https://hasbrouck.org/articles/cybersecurity.html
"The contestants on
The Amazing Race aren’t allowed to bring money, credit or
debit cards, cellphones, tablets, laptop computers, or other electronic devices
with them on their race around the world. So issues related to digital devices,
like those related to banking and electronic payments, are among those aspects
of travel that are elided from what’s shown on the reality-TV show. These are,
however, increasingly important issues for real-world travellers.
In my last column on financial services for travellers, I touched only briefly
on the risks of theft of smartphones or laptops and cyber-attacks on banking
Web sites, apps, and data.
Financial data isn’t the only sensitive data travellers carry with us on our
smartphones.
In this and my next several columns, by popular demand, I’ll expand on the
range of cyber-security threats to data on travellers’ smartphones and laptop
computers, other portable devices, or “in the cloud”.
Part One of this series, below, surveys the types of possible attacks on your
phone and data from cops and robbers. Part Two covers backups, how to minimize
the data on your phone, the categories of sensitive data you should be
concerned about, and defensive techniques applicable to particular types of
data and apps. Later parts will discuss some of the things you can do to defend
yourself against attacks on the data that remains on your phone.
I’m not a programmer or a cyber-security professional, but I do have expertise
on what sorts of bad things happen to travellers in the real world. My
perspective is that of threat modeling and mitigation: what you can do to
reduce (not eliminate) the risks of compromise of your data, and to limit the
damage if it happens.
In the wake of the fascist coup in the USA, I’ve been getting questions from
friends, neighbors, longtime readers, and complete strangers (some, with good
reason, anonymous) about how they can protect their digital data, especially
the data on their smartphones, while travelling in the U.S., visiting or living
in the U.S. as immigrants, tourists, or foreign residents, or crossing U.S.
borders, especially as transgender or non-binary people, people with ‘X’ gender
markers on their passports or other IDs, or non-U.S. citizens.
It would be a mistake to think that these risks are limited to the U.S. or to
U.S. borders. In addition to the U.S., China, Russia, Israel, and the Gulf
states (U.A.E., Qatar, Saudi Arabia, etc.) have particularly sophisticated and
pervasive systems of cyber-surveillance of their citizens, foreign residents
and visitors, and foreign critics. These countries aren’t alone. Some other
large countries including India, Brazil, and Nigeria may have less pervasive
government cyber-surveillance programs, but are home to particularly large and
sophisticated networks of cyber-criminals. Internet-based threats from
governmental, corporate, and criminal actors are global in reach."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
