Tuesday Sweep: 23 May 2017
Weekly Round Up
Where do you scan for news?
- LayerOne is this weekend!!! (watch last year’s videos)
- MakerFaire was this past weekend and they’ve already thrown up a promovideo. We were there! The Levitating Fountain continues to be a CRASH Space crowd pleaser. Read the Hack-a-Day write up!
- The flaw dubbed Yahoobleed which caused YahooMail to leak all sorts of stuff connects thematically to our TuesdaySweep because once again we have an object lesson on “why update”. This memory overflow bug harkens back to Heartbleed, but this time ImageMagick was the already-patched-two-years-ago source. ImageMagick, a commandline/shellscript/backend friendly image utility, underpins many many websites that do image processing. Yahoo had failed to update their system, but you can test yours. For those of you not familiar with ImageMagick you can do all sorts of fun and useful things with it, resize, add borders, find colors, generate images from scratch. Support the project so they can keep finding and patching one the most used image utilities on the internet.
- GOOD NEWS: Supreme Court makes life harder for patent trolls
- PHONE CALL TO MAKE: Watch John Olivers Net Neutrality II video, and the Update, read that they voted to suspend Net Neutrality rules and assaulted a reporter as they were about it. Then call your California state representatives to see if there is something California with it’s strong consumer protection laws might be able to do on its own to fight this and the horrible ISP privacy decision. Can’t hurt to call the FCC, maybe using the EFF petition as a script or remind Ajit what he really thinks.
- Twitter is going Full Facebook on tacking. (Article contains advice on what to do)
- Some of those infected by WCry can get around paying the ransom, yet it’s sad that Microsoft might have taken actions to prevent it in the first place. Bruce Schneier’s call to action for consumer protection against ransomware on IoT devices warmed my heart.
- MEETUP: Some of you might remember the LA Wifi UserGroup, but there is a new WiFi meetup in town and they hope to start building MeshNetworks in LA (in Marina Del Rey.)
Sweep
This list will be getting longer, but lets keep it simple while folks are still setting up.
- Updated software recently? Pick a new device to check on today.
- Backups still up and running? When was the last time you made a clean disk image? Here’s a new great article on how to design a backup system.
- Reduce your attack surface: Delete a low quality app from your phone. Delete an account that doesn’t bring you joy.
- Add a password to your password manager… and delete it from everywhere else.
- Anywhere you could add two factor authentication?
- Double check privacy settings on your phone, social media accounts. Especially Twitter this week.
Reflect
What’s are the frictions keeping you from doing “what’s right”? Regret is only useful if it leads to a plan on how to improve.
Continuing Set Up
We’ve covered so much so fast. You’re not behind, you’re just where you are. Pick something to do.
- If you’re having trouble with all the set up, the coach tool at the Crash Override Network has a great step by step break down for many of the same introductory steps we did here.
- Review the list of OneThing articles so far and pick one to catch up on.
Engage
We are a community. You are a welcome part of it.
