The Wall Street Journal | By: Christopher Mims – Updated March 9, 2017 7:27 a.m. ET:
May 13 2017 – Bringing the above article to your attention.
It’s Time for VIPs to Take the Hacker Threat Seriously—and Personally:
WikiLeaks’ purported CIA hack shows that old iPhones and laptops, not to mention web-connected TVs and baby monitors, put you and your organization at risk
If Edward Snowden’s leak of National Security Agency data was a wake-up call that everyday citizens could be subjected to mass surveillance, then WikiLeaks’ latest dump of purported CIA hacking tools should be a wake-up call to high-profile personnel in governments, corporations, nonprofits and media outlets: If you find yourself in the crosshairs of a hacker, your digital life could get owned like never before.
Simply hiring cybersecurity professionals to protect your organization is no longer enough, if you’re a sufficiently valuable target—and your adversary has enough resources and patience. It isn’t about a weakness in the services we rely on, such as secure messaging or encrypted data storage. Our devices themselves are vulnerable to attack. And once a mobile phone or similar device is compromised, attackers can get access to just about everything on it.
WikiLeaks claims the data they received included millions of lines of code. If that’s true, those tools and exploits could be in the hands of dozens if not hundreds of hackers, says Columbia University professor of computer science Steven Bellovin. Which means it isn’t only U.S. intelligence agencies that high-value targets must be wary of, but also of any organization with enough resources to use these tools for anything from blackmail to industrial espionage.
One reason for the focus on mobile devices—including unpublished and unpatched zero day* exploits allowing agents to take control of both iPhones and Android devices—is that our phones have become the nexus of our lives.
* Zero Day – this term is fully explained in the video below
But there’s also the ever-growing array of connected gadgets, from certain cheap Chinese-made security cameras and baby monitors to children’s toys and, yes, your television. Anything with a computer in it can be hacked, and now these computers have more sensors than ever: cameras, far-field microphones capable of picking up a voice from across the room and location-sensing radios that allow for pinpoint accuracy.
The same devices that have access to our corporate networks are also where we browse the internet and let our children play games. As soon as they are breached through personal use, they become vectors into our professional lives.
To read full article – please click here.
Video Documentary – Zero Days – Security Leaks For Sale:
