Internet Security

It must be a decade since I took a computer security class as part of my degree program at Westfield State College. Since that time, computer security has become an even bigger industry.

Courtesy Google Images

During the course of my research for a term paper about Kevin Mitnick, an infamous computer hacker, I learned about the Def Con Hacking Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. According to the Huffington Post, it is an annual event that attracts thousands of the best code crackers to discuss the latest hacking techniques. Hackers can make a name for themselves by demonstrating how they find security flaws in technology that most consider well-protected.

What amazed and confounded me most about the conference was the assertion by one of the attendees that he could hack a bank account using information from an ATM slip. This prompted me to make sure that I never leave my ATM slips in the trash at the teller; I shred them.

Database breaches have had an indirect impact on me. On three separate occasions, institutes I’ve done business with have had their databases compromised. Each incident resulted in that company enrolling me, at no cost to me, in a credit watch agency. Fortunately, none of the incidents presented a financial hardship for me.

I’ve probably become lax regarding computer security. I came across an article by Mat Honan at Wired.com that reminded me how much damage a hacker can do. The article, How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking describes, in detail, the process the hacker(s) used, the data lost by Mr.Honan and the process (and cost) of retrieving just 75% of what was destroyed. (They were even able to erase data from his mobile phone and home computing devices.)

Mr. Honan’s experience has led me to re-evaluate my on-line practices. I think there are three (3) elements of internet security we should all practice:

1     1.  Don’t save credit card/bank information on a site just to make purchases and bill paying easier.

2     2.  Create complex passwords that contain a mixture of letters, numbers and characters.

3     3.  Don’t use the same password for all your secure internet sites.

I think what happened to Mr. Honan is frighteningly educational. I wouldn’t want it to happen to me.

Is anyone else concerned about leaving an electronic trail that hackers could utilize?

Lake Vostok: Poland Springs – Eat Your Heart Out

There is a host of research bases located in Antarctica and they are run by a number of different countries, including the United States, China and Russia.  People at these stations study everything from weather to aeronomy, the study of the upper atmospheric regions of the Earth and other planets.  Antarctica is a chosen spot for research because the region is probably the most unspoiled area in the world with the cleanest air on earth.

The oldest station is Mawson Station.  It’s Australia’s oldest continuously inhabited Antarctic station having run since 1954.

There are hundreds of subglacial lakes of varying sizes under Antarctica’s miles-thick sheet of ice.  The Russians are the first to drill into one of those lakes.  Lake Vostok is under the Russian’s Vostok Research Station and on Sunday, 2/5/12, the Russians tapped into the lake.  There was a mixture of anticipation and trepidation within the scientific community leading up to the accomplishment.

The Russians used a combination of chemicals to prevent the five inch diameter drill hole from refreezing as they drilled.  Bear in mind, the coldest temperature ever recorded, -128.6 degree Fahrenheit below zero, was recorded at Vostok Station.  The use of the chemicals had some scientists concerned about the possibility of contaminating the lake.  To reduce the chance of contamination, the Russians completed the project, sans chemicals, by heating the drill.  The Huffington Post reported that the lake’s water pressure pushed any drilling liquids away from the lake.

Unfortunately, winter has arrived in Antarctica and the exploration of Lake Vostok has been suspended.

This is an exciting accomplishment.  The subglacial lakes are considered pristine environments because they haven’t been exposed to Earth’s atmosphere in millions of years.  Scientists wonder if life exists in any of these waters.  If so, they theorize there’s a chance that life could be present in the frigid waters of Jupiter’s moons.

I’m hopeful that life, even a single celled organism, is found in a sample from one of these lakes.  Maybe, that will help fuel some renewed interest in space.  If there’s even a remote possibility that there’s life “out there,” we need find it.

What do you think; does life in an earthly subglacial lake equate to alien life on a distant planet?

Russian Drill Penetrates 14-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Lake - Wired Science 2/6/2012