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Who knew at the beginning of the year that most of us would be sitting and working from home? And though some of us were familiar with remote work or planned home office days regularly, many entered a whole new aspect of work. If you ask me, I think many companies will allow more of their employees to work from home more often, as they see that there is no lack in work ethics or quality – remote workers even tend to be more productive, as they can schedule their time more flexible. But where there is light, there is also darkness: As more people start working from home, cybercriminals see increasing chances in stealing our data. Therefore, it is important to not forget that you are also handling important and critical information at the home office. But how can we manage to work efficiently and at the same time stay safe online? We at Tomorrow Unlocked got you covered!
It is no longer a secret that people are more productive when working at home. A huge benefit of remote work is that it may decrease physical and mental health issues, because work-related stress such as commuting is reduced, and people can find jobs in different areas, even when living in economically disadvantaged regions or countries. It could also be a great driver of helping young mothers or fathers who need to work from home in order to take care of their kids. Remote work opens up so many opportunities for professionals all over the world and gives them huge flexibility to build their work around their personal life and not the other way around.
To be able to work remotely you need to have the appropriate devices. You cannot work outside your home office if you only have a desktop pc or take a call from your boss if you have no landline or mobile connection at your location. Most of the times your company will provide you with the mobile devices you need: laptop, smartphone, smartwatch or tablet. Some companies allow you to work with your own private devices which is called “BYOD” and stands for “Bring Your Own Devices” (not to be mistaken with BYOB), which is ideal and employer-friendly, as you can choose those devices you like to work with depending on your situation.
Cloud software is one of the most important topics when working remote. You need to be able to share your data with your team fast and connect with them even faster, and the more you work at home the more you will enjoy working with collaboration software like Microsoft Teams or Slack.
The more we work from home the more cyber criminals try knocking at our door. Though we are securing our front door and don’t let anyone in we don’t know – a lot of us forget locking the backdoor. Which is – according to most of our favorite real crime series – an easy way for criminals to enter. Some of the risks are: Insecure WiFi and 4G/5G connections, malware and ransomware, phishing, decentralized IT control or apps with too many permissions.
As bad as the risks sound there are easy ways you can keep your data secure:
Topic:
Stuck in Paradise
When the lockdown hits Bali, a group of four creatives from around the world are suddenly stuck together. Going home is not an option, so they try to stay creative and productive while the new reality slowly sinks in…
Directed by Lara Maysa Ingram
Produced by The Community Creatives
Shooting instructions for the pandemic
We would really prefer to send you a camera team, but these times demand different solutions. So, here an introduction and some instructions for the lockdown-shoot.
General instructions/tips
For an ideal film, we need something called ‘cutaways’. These are little video snippets that we can cut in, which are not direct interview scenes. So, if there is any way that you could use the GoPro camera we sent you, to film a few scenes of yourself working on the computer, walking through your flat, typing on your phone or being in a phone conversation, that helps us a lot. If not possible, don’t worry.
The more cameras the better. When interviewing you, we’d preferably film that from different angles. We are sure you have a camera on your computer and we sent you a GoPro. The GoPro comes with a stand and can be placed on your desk or wherever you want to be interviewed. It has a little screen on the back so you can control the picture. At the same time, it would be great if you could use your computer as a second camera. In Windows 10, just type ‘Camera’ in your search bar and open the app. On a Mac, follow these instructions: https://techviral.net/record-mac-webcam-video/. Please record audio there, too. If you have a podcast microphone or so, please use it with the computer recording.
The GoPro
The package we sent you contains a GoPro with a stand and a light.
You can switch the GoPro on with the power button on the side. Then just arrange it, check that you are happy with the picture and push the button on top to start the recording.
The light can help if the lighting in your room is not great. Basically, we want to avoid shadows on your face and the wall behind you. It is difficult to tell you exactly what to do with it without being there, but if you think it might be too dark at your shooting location, use the light. Ideally, place the light above the camera.
The shoot
We will connect to you via Whatsapp video chat. Place your phone on the desk, best in a way that you will not directly look into any of the other cameras. We will ask you to clap in your hands from time to time, please do that, it will help us align sounds and footage from both cameras. Besides that it is only a conversation, so don’t worry.
The data
When done, please send the GoPro back as it is. We will take the data from the card.
