security – Page 2 – Scriptingthewhy.com

Is Apple’s Closed Ecosystem Worth the Trade-Offs?

Key Takeaways

Apple’s Closed Ecosystem: Provides enhanced security but can limit user flexibility and control.
Security Concerns: While Apple offers strong security measures, user error and targeted attacks remain potential threats.
Lack of Upgradeability: Newer Apple devices, especially MacBooks, offer limited upgrade options, reducing their lifespan and forcing users to purchase new devices.
Balancing Act: Apple should strive to balance security, user experience, and innovation.
Informed Choices: Users should carefully consider the trade-offs between security, convenience, and cost when choosing Apple products.

Image generated with AI. Apple is just one of those Knights. Also, this knight is missing fingers. AI isn’t taking anyone’s job.

Apple: A Double-Edged Sword of Security and Convenience

Apple products have long been hailed as the pinnacle of technological innovation and security. However, a closer look reveals a more nuanced picture. While Apple’s closed ecosystem undoubtedly offers a higher level of security compared to its open-source counterparts, it also comes with significant drawbacks.

The Security Dilemma: A Double-Edged Sword

One of the primary reasons people choose Apple is its robust security measures. The closed ecosystem limits access to the device’s core components, making it more difficult for malicious actors to exploit vulnerabilities. However, this security-focused approach can sometimes hinder user experience. For instance, recovering a lost or forgotten Apple ID password can be a frustrating ordeal.

Moreover, it’s important to remember that no system is entirely impenetrable. Even Apple devices can fall victim to targeted attacks and user error. The old adage, “The weakest link in the chain is often the user,” still holds true.

The Upgradeability Conundrum: A Step Backwards

One of the most significant criticisms leveled against modern Apple devices, particularly MacBooks, is their lack of upgradeability. While older models allowed users to customize their hardware by upgrading RAM and storage, newer models have adopted a more restrictive approach. This decision, while likely driven by cost and design considerations, limits the device’s lifespan and forces users to purchase entirely new machines when their needs change.

Image generated with AI. “I have an iproduct, I don’t have to worry about safety.”

A Balancing Act: Security, Convenience, and Innovation

Apple’s commitment to security is commendable, but it should not come at the expense of user experience and innovation. A balance must be struck between these competing priorities. By offering more flexibility and customization options, Apple could empower users to make informed choices about their devices without sacrificing security.

Ultimately, the decision to choose an Apple product is a personal one. While they offer a premium experience, it’s essential to weigh the benefits against the drawbacks. As technology continues to evolve, it’s crucial to stay informed and make informed choices.

What are your thoughts on Apple’s approach to security and upgradeability? Share your experiences and opinions in the comments below.

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Security, Tech

Dev’s Gain a Job Loss…

For many, this feeling doesn’t come from holding regular jobs.
Photo by Nina Uhlikova, please support by following @pexel.com

Love Gained, Job loss

Do you have a job that you love? A job that you can’t go one day thinking about. A job so perfect that you can’t see how you would live the rest of your life without it. If you’re like most people, then your answer is moreover going to be a deafening “no”.

Not surprisingly, most people grew up and found the old saying, “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life,” to be a load of …cow dung. At least the grass looks nice.

Given not being satisfied with your current job or not having one depending on the situation you’re in, you are more likely to have been advised to seek work from job posting boards/sites like LinkedIn, indeed, and Monster. Seeing the amount of job postings on these job sites could have you scratching your head and checking your skillset.

This isn’t bad, you are trying to find your “dream job” after all, and you may land on one to apply. However, can we tell you that not every job posting is a real one? Don’t know what we mean?

Today, we’ll look into this trend of fake jobs—a little about why this method would be used, and how you can protect yourself from falling victim.

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Always take a closer look when it comes to being online.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio, please support by following @pexel.com

So, you’re on Indeed, and you’re looking around for a job that matches your skillset. You know the skills you went to college for, spent four to eight years of your time, only to meet the request of you having five years of experience for an entry-level job.

Math isn’t mathing, yea, we know, a quick shoutout to Human Resources. They found a way to job-block. Okay, moving along, you found your dream job, you want to be a developer and there’s an opening.

Great, you apply, get a date for an online interview. The day finally comes, the interviewer asks you to install something onto your computer so the interview can take place. To your surprise, however, you just fell victim to a new campaign called “Dev Popper”.

Yes, you have been hoodwinked. Threat actors are using job postings to trick people, mainly software developers, into installing a RAT (Remote Access Trojan). A trojan on its own is bad enough, but the remote access allows the threat actor to navigate around your machine.

How is this a problem? Well, think of it this way, you opened the door of your home to a robber along with giving them the key. They can do what they want.

Sometimes we give you too much information, but that’s okay. We’re nerds, it’s what we do.
Photo by cottonbro studio, please support by following @pexel.com

A quick fun fact, while this activity is illegal, there have been some questions if the use of RATs is legal. They are to a degree depending on the purpose. If someone from the IT help desk was trying to solve a problem on your computer, they would ask you to download something to give them access, and you would watch them as they were fixing the problem.

This use case is perfectly legal, now if they were to find a folder saying, “Bank Account” and copy information from there, then that steers to being illegal because this is being done with malicious intent.

