Cybercrime doesn’t require the skill of a computer programmer, any more than mugging somebody on the street requires the skill of a James Bond villain. It just takes a level of dedication and a huge lack of compassion. 

It’s So Easy to Have Everything Taken Away From You

Let’s keep the comparison of cybercriminals with street muggers in mind. That’s really what these people are. When my friend (we’ll call him Bob for the sake of this blog post) watched his online accounts systematically get broken into, he wasn’t dealing with a highly-skilled, Hollywood-portrayed hacker. He was likely dealing with a kid who found an easy way to take advantage of others.

Here’s the story:

Bob received a weird message from a stranger. That message had screenshots of a few of his online accounts—his Amazon account, Netflix, and a few others. This stranger was proving that he had access to Bob’s accounts.

A few minutes later, the stranger started to show text messages that were intended for Bob. He logged into Bob’s Facebook account and started messaging Bob’s friends and family. 

Bob’s phone wasn’t acting strangely. There was no evidence that it had been hijacked. His computer at home wasn’t showing any signs of malicious activity. Everything worked as normal.

This stranger was going through all of Bob’s online accounts and changing passwords, taking over, and locking Bob out. It wasn’t long before he found his way into Bob’s Paypal account.

How could this happen? There are actually several possible ways:

If you use the same passwords on multiple accounts, it’s easy for a cybercriminal to sift through sites and businesses that were breached and try your username and password on other services. Stolen information is often displayed and sold on the Dark Web, and for a few dollars, anyone can grab loads of personal, sensitive information like this.

Another way could be SIM Swapping, which is a term for when a criminal tricks a cell phone carrier to forward your calls and text messages to their own device. It only takes a confident criminal and a misguided support person at your carrier.

In this case, however, the criminal didn’t even go that far.

They used a legitimate service called Sakari, which is a text messaging marketing service that lets businesses perform mass communication to their customers or subscribers via text. 

Anyone can create an account with Sakari, and for a few dollars, seize another person’s phone number.

The victim doesn’t lose access to their smartphone. They still get calls and texts. The criminal, however, gets to see everything going on. Since many online accounts will text you if you try to get in without a password, the so-called hacker could intercept these messages and take the steps to gain control over your identity. Once they are in your text messages, they can quickly escalate into your email, and then control everything.

We’re likely going to see companies like Sakari increase their security to prevent this from becoming a widespread problem, but it just goes to show you that hackers can be resourceful without actually needing a lot of skill—just dedication to do wrong.

To protect yourself from this type of attack, be sure to use strong passwords and never use the same password on multiple accounts. Utilize 2FA that goes beyond SMS messaging, such as the Google Authenticator, Duo, Lastpass Authenticator, or a similar tool. Most importantly, never hesitate to ask your trusted IT experts what you can do to further protect yourself, your identity, and your business.

Want to discuss your cybersecurity? Give Patriot Tech Services Inc. a call at 877-874-4629.

Focus Mode

Any interface that has the user interface and the number of features that Microsoft Word has can easily distract people. To combat this inevitability, Microsoft has integrated a Focus Mode into Word. 

When activating Focus Mode, the user will then get a version of their user interface that removes the feature bars at the top of the screen. This allows the user to focus on the document without all the “noise” that is there by default.

To enact Focus Mode, go to the View menu tab, go to the Immersive section and click on Focus. Your interface will disappear leaving only the document you're working on. When in Focus Mode, you can also change the background of your document workspace to a color that better suits your needs.

To exit out of Focus Mode, simply hover your cursor near the top of the screen to call the interface back up. Selecting Focus again will return your display to normal.

Immersive Reader

Another cool feature is called the Immersive Reader. This button appears next to the Focus button and allows the reader to more easily read a document. It temporarily changes the text size and formatting to suit the needs of the reader. It is customizable for each user, as well, so everyone can have the experience they need when using Word. 

Immersive Reader also provides a Read Aloud functionality which provides users with a bunch of options to customize the voice and speed in which Word will read back the text inside a document. 

Inserting an Online Video

Word files are more versatile than ever. Now they can include multimedia from YouTube or Vimeo. Word provides an easy-to-use interface in which to embed a streaming video. Inside the Insert menu, you’ll find Online Video. Clicking this will enable you to paste in a link to insert the video clip into your document. Of course, any video you choose can be moved around and resized as you see fit and can be played within the document itself.

There are dozens more useful Word features available to users today. For more great tips, tricks, and an inside look at Microsoft Office, come back and visit our blog regularly.

What’s the Issue?

The current situation didn’t start recently, but at the beginning of April, some 533 million Facebook records were leaked by hackers for free on the dark web. Over half a billion users have had their personal information, including Facebook ID, corresponding phone numbers, birthdates, some email addresses, relationship status, and bio, dumped into a public database online. 

Facebook confirmed that the data was from a 2019 data leak, and that they have long since patched the vulnerability used to obtain it. That’s a good thing, but it’s still concerning that two years after a major data leak, the data, which was for sale for the past two years, was just dropped on the web for free. Obviously, the tech giant wants the narrative to be that this is old data and they have since made the changes necessary to protect their massive amount of user data, but the fact that it is still available is the bigger issue.

Once Data is Leaked, It’s Out There Forever

We may not really know the tangible value of the data found in this massive database. What we do know is that once data is leaked, it’s going to cause some consternation for Facebook, because:

• One of Facebook’s major revenue streams revolves around transactions with this data.
• This data is out there for free.
• It was likely obtained from a hacking tactic called scraping.

Your company doesn’t have the huge amount of data that Facebook has, but you have the same responsibilities with the sensitive data you have. If Facebook wasn’t, you know, Facebook (that being a platform that is typically used to share data) they wouldn’t be able to simply shrug off something like this. We can say with confidence that a data leak of nearly a quarter of your client base’s data would come with massive repercussions for your business. 

That’s why you need to ensure that you have the tools in place so that you don’t have to deal with data theft, loss of customer confidence, and all the other negative variables that come with a data breach. If you would like to find out more about how Patriot Tech Services Inc. can help you secure your business’ and customers’ data, reach out to us today at 877-874-4629.