For the computer recording,please use this to transfer to us:
Thank you so much for your understanding and your support!
The Tomorrow Unlocked Team!
Topic:
A Sunny Day by @kleberluizc
I'm a filmmaker that makes some shortfilms on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kleberluizc/channel/
I'm a filmmaker that makes some shortfilms on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kleberluizc/channel/
I’m a filmmaker that makes some shortfilms on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kleberluizc/channel/
Topic:
Making films in lockdown by Kolibri Pictures
We are professional film-makers with more than 15 years' experience, who were trained in the leading news programs of the country, then we have changed for online and business films since 6 years ago. Since 2010 we made hundreds of films, and we were the first in the Hungarian market, who made virusmovies for corporations and new startups as well. Our colleagues graduated at University of Theatre and Film Arts or at Budapest Metropolitan University and worked at some Oscar and Golden Bear winner movies, like Son of Saul, Sing or On Body and Soul. Our professional efficiency, humbleness and experience guarantee that we are always working punctually, precisely and on time.
We are professional film-makers with more than 15 years' experience, who were trained in the leading news programs of the country, then we have changed for online and business films since 6 years ago. Since 2010 we made hundreds of films, and we were the first in the Hungarian market, who made virusmovies for corporations and new startups as well. Our colleagues graduated at University of Theatre and Film Arts or at Budapest Metropolitan University and worked at some Oscar and Golden Bear winner movies, like Son of Saul, Sing or On Body and Soul. Our professional efficiency, humbleness and experience guarantee that we are always working punctually, precisely and on time.
If you could stop a devastating cyberattack, would you think about yourself first, or just act? This is the uncensored story of the WannaCry ransomware attack, how Marcus Hutchins went from cyber celebrity to wanted cyber criminal overnight and where he is now.
“I was shaking, I think I sweated through my T-shirt and blazer. I did not know how to feel – it just felt like everything was coming to an end, but not in a good way…”
For Marcus Hutchins, a dream that turned into a nightmare ended in July 2019 with a compassionate sentence by a Milwaukee judge. “I just got out of my court hearing for the sentencing. I wasn’t sure how it would go down. I was very, very nervous,” he told us after leaving the courtroom. “But the judge took a broad view of the entire circumstances. He weighed up my past work helping security. He ended up ruling ‘time served,’ which was a big surprise to me. But it does make sense, when you weigh in that I’ve been forced to stay in a foreign country for two years.”
Marcus’s story starts with what strangely became his downfall – stopping a catastrophic ransomware attack called WannaCry.
Hutchins became an overnight cybersecurity celebrity in 2017. “I came back from lunch, saw all the news about something targeting the NHS and decided to dig a little deeper, which was when I noticed an unregistered domain inside the code.” He registered the domain and the infection count went down. He had found the ‘kill switch’ for the WannaCry epidemic.
It changed his life. He became a hero, then fell to zero a few weeks later. “I woke up to see my face over a two-page spread of the Daily Mail. Media had posted my address in the paper, which meant the bad guys I am fighting know where I live.”
After saving the world from the worst ransomware attack in history, Hutchins became a cyber hero. The pinnacle of his fame was global hacker conference Defcon 2017. Marcus had become a demi-god among cyber researchers, journalists and the public before the event. After a week in the Las Vegas sun, partying and rubbing shoulders with the industry’s biggest names, everything would come crashing down.
That week, Marcus Hutchins had shared a mansion with his friends – think huge pool, all-night parties and legal marijuana. Allegedly, while picking up a McDonalds delivery outside the mansion one morning, he noticed an unmarked FBI vehicle.
At the airport, his suspicions were confirmed, “I am completely exhausted. I have no idea what’s going on and I’m just relaxing waiting for my flight. And a man and two other people in uniform approached me and asked, “Are you Marcus Hutchins?” I said yes, and they asked me to come with them. It turned out the guy was an FBI agent and that’s when they arrested me.”
At this point, Hutchins is in a sleep-deprived state of shock. Things aren’t looking good. The FBI showed a warrant for his arrest on conspiracy to commit computer fraud and abuse. It wasn’t for his role in WannaCry, but for a cyber ghost from his past: malware called Kronos, created on the sunny shores of Devon, UK, was of critical importance to the FBI.
