Day Eleven - Hacked?

Day Eleven – Mark gets a bit techie, but only a bit.

I have about an hour before I miss the deadline for today’s post and I should sleep as I have an early start to catch a flight in the morning. 

 

I started to write while I was on the train to Helsinki, using my iPad, but it did not go well at all.  The train was very crowded because of the aforementioned ski holiday and it was also too hot.   I hate hot transport as it makes me start to feel nauseous.  There were also a lot of young soldiers on the trains and buses, adding to the crowd and traveling to undertake their National Service duties, another Finnish difference.

Anyway I had to give up as I started to feel a bit ill.  When I got to the hotel and into my room I then had connection problems and spent more than 30 minutes trying to get online.  When I did there was an email from my wife, who is away, saying that she thought she had been hacked.

Hacked?

So then a skype started, that had to change to be a skype typing chat rather than a call.  So I think I wrote about 1000 words already in Skype chat trying to sort out her computer from a distance.  We are still not sure if she was hacked or not but she has now have changed all passwords (and different ones on each account at last!).  Ran a scan for malware and checked some other things.  More checks to do but nothing more I can do from here.

The thing is that she went onto an open network in a café in Moscow.  Open networks are really dangerous places unless you are careful and know what you are doing and even then risky.  Sometimes we have to use them I know – but be careful and I strongly recommend investing 20 minutes or so of your time reading up how to best protect yourself in on an open network.  Just google it and read or watch some videos.  This might be a start here.

I am on an open network now in my hotel room but I am using a VPN and checking the URLs for having https at the start and not just http. 

 

VPNs are great tools.  For the record, I have had my computer attacked three times while on open hotel networks, (Berlin, Vegas and Tallinn).  In each case I was told I was under attack and was protected by the security on my laptop. But that what made me start to use a VPN in cafes and hotels.

I had no idea I was going to end up writing about security here tonight, but there you go.  PLEASE do the basics, like having different passwords on your various apps and services, do not use the same one across platforms.  Do check that the network in the café is real and not a fake scam one with a similar but different name.  Check the https.  Most of all remember that the easiest hack is still probably social engineering.  It is popular because it works.  Oh and please back up!  Nuff said.

Play safe my friends.  Good night.