Week 11 – The End

I chose to write primarily how malware can disrupt life.  Such as ransomware becoming so common, the word has now been added to the Oxford English dictionary.  It’s being used to stop checkouts and returns in a small-town library, so it can happen anywhere, not just large companies and hospitals like we hear about on the news.  I wrote about how many want ransoms paid in cryptocurrencies, so they can’t be traced.

Another type of malware that is in the news a lot is international, or state sponsored hacking.  Often through phishing or spearphishing.  I wrote about China in my last blog post, however we have also heard about Korea during the Olympic Games and of course Russia, especially involving the election.  In my first blog post, North Korean hackers used a malware called Ghostscript to steal cryptocurrency from South Korea’s currency exchange.

I find the subject of malware fascinating.  The techniques are varied and often changing, the targets are varied as well as the culprits.  Compared to this, hardware just seems boring.

My topics for the weekly blog post were found at http://www.securitywizardry.com/radar.htm I loved the look of the page and they had a lot of topics that I could click on to read more about. Once I decided on what I wanted to write about, I just did some google or bing searches of related topics or to find out more information.

I think the blog project for class was fun.  I enjoy keeping up with the news and think students if future classes should also.  The fact that we could pick what we wanted to write about helped.  Some instructors may say “this week we are writing about firewalls” or something and it can be difficult to find something unique to write about.  Plus, the headlines that week may be about Russia shutting off the power supply at Northwest Natural Gas, which would affect the local population.  How could you not write about that?

A student blog wouldn’t be helpful for a security professional, however, one of the students might become a security professional and chose to do their own blog.  This type of blog should be done by someone in the industry for serious considerations by others.  However, it’s quite interesting a fun for students.