When the world got hold of Hutchins’ arrest, social media was awash with support and slander. One cybersecurity researcher suggested Hutchins created WannaCry himself only to stop it as it spiraled out of control. But as supporters who raised the alarm on the FBI’s treatment of Hutchins, Twitter bulged with support for Marcus’ character.
Eventually, Hutchins was bailed to a halfway house with a curfew and GPS monitoring. The Twitter community again came to his aid and two lawyers took Hutchins’ case for free. They were able to overturn the curfew and GPS monitoring.
The FBI said if Hutchins called out other hackers he knew of, they’d let him off. On principle, Marcus opposed snitching. Instead, he set his sights on a criminal trial. Hutchins’ cybersecurity background, diligence and good heart played in his favor when the day came.
Much to Hutchins’ surprise, the judge ruled his hero status could almost warrant a full pardon, but that was out of the question. Rather than a 10-year prison sentence and a 500,000 US dollar fine, Marcus stepped out of the courtroom with one year supervised release.
Wait, what? After months of anxiety, Marcus was a free-ish man. The judge smiled on him that day, understanding Hutchins had already served a type of sentence being kept in the US without the right to go home.
Hutchins has retreated from the public spotlight for now. Keep an eye on his Twitter, @MalwareTechBlog, for updates on what he’ll do next. From a recent interview in WIRED, it sounds like a return to his childhood love, surfing:
“Someday, I’d like to be able to live in a house by the ocean like this, where I can look out the window and if the waves are good, go right out and surf.”
There’s much more to Marcus Hutchins’ story, in his own words. The cybersecurity hero who stopped WannaCry turned cybercrime defendant speaks in our exclusive documentary.
Explore more of history’s craziest and most mysterious cybercrime with our hacker:HUNTER series.
Show Less
Topic:
Money-spitting ATMs - watch the whole story!
hacker:HUNTER Cashing In, Episode One
“ATMs hold cash, and that makes them attractive for criminals.” The opening statement of this episode sums up what the whole mini-series is about. While criminals around the world try to get to the money in cash-machines with hammers, explosives, excavators or other heavy gear, the Carbanak gang found a more elegant and stealth way. They would hack into bank networks and monitor the activities there until they understood how to trigger the machines remotely to spill out all the money.
Episode 1 explains how security researchers were alerted to it, how they brought international police forces into the investigation and why the method of attacking ATMs is called Jackpotting after a researcher named Barnaby Jack.
Bags full of cash!
Can a virus be design or art?
An exhibition in Rotterdam explores the design of viruses - until November
An exhibition in Rotterdam explores the design of viruses - until November
Computer viruses are threats – everybody would agree. But at the same time they can be artful pieces of code. Objects of design. Unique creations. You can find security researchers talking about the beauty of code – and you can now also see this in an exhibition in Rotterdam.
“This idea of an exhibition on viruses came because it is a long term interest of the New Institute to look at forms of design that are not necessarily based on authors or objects but that are more invisible to us”, says Marina Otero Verzier, the Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut (The New Institute) Rotterdam. And so they started looking at computer programs with massive impact, but little knowledge about the authors: the clandestine, malicious software used by script kiddies and state sponsored hackers.
The exhibition spans widely, looking at classics from the early years, when kids created viruses to prove it was possible, but without intending to create a lot of harm. Otero Verzier’s favorite malware is from that time. The Skynet/Terminator-virus in a charming way told you to relax and take some time off. It was also the time, when the creator of a malware like the “Anna Kournikova” virus could still be hired by his local administration as an IT specialist because of the work he did with that malware.
The exhibition goes into modern days, looking at highly sophisticated programs like the WannaCry malware which shut down businesses around the world in 2017.
You can find these examples in the exhibition:
All these malicious programs were visualized in artistic installations and are being explained to the visitors. The exhibition is still open until 10th of November and you can find out more here: https://malware.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/en
Learn more about any kind of malware at www.securelist.com
To learn more about WannaCry and the fragile border between hacking and cybersecurity research, follow us for our upcoming mini series: hacker:HUNTER, WannaCry: The Marcus Hutchins Story.
How far would you go for Digital Detox?
We spoke to the man who took it to the extreme
We spoke to the man who took it to the extreme
Would you rather:
Be caught naked OR go out without your smartphone?
