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Sarah Learns Cyber Security (Part 1 - Passwords and TextSecure?)

In my hands I hold a weapon of mass destruction and madness, a tool that only a few short years ago was every science fiction movie’s wet dream.

I own a smart phone. (LG Nexus 4, running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean) Now I kinda hope that people who know more than me will read this and maybe throw me a bone. And I kinda hope that people who know less than me will read this and perhaps reconsider their own security practices.

I am terrified of my cell phone. I’m not scared of cancer or radiation or that my head will explode while pumping gas. But I am very, very afraid for my safety.

And perhaps the biggest problem is that I want to have my cake and eat it too.

I want to be social and take awesome selfies with my friends on my adventures. I want to be able to quickly check my bank account so I can discreetly see if I can grab dinner with my friends. I want to be able to look up a map for new places to check out or directions when I am lost.

But I also want to be safe. I don’t want to inadvertently become an accessory to a crime because I was geotagged in a location while on a photo adventure. I don’t want my financial information stolen from me, or my location broadcast to predators. Or anyone for that matter. It freaks me out that Google knew within a week that I had left my last job.

Maybe I watch too much Person Of Interest. But what scares me the most about that show is how dead on it is. It’s not that hard to get people’s information, most people give it away willingly, and there is a Machine. It’s called Google. But watching this show really opened my eyes to how blind I’ve been and how ignorant I am when it comes to my own safety.

The fact is, I don’t feel safe with my phone. I am terrified of this thing. I am so scared every time I check my Facebook, or send a text message. These scenarios I describe are not worst case scenarios. These are common, real life situations that are not that difficult to accomplish.

When ATM’s first became a thing, my mom was terrified of them and refused to use them. It took some hard core convincing on my dad’s part to convince her that it was okay. I remember telling Ocean the following story:

“Like, I don’t get it. My mom is a computer scientist project manager who’s afraid of an ATM. How lame is that?”

His response: “Your mom was afraid because she’s smart and her fear was not irrational at all.”

And now here I am, the next generation of paranoia, and it’s my cell phone that I am trying to avoid using.

I am thisclose to selling my smartphone, and jumping back on the CDMA network with a talk and text phone. CDMA is way more secure than HSPA. (One of many reasons why it’s considerably slower.) But knowledge is power and I see many people I look up to using their smart phones. Professional hackers, cyber security experts, mobile security experts, military and police personnel, developers… they are not afraid of their phones. And if they can feel safe using their phones, then maybe with some knowledge, I can feel safe using mine too.

It’s not that I have anything to hide (well, perhaps a few questionable pictures), but rather the fact that I feel like my life isn’t my own. I feel like I can be blackmailed or made very, very vulnerable by an inanimate object and that’s scary to me.

Step 1 - encrypt phone… I don’t really know how this works, but encryption is good, right? Sounds legit. Seriously. I know what encryption is, but how this works to keep me safer, I’m still not really sure.

Step 2 - password protect that shit. When I still worked in mobile sales, I used to cringe every time someone would hand me a phone with no password. In fact, if you do nothing else, put a password on your phone. (Thank you Ocean for drilling that one into my head a year ago.)

Step 3 - turn off GPS, Bluetooth, NFC, Wi-Fi when you are not using them. My resurgence of smart phone paranoia started again when I was messaging someone over Facebook and all of a sudden, I saw that it was also messaging my GPS co-ordinates and a handy dandy little map of where I’m messaging from. It’s a damn good thing I know him and trust him.

Step 4 - Realize that you don’t trust Facebook’s ever changing privacy policy because you don’t understand it, change the password on your phone, go in and remove location permissions *again* because Facebook seems to find some way to reinstate those without my knowledge far too often for my liking. Start messaging this guy over email.

Passwords are supposed to be the key to our safety. The cliff notes crash course on passwords… the longer, the better. The more you mix up, numbers, special characters, capital and lower case letters, the safer you’ll be. And have a different, unrelated password for everything. Great fantastic advice. Now back to the real world for a moment… how the hell am I supposed to remember all these passwords and still be safe? AAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Step 5 - Install TextSecure. All my security smart friends are using it, so it must be legit. Almost lose my shit when half of my text messages stop sending properly. Lose ability to send multimedia messages. Hand phone to Amadeus and say “fix it!!!!!” Regain ability to text him, but no longer able to text Smile or Wink. Wait until next morning to have Wink walk me through what happened, why it stopped working and how to fix it. Smile has zero issues with the installation of his app or sending and receiving messages between TextSecure users.

I think that maybe a huge part of this is that I just don’t understand how the technology works. Even with the safe practices I have put in place, I really am mostly following what I see the people at the hacker space doing with their phones, watching Person Of Interest and trying to do the opposite.

And after all of this, if my phone is safe and yours is not, then we’re all at risk. God, I almost feel safer having unprotected sex with strangers. Or in this technology revolution that we are living in, is our ignorant smart phone use equivalent to the sexual revolution of the 60’s? Will this be all fun and games until people start to get seriously hurt and we all have no choice but to scream out “for god’s sake wear a fucking condom!”.

One day in the future, my kids will be sitting there telling their friends, “Oh my god, like, my mom is a computer scientist security expert who’s scared of her own phone. How lame is that?”

And I will totally deserve that one.

So I will now also publicly say, Mom you were right to be scared of the ATM. You were right and I was wrong, you can now sing the “I was right” song.

Also, I think my next step is to learn more about what encryption is and how it works. And passwords. There must be a magic trick to remembering safe passwords.

Energy Converters Absorb Power of Waves

Authored by Kenny Walter, Digital Reporter, R&D Magazine

Researchers may have found a new way to capture wave energy that can be used to make electricity.

A team from Sandia National Laboratories are working on designing, modeling and testing a new control system that may double the amount of power a wave energy converter can absorb from ocean waves by applying a classical control theory, robotics and aerospace engineering design principles to improve the converter’s efficiency.

Read more: https://www.rdmag.com/article/2017/10/energy-converters-absorb-power-waves

What are your rights at a protest?

Animation by KAPWA Studioworks

Citizen activism is as American as apple pie. Whether you call it a protest, a parade, a tea party, a town hall, a march, a sit-in, a patriotic rally, a picket line, a free speech event, or a nonviolent demonstration, your right to stand up peacefully for what you believe in is protected by the US Constitution. Read the  First Amendment:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

To learn how to turn protest into powerful change, watch this TED-Ed Lesson.

Ready to exercise your constitutionally protected right to protest? Before you go, know your rights. Below, read an excerpt from the American Civil Liberties Union guidelines for protestors. [For a pdf of the full ACLU ‘Know Your Rights’ guidelines for protestors, click here.]

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