Also, another issue with RATs is, that once they’re on your machine, a backdoor can be created for the threat actor to retrieve any data they didn’t take the first go around. So, word to the wise, pay attention to your downloads and keep your backdoor closed.

So, you may be wondering, “How would I be able to tell I have a RAT?” Some tell-tales are seeing unfamiliar programs, processing running, or if you find items have been deleted without your intervention. RATs tend to be installed with other programs or “PUPs” (Possible Unwanted Programs) and can eat up your CPU usage.

Other ways to tell something that may be on your machine are; that it’s taking longer than usual for a program to run, and the obvious one; your mouse is moving without your intervention. Unless your residence is possessed, the other logical answer is that you have a ghost in your machine. That ghost is a threat actor.

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Programming, Security, Tech

Hounds & The Morris Worm

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Quick note: if you’re viewing this via email, come to the site for better viewing. Enjoy!

man in dress shirt on the phone. — What do you mean “it’s illegal to drop a toaster onto Eric head”?
It’s not a crime if it was for science.
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio, please support by following @pexel.com

Outside of the longing to conduct social experiments, a popular one is dropping a toaster atop your co-worker’s head to test gravity and ensure it still works. You could say the internet has and can take us places we never thought possible.

We can go to many locations, stay in touch with people close and far, and have the ability to get our digital hands on anything provided we have the coin. So, with all the good, what’s the bad? Well, the bad is, again being able to get your digital hands-on certain items, most of which could be questionable, if you have the coin.

I mean, it shouldn’t be that easy but here we are. One of which is someone mails you a flash drive saying “Hot Nudes, your spouse will never know. Don’t worry.” You should worry and never put the flash drive into your system because your spouse will know when the computer starts acting wonky and a virus begins to run rampant on your machine and very soon, your network. Again, five minutes of fun could have you rooted, and I’ll go over how.

dog in greyscale. — I know that I am a cute dog. I do know what you want but I want you to know something. I have a particular set of teeth; I will find you… and I will bite you.
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Capture and Release

Have you ever watched The Simpsons and heard the famous line from Mr. Burns, “Release the hounds”? If you haven’t here’s a brief overview, Mr. Burns is mainly an evil rich guy who employs Homer and a few of his friends, and when the mood strikes, he will tell his assistant Mr. Smithers to release the hounds to chase Homer off.

So in a sense, what every corporate boss wants to do but legal reasons stop them. I use this phrase because it’s symbolic of what happens after releasing a virus or what it is actual name is a worm. Computer worms are a subset of trojan malware that can self-replicate from one computer to another and eventually spread through a network without human intervention.

The original name was The Morris Worm, named after Robert Tappan Morris. Robert being a simple student at Cornell University created this worm with the intention to gauge the size of the precursor internet of the time “ARPANET” (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network)– the first public computer network mainly used for academics and research.

However, this testing resulted in a denial-of-service (DoS) for 60,000 machines back in 1988. But the fun doesn’t stop there, the United States v. Morris 1991, resulting Morris being the first convicted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act having a nice price tag of three years in prison, 400 hours of community service, and finally paying a fine of $10,000. This may have you thinking twice about trying to view spicy pictures of kittens on your family computer.

man holding 2 paint brushes — I think I caught Covid from this one last time.
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Vectors of Infection

A worm, how is it different from a virus? Worms, as mentioned earlier, tend to be able to self-replicate and spread throughout linked computers and then onto the network.

Viruses, on the other hand, tend to be attached to files or programs and hide until transferred elsewhere unknowingly. So if you wanted this in nightclub terms, worms are crabs and viruses are herpes.

Some of the vectors used for infection are emails, file sharing, instant messaging, smartphones, flash drives, and if it’s connected to the internet in some fashion, game over man could be heard from everyone on your contact list and pretty much around the world. The six degrees of separation would no longer exist if a worm were never quarantined and dealt with.

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person in medieval armor — She said bring protection…girl just you wait. I got all the protection.
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Keeping safe via Updates

So, how would you be able to tell if you have a computer worm running around making its wormy babies on your PC (Personal Computer)? Some signs are files making like a deadbeat parent and just disappearing (I’m not going to single out deadbeat fathers, there are deadbeat mothers too).

Your computer begins to run slower close to sluggish, this could be caused by the worm taking up memory as it spreads leading to a large amount of free space being taken up. So at this point, you may be thinking “Wow this suck, I want to see spicy pictures of kittens, but I don’t want crabs.”

Well, you’re in luck, and don’t let your spouse know that Z-Daddy told you this. Some ways to prevent catching a worm or “crabs”, Deadliest Catch, staying away from downloading from unknown sources, verifying with your contacts if something is sent from them, keeping the operating system up to date, and having antivirus software and making sure that’s up to date as well.

Morris may have created a monster that caused a decent amount of chaos and was the first person to get freshly smacked with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) but went on to cofound the online store Viaweb and later funded firm Y Combinator. So every cloud has a silver lining.

Mark: So what I got from this script is that I can create a virus open my own business.
Tina: That’s not what he meant Mark, stop skimming and actually read.
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Figure there’s some information I missed on computer worms. Scripted a comment below.