Everyone Must Secure Laptops Like Mark Zuckerberg Does
BENGALURU: When Mark Zuckerberg decided to take it to Instagram to commemorate the platform having crossed the milestone of 500 million monthly users, little did he expect that his laptop would gain much attention. In the picture, Zuckerberg holds what appears to be a wooden frame in the background is his laptop. Twitter user Chris Olson first spotted three peculiarities about Mark’s laptop where in the earphone jack and the webcam were taped, and the Mozzila Thunderbird icon that revealed the Facebook CEO’s chosen platform for accessing e-mails. The observations sent ripples across the internet especially among the security enthusiasts.
The more one knows about cyber security, the more paranoid he/she becomes and Zuckerberg is not an exception. Besides, he is much more likely to be a hacking target than most people. Earlier this month, a hacker group under the name OurMine Team had claimed responsibility for hacking Mark’s Twitter and Pinterest accounts. Although it is uncertain how the group pulled off the hacks, they had endorsed the recently infamous LinkedIn password dump. And we could also infer that Zuck had, from his part probably failed to enforce a 2 factor authentication.
Recently, researchers at the University of Michigan revealed through a technical paper a one of a kind ‘analog attack’ wherein backdoor could be installed on the chip, i.e. at the hardware level as opposed to application/OS level. ‘Demonically Clever’ as Wired.com tags it, is a physical hack that takes advantage of how the actual electricity flowing through the chip’s transistors can be hijacked to trigger an unexpected outcome. It would give a malicious program the full OS access it wasn’t intended to have. ‘And it would be far harder to detect with existing techniques like visual analysis of a chip or measuring its power use to spot anomalies.’ reports wired.
According to a cache of National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, at least two government-designed programs were devised to take over computer cameras and microphones. Let alone the government, there are plenty of mischievous hackers who would find it amusing to spy upon a person like Zuckerberg; after all as we know it, the man himself was a pretty mischievous geek at college. It is evident from his precautionary measures that he neither takes security measures for granted nor underestimates the capabilities of hackers. And so should us, as security breaches and the losses they account for continue to rise, it is in fact high time for unsuspecting users to take security measures seriously rather than shrug it off as mere paranoia. Covering photo, video and audio portals has long been a basic and cheap security safeguard.
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