Tag Archive for: easy

People are just realising easy Wi-Fi hack means they’ll never endure a buffering movie again


EXPERTS have revealed a Wi-Fi hack that means households relying on streaming apps won’t have to suffer through buffering movies.

It’s easy and free, but it does require a little forethought.

Streaming apps like Netflix and Prime TV let subscribers download content for watching on-the-go

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Streaming apps like Netflix and Prime TV let subscribers download content for watching on-the-goCredit: Alamy

According to lecturer James Jin Kang and Paul Haskell-Dowland, associate dean of computing and security at Edith Cowen University, planning your internet usage is the simplest way to avoid buffer.

It’s a tip the pair recommended during the first UK Covid-19 lockdown, when much of the world went online.

So, the trick will become increasingly more useful over the winter months.

This is when members of your household and the neighbours are more likely slink off inside for internet-based entertainment to escape the gloomy weather.

“If multiple people are streaming video at your home, which often requires ten times the daytime demand, a limited internet connection will soon be fully used,” the pair wrote in The Conversation in 2020.

Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data that can be transmitted over an internet connection within a given period.

It is shared by all internet users in a particular area.

And it gets eaten up quickly when more people in the area are at home using Wi-Fi.

To watch a movie pain-free during heightened bandwidth activity, the experts say households should think ahead.

“Try to plan your and family members’ online activities around peak times,” they wrote.

“Outside your home, connectivity is likely to be on a ‘best effort’ plan, which shares a fixed bandwidth with other users.

“In other words, your mobile internet bandwidth is shared with others in your area when they access the internet at the same time.

“A shared bandwidth results in slower individual speeds.

“You can’t control how many people access the internet, but you can manage your own internet activity by downloading large files or content overnight, or outside of peak hours (when there is less traffic).”

Streaming apps like Netflix and Prime TV let subscribers download content for watching on-the-go.

But the feature can also be used to download a movie or the next few episodes of a series…

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Its too easy to hack a semi truck


In a few weeks, in a hotel parking lot in Houston, Texas, the National Motor Freight Traffic Association (NMFTA) team will make a tanker truck do some very troubling things.

It’s going to chuff its brakes and it’s going to make strange and uncomfortable noises, an indication that the truck is dumping its pneumatic air supply, which is not an example of optimal vehicle performance. But we’re going to make it happen.

The alarming part of this demonstration? We won’t even have to get in the truck to do it, nor will we need to take advantage of modern wireless technologies like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

Instead, Ben Gardiner, NMFTA’s senior cybersecurity research engineer, will use a budget antenna of two wires, through which he will deploy radio frequency signals to send the command to the trailer powerline network. That’s it.

This alarming live demonstration of how easy it is to hack into a vehicle using rudimentary technology should make everyone nervous. That’s why we’re hosting the Digital Solutions Conference on Cybersecurity in Houston, Texas, Oct. 22-25.

Our goal is to help LTL carriers understand the gravity of how important cybersecurity is to our industry and to learn how to prepare for and prevent a cyberattack.

It shouldn’t be this easy to hack into an LTL truck, but it is because the trailer brake controllers use code from the 1980s. The controllers themselves were developed in the ’90s by sticking converter chips in front of the existing code, from an era when no one had any reason to worry about things like encryption or authentication.

We’ve seen more than a few vulnerabilities in assets over the past few years. And one big problem where the assets are concerned is that it’s far too easy for skilled hackers to commandeer a trailer’s diagnostic system. That’s because this same 1990s technology (trailer powerline networks) is still prominent on all trucks and trailers in North America since 2001. Fleets love to get decades’ worth of service out of their vehicles, and even in the 1990s truck manufacturers were doing an excellent job of building in quality that would stand the test of time. But cybersecurity wasn’t on the…

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Why schools are easy targets for ransomware attacks, and what to do about it


Why schools are easy targets for ransomware attacks, and what to do about it

The education sector experienced the highest rate of ransomware attacks in 2022, according to new research from a leading global cybersecurity company.

The State of Ransomware in Education 2023 report, released by Sophos, found 80% of K-12 schools reported they were targets of these types of attacks – a worrying increase from 56% in 2021. Additionally, the education sector reported one of the highest rates of ransom payment with nearly half (47%) of schools paying the ransom.

However, paying the ransom significantly increased recovery costs. The average recovery costs (excluding any ransoms paid) for schools were $2.18m when paying the ransom versus $1.37m when not paying.

Paying the ransom also lengthened recovery times for victims. For schools, 63% of those that used backups recovered within a month versus just 59% of those that paid the ransom.

“Although not a particularly financially rewarding target for cybercriminals, K-12 schools hold a plethora of valuable data such as student addresses, parent emails and bank account details and therefore are becoming increasingly targeted,” Aaron Bugal, Field CTO APJ, at Sophos told The Educator.

“Furthermore, schools will have thousands of dispersed endpoints to protect, often being those of cyber unaware students and even teachers.”

Bugal said this presents a “dream attack surface” for cybercriminals, because if students and staff aren’t being taught how to properly identify threats and be cyber aware, one weak link is all it takes to give hackers the opportunity to secure access to all of school system’s data.

So, what can principals do to respond to this threat?

“Staying ahead of cyber criminals is integral to maintaining a performant educational ecosystem,” Bugal said.

“Schools must focus on both cybersecurity education and implement the right processes and technical controls to effect a positive security outcome.”

With cyberthreats continuing to grow in both volume and complexity, Bugal says most schools shouldn’t be attempting to manage cybersecurity on their own.

“Instead they should consider investing in cybersecurity as a…

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Easy and cheap hacking tools are available online for anyone


Phishing attacks, ransomware and data breaches have been ramping up over the last few years and threatening our digital lives more than ever before.

You don’t need to be a professional hacker living off the grid in a remote location guzzling energy drinks while you ply your crooked trade. Hacker toolkits are available online for anyone to purchase and they’re shockingly cheap and easy to use.

A dark marketplace

The Dark Web keeps internet activity private and anonymous. Dark Web content isn’t indexed by search engines, and you need special software to access it. You can imagine the applications for this, such as avoiding government censorship and keeping identities private.

The Dark Web is a hotbed for illegal activity, such as selling drugs and firearms. You can also find financial and personal information up for sale. Here’s to learn how much your stolen credit card is worth on the Dark Web.

Unsurprisingly, hacking tools known as Crimeware-as-a-Service (CaaS) or Malware-as-a-Service (Maas) are also on sale for as little as $40. Crooks who purchase these programs don’t need much know-how to deploy them. Last year phishing software purchased online targeted some of the biggest banks in the country.

Some malware is available as a subscription service. Fast Company reports that Eternity Stealer, which steals usernames, emails, and credit card numbers, goes for $260 per year.

Everything you do is at risk

Whether you’re buying something online or checking your email, you’re always a potential target for hacks and scams. With CaaS, the risk goes up even higher because the crooked tools are more readily available.

And as in any market, competition breeds innovation — hackers will compete with each other to make more sophisticated and user-friendly tools to get a leg up in the business. And that spells bad news for us all.

RELATED: Operation Cookie Monster brought down a massive hacker marketplace – See if your info was there

Now more than ever it’s important to protect…

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