Agents Of Change

Image courtesy of Sukritim.org

In my very recent past I was employed at a hotel, Country Inns & Suites by Carlson, and we had been open a little over a year. The first year started rather slowly and during this slow period, we'd managed to acquire a hand full of loyal customers. One particular group of customers pretty much had the run of the house: They'd basically helped us open the doors to our hotel; there'd been times in the beginning where these guys would be our only guest in-house out of a total of 66 rooms.

Business started picking up and reached a point where our rooms were staying full to capacity a min of 5 nights a week, which meant that we were practically turning people away at the door. Now, what happened was that one group of regulars we had in-house started getting shuffled around in the mix of new customers that we were acquiring and our whole accounting system was being affected. Prices started changing in a dynamic fashion where some people were charged say, $60 in the beginning with a twenty to thirty dollar increase during a course of bi-weekly increments. 

When business was slow we had the payment method set with our regulars to where, everyday during the course a 24-hour period, someone from the group would stop by and pay their room rent for the day. There was no set time that the room had to be paid for just as long as it was paid in a reasonable amount of time. At times, 2 and a half days would go by before someone stopped and paid the bill. Which in the beginning when business was slow....that system worked out just fine.

Needless to say, it reached a point to where someone would say so and so came down from the room and paid for the day, or back paid for 2 days that had to be paid; however, since they were paying with cash....there wasn't a record being showed on the computer, no receipt had been printed at times, or other times it was just little technical errors made by one of the new clerks, or even a veteran clerk who'd gotten busy and forgot to post the payment. However it transpired....things of that nature were happening because normally these guys would stay overnight and had to be at work before check out time, thus they either would send someone in at lunch to pay for the room, they'd call and let us know by lunch whether or not they would stay another night and if so they'd pay when they came in after work. All of this was happening right along with shift changes, new faces, messages past from this to that person, ( some of which never were delivered to the next 2 shifts ). So the solution that we came up with worked like this: Every morning when the housekeepers checked that guest's room, if their property was still in the room while they went to work it was assumed that they'd be staying another night ( or at least coming back for their property ), thus, we were to lock their room and deactivate the key. Therefore, by all circumstances they'd have to come to the front for a key. Whatever shift that occurrence happened to transpire on, it was the staff on duty's job to settle the account then and there before a key to the room was issued.  If for some odds reason the steps didn't not go in that particular order and the guest's account got screwed in the systems, the discrepancies were deducted from whoever messed up these steps.

On face value it would seem that this would be the common way that things with any guest, regular in-house or not, were to unfold by default. However, if you've ever worked in a hotel long enough to see guest actually make this there home away from home side by side with walk-in guest constantly revolving 24 hours a day 7 days a week, I'm quite certain that you're aware that there's just too many unknown variables that arise at whelm for this system to ever be that predictable and simple. Long story short, it took well over 3 weeks for the new way of handling things finally worked smoothly. 

Cyber-Crime In My Life-time

We Are Legion.....Expect Us!

By far the most significant impact of cyber-crime that I have seen in my lifetime is hacktivism. Hactivism, like activism- where civil and human rights groups use all means possible to champion their causes, involves the use of the Internet by hackers to send out serious targeted messages to governments, to individuals and groups that try to gag the Internet, to overall bad leadership and bad policies. Most importantly, hacktivist demand the freedom of the cyberspace.  In today's society technology plays a crucial role and is used as a new cultural vehicle, and even an aggregation element or carrier to express dissent against the policies of government and private companies. In recent years and months our world has seen the abilities of individuals and collective groups to use their skills in computers against authoritarian regimes and greedy and unprincipled corporations. These individuals are known as hacktivist. The term hacktivist was first coined in 1996 by a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow hacker collective named Omega. Per Wikipedia- If hacking as illegally breaking into computers is assumed, then hacktivism could be defined as the nonviolent use of legal and/or illegal digital tools in pursuit of political ends. Groups of hacktivist are considered as uncontrollable variables in the cyber-space capable of surprising us with striking operations worthy of the most skilled cyber army.

What do I expect to change in the next 5 years?

Considering that the Internet world is profoundly changing due to the continuous acts of hacktivism, I think that hacktivist represent one of the major cyber threats. Because the attacks of these groups produce the same effects of those perpetrated by cyber criminals or governments to offend strategic objectives, cyber protests must be taken into serious consideration in cyber strategies for the defense of a nation at whole. Hactivist all over the world are coming together and they understand that the world is now facing unbridled dependence on oil, overpopulation, and climate change. These crucial sign posts are signaling the end of secure first-world capitalism as we have known it ( In my opinion ). It is clear that the established social order is facing a radical, impending, massive, long needed change, and Hacktivist are continuing to learn their systems, control and manipulate their systems, and have been, and continue to be willing to even shut their systems down when they feel there is a need. The most striking and haunting part of it all is that it doesn't matter whether it is ethical or legal, all that matters in the eyes and minds of the hacktivist is that they feel there is a need to carry out assaults on systems. According to a study published by Verizon, Data Breach Investigations Report, hacktivist stole almost twice as many records as ordinary cyber-crime from organizations and government agencies in the last year. ( Here I must add that not anywhere in our textbook's section on cyber-crime did I notice reference being made of hacktivist/hacktivism; however, needless to say: To tamper with, destroy, or otherwise manipulate someones computer system without his/her express consent is considered an illegal act. ) 

What are the steps I take to protect myself?

1. Limit the amount of personal information that I give out to anyone on the web
2. Use a unique and strong password mixing alphabets, numbers and symbols ( not using the same password across multiple sites )
3. Change my passwords online regularly
4. Keep updated security software and system updates
5. Don't click on unknown URL's nor open attachments in anonymous or suspicious emails

On a larger scale, I'm personally one of those who believes in the freedom of the Internet but on a somewhat different level than a hacktivist. I feel that people should have the freedom to carry on and conduct their activities in cyber-space safe and secure from attacks of all sorts and therefore I've made ethical hacking/penetration testing my career path. I'm one of the guys who believe people should make it a mandatory obligation to test their computer systems with fire and ice, hell and snow....before the bad guys do.

Convergence

Image courtesy of  Outr.Net, Inc

Convergence

This just so happened to be another one of those that I had to think long and hard upon. What device would I choose, if I could have just one device that would be sufficient enough to marry and manage all the activities that I engage in on a daily basis? My personal use involving any of the devices we've discussed thus far in this class can be epitomized by activities involving learning to write code, learning to build web pages, learning to use security tools via running them against vulnerable and not so vulnerable virtual machines, researching vulnerabilities and exploits, pursuing an education, networking via social networking sites, making and promoting music via the internet. Granted, these are in no respective order. 

Now. When tablet pc's hit the market after the smartest freaking phones were already developed, I must admit that I didn't get them then and I don't get them now ( convergence wise ). I think that they are excellent gadgets but....that's as far as it goes. My reasoning behind this lies in the fact that on the one hand there's my laptop and on the other there's my smart phone. The smart phone alone can practically do 50% of everything that the tablet pc brought to the market. As for the other 50% that the smartphone can't do that the tablet pc can, my laptop handles with ease and then some....leaving the tablet pc lagging behind while my smartphone my laptop and I ease on down the yellow brick road, so to speak.

I see no need for another device that kinda just sits in the middle taking up space and not to mention, more of my money and bandwidth, mind you. Neither of which I have a lot of to spare these days.

So...if I could choose only one I would definitely beyond a shadow of a doubt choose my laptop.