Security concerns were raised after hackers threatened to release the information of users on the adultery website Ashley Madison, and a baby monitor in a Middlesex County family home.
Andrew Scholl, an I.T. support coordinator for Keystone Technologies Logistics Limited, explained “A lot of companies don’t really test their equipment. They just assume that it’s safe and that they think that their safe, but the reality is anything can be hacked, it’s just a matter of how long it takes them to hack and how persistent people are to get into it.”
He added some information, such as anything that is opened sourced, is easier to access than others. Scholl reminded the public to be selective of the information they share online, including where they are located or what they are purchasing. “Avoid putting on family pictures, family information, names of pets, names of family members,” he said, “Change your privacy settings on things like social media, like Facebook, ensure that you only have people on your friends lists that are family or friends that you do know, and that you don’t just invite random people. Really keep an eye on who’s watching your stuff and who’s accessing your information.”
For extra security, Scholl said to have an I.T. company test internet security. “A lot of these pieces of equipment, they can be easily set up in your home or in your office, but they’re not always secured when you just set up that way. They need to be set up by somebody who knows what they’re doing to ensure proper security.”
The Ashley Madison and baby monitor cases come a little over a year after the Heart Bleed bug case, where 19-year old Authuro Solis-Reyes of London, Ontario was arrested with charges surrounding mischief related to data and unauthorized use of a computer.
“A lot of the times when the younger generation does it, it’s usually by accident,” Scholl explained, “They’re what we call script kiddies cause they just basically find these little chunks of code, and they start throwing it at different computers and trying to get it to do something and it happens by accident.”
Although he didn’t say if that was the case for Heart Bleed, he added “Hackers that are very veteran, they know what they’re doing. They can get in, do what they want, and get out, and nobody even knows that they were there.”