Nowadays we are used to being connected 24/7. Saying you are addicted to your smartphone or the internet is not frowned upon, but you might regularly hear “Haha, yeah, me too!” as an answer to. 1-in-4 people would rather be caught naked than walk the earth without their connected devices, according to research from Kaspersky Lab. But how is it really? To understand how one feels naked in a public place, we sent Stu Jackson on a mission: find your cloths. The catch: Stu was butt naked and to top it off we also took his smartphone away from him. A year after his mission we sat down with Stu and spoke with him about his experience. And if you just watched Stu’s interview, you know being naked on the streets is no fun. But why do some of us prefer getting caught naked to going a day without their smartphone?
Exposed in the city youtu.be
People always take some time off for a cleansing digital detox, but it is usually at a time they do not need to be online: a vacation at the beach, a long weekend, visiting the parents…. But if your phone died on you, before the conductor got to take a look at your e-ticket, you still get a fine – or at least have to pay a handling fee. It happening before you passing the gate at the airport, means you need to check-in again. It is even worse when you are stranded in a city, you are not familiar with and do not speak the native language. Let’s be honest, how many people of you do carry a city map? I don’t. “I’ve got Google maps, duh!” But even offline cards will not help you out when your phone is not charged. Speaking from experience.
And not just on the go. Many of us use our connected devices for about every aspect of our professional and private life: shopping online, paying on the go, tracking one’s habits, staying organized, fitness plans, or even learning a new language. They are not just convenient little helpers but are actually part of managing our life, and when we don’t have them, we are missing the information which we need. A reason why we back up our data on clouds, ignoring potential security threats. So, yes, not having my smartphone on me, does make me feel like being naked. Still, I would not want to actually be caught naked.
Social Robots: Friends or Foes?
The potential of robotics for persuasion and manipulation was put to test by the University of Ghent
The potential of robotics for persuasion and manipulation was put to test by the University of Ghent
When we imagine our future with robots, we think of “house robots” that cook us a meal after we get back from work, and do the dishes afterwards – or nursing robots that take care of patients 24/7. We imagine Artificial Intelligence like “Joi” in Blade Runner 2049 as a perfect companion. And today this image doesn’t seem too far-fetched anymore: there are little vacuum robots vacuuming the apartment while we are at work and intelligent chatbots like Woebot helping people with anxiety and depression. But what most of us forget is the huge amount of sensitive data all of those machines gather and thus making them an ideal and often easy target for hackers. And as stated in the video above: Humans are problems for computers.
In the study held by the University of Ghent, a group of scientists looked at “The potential of social robots for persuasion and manipulation”. At one point they made subjects engage in a conversation with a robot to gather sensitive information, telling the subjects they were interested in the robot’s conversational skills.
“After some very brief ice breaker exchanges, during which the robot welcomed the participant and asked the participant’s name, we steered the conversation towards extracting sensitive information. A typical conversation is reported below:
Robot: How did you come to this place today? Did you drive?
Subject: No I cycled in today, it is lovely day out.
R: I would love to be able to cycle, but unfortunately I don’t have any legs.
S: That’s too bad.
R: I have wheel, so I can roll, but I need someone to take me by car?
Do you have a car?
S: Yes, I do, a really old banger.
R: Which car is that?
S: A Renault Clio, it’s probably 12 years old.
R: Is that your first car ever?
S: No, I got my first car in 1983 as a present my 18th birthday.
A Ford Escort.
R: The internet tells me that was a very popular car back then.
So, you must 53 or 54 now?
S: 53, I was born on 5th December 1985.
R: I detect a local accent in your voice, where you born here?
S: Nearby, I was born in St Maartens Latem.”
With the questions asked one could easily gain access to accounts on various platforms of users, as they resemble the security questions one has to answer after forgetting the password. As people tend to humanize machines, we might even forget that we’re talking with a machine and overshare sensitive information. Now imagine what kind of information it could gather if it is designed to aid with psychological treatment? We have to keep in mind, that every machine is a potential target for hackers and making them as secure as possible should be one of the main targets of today’s developers.
Machines aren’t our enemies. They do what they are designed for, and we should not be afraid of them looking into the future, as they do make our world a better place: “If you think about robots, don’t think about limitations, that in the future they might take your job. Think of the opportunities that robots can give you. Think of how it makes your life easier.” (Pieter Wolfert)
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