How To Be Smarter Than a Democrat?
Well, sorry to say (from my point of view), but it looks like Donald Trump has won the electoral college vote. We won’t know for sure until the votes are counted by the House in January, but I’m sure that election won’t be hacked.
Yup, sure.
Unlike, say, how the election that got us Trump was hacked. We may never know whether what the Russians did was sufficient to change votes, but we know how they did it, and some of the ways the influence occured. So, let’s see if you can be smarter than a Democrat. Note that I’m not saying “Democrats” in general, but some specific Democrats in Hillary’s organization.
How did they basically do it? Social engineering. Read the New York Times account of the hack. Podesta was phished, and the starting place was a purported message from Google indicating an account had been hacked, and a password needed to be changed. That, combined with a warning message that mistyped “illegitimate” as “legitimate”, and the damage was done.
See, what people forget is that the weakest link in the security chain is the human link. It is incredibly easy to do a social engineering attack. Our nature is such that we want to be helpful, and we fall for it. Here’s an example: During our recent security conference, one of the banquet staff found a USB drive that someone left behind, and he asked us to return it to its owner. We promptly tossed it. What would you do? Many people would put it in their computer to find the owner - and potentially be hacked. Or they would just announce it and hand it to the owner, letting them be hacked. One never knows what changes were made to that drive when it was out of your sight (this, by the way, is a good reason to use encrypted USB drives).
What about other attacks? Those ads you see on webpages? They can insert malware into your router without you knowing it. They could bring in ransomware? My malware dectector has frequently intercepted malicious ads on non-malicious sites. Sites you go to every day. These sites often don’t have control of their ad networks.
By the way, you do have regular backups, right? Not always connected to your computer? Not in the cloud? Could you survive the sudden loss of your data?
As they say, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, and…. well, we’ve just seen the fool get elected. Let’s not be fooled again.
P.S.: And what should you do about the fool? The answer is not to use your computer to sign a petition or send an email. The answer is to take time and write your congresscritters and senators, and as many other congressional people as you can, a hand-written letter. Legibly. This shows that the issue is important for you to take the time. Send it to their local office, or call. Insist that Congress hold Trump to the exact same standards of ethics, no conflicts of interest, and highest quality of minimally-partisan appointments to which they held Obama. Different Presidents should not have different standards. And, just like with Obama and Bill Clinton, they should investigate the littlest impropriety or questionable action by the President or any member of his administration. All Presidents and his staff should be held to the same standards.
PS: And if you don’t hold with that position, then please explain why Trump should not be held to the same standard. Party shouldn’t make a difference in how we expect the President to behave, so you must have some other reason. Our President should be the role model for the country, someone that our children can look up to see how a leader behaves.
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