensions by only making Chrome extensions available via the official Chrome Store.

According to their blog post announcement, Google’s test phase for the rule saw a 75% drop in users complaining about unwanted extensions. Google wrote:

“We originally did not enforce this policy on the Windows developer channel in order to allow developers to opt out. Unfortunately, we’ve since observed malicious software forcing users into the developer channel in order to install unwanted off-store extensions. Affected users are left with malicious extensions running on a Chrome channel they did not choose.”

The move to a centralized marketplace for extensions is a great way for Google to establish quality control for Chrome extensions, just as it and Apple have with their respective app stores.

Chrome extensions are a great way to customize and optimize your browsing experience. For example AVG’s Crumble extension blocks online trackers and cookies allowing you to surf without surveillance.

You can install the extension for free from here: Crumble Chrome extension.

Checking which extensions you are using is very easy to do.

How to check which extensions you are running

Checking which Chrome extensions are active is quick and easy. Within Chrome, open the menu in the top right and select More Tools. Select Extensions from the menu.

Here you can view which extensions are currently running, add and remove extensions.

Chrome Extensions

 

Google introduce new Chrome extension rules to help protect users

Google has just introduced new rules for Chrome extensions to help crack down on unwanted and malicious extensions by only making Chrome extensions available via the official Chrome Store.

According to their blog post announcement, Google’s test phase for the rule saw a 75% drop in users complaining about unwanted extensions. Google wrote:

“We originally did not enforce this policy on the Windows developer channel in order to allow developers to opt out. Unfortunately, we’ve since observed malicious software forcing users into the developer channel in order to install unwanted off-store extensions. Affected users are left with malicious extensions running on a Chrome channel they did not choose.”

The move to a centralized marketplace for extensions is a great way for Google to establish quality control for Chrome extensions, just as it and Apple have with their respective app stores.

Chrome extensions are a great way to customize and optimize your browsing experience. For example AVG’s Crumble extension blocks online trackers and cookies allowing you to surf without surveillance.

You can install the extension for free from here: Crumble Chrome extension.

Checking which extensions you are using is very easy to do.

How to check which extensions you are running

Checking which Chrome extensions are active is quick and easy. Within Chrome, open the menu in the top right and select More Tools. Select Extensions from the menu.

Here you can view which extensions are currently running, add and remove extensions.

Chrome Extensions