Yeah, about that...
http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/07/using-old-school-typewr...
http://www.magicmargin.net/2012/12/silencing-chatty-selectri...
Unless they're going back to mechanical ones.
"Unhackable" is a poor choice of words -- more like "practically speaking, tougher to hack." This is a speed bump, not a roadblock.
Of course, if the US were to adopt this sort of strategy, we'd have to make sure we're manufacturing the typewriters domestically. Which probably means setting up a puppet company somewhere in the States, purely for the sake of making typewriters for government contracts. And then you'd have to make sure that company isn't socially engineered, infiltrated, or hacked. And so on, and so forth.
I definitely subscribe to the idea that security is not about making unauthorized access impossible (no such thing), but rather about making it prohibitively expensive (both in terms of resources and risk).
In that light, it should surprise no one that government agencies have always had the ability to spy on citizens when sufficiently motivated. What is truly concerning is that per-capita, it is becoming more and more affordable for agencies to spy on every single person everywhere, all the time.
Exactly. There is no such thing as a foolproof security strategy. Anyone who tells you his plan is foolproof has already proven himself a fool.
Security is about protection, mitigation, and contingencies. It is not about full-stop prevention. Build a 100-foot wall, and I'll build a 101-foot ladder. (Proverbially speaking, of course).
"What is truly concerning is that per-capita, it is becoming more and more affordable for agencies to spy on every single person everywhere, all the time."
This is probably 50% of what concerns me. The other 50% is the coming revolution in analysis. I use that word so strongly as to place it in <em>sterisks. Advances in machine learning will allow us to find needles in the mountains and mountains of haystacks that we're collecting now. It is truly marvelous (and also scary, depending upon your point of view) to consider what one could make of the most seemingly mundane of patterns and breadcrumbs.
I've been going back to cash instead of using credit cards because I've been exposed twice now via Target and Home Depot. I want to even avoid using ATMs and go into the bank to get cash because you can't really even tell when an ATM has a malicious card scanner installed.
Once we have automated cars maybe we'll go be back to walking and riding bikes to avoid being victimized by remote car jacking.
Imagine the mess hijacked delivery drones might cause.
Your phone can be cloned remotely. You can't easily clone a rotary phone that plugs into the wall.
I'm definitely not looking to automate my home, especially after reading how Chinese hacker had installed back doors on wall mounted AC devices or whatever which had access to the internal network at the New York Times building to keep infiltrating and reinfecting all the machines on the network.
Maybe we jumped into the digital world a little bit too quickly.
That said, I do agree that security is becoming a major issue in our world.
It's best to just not have to deal with it. My credit card number has been put up for sale twice now, twice. Because I used it at a Target and a Home Depot. Ok, I just don't want to go through that again. I don't care if there are laws, if I use cash, I'll be fine. It's no problem, cash is accepted everywhere. I'm not likely to be mugged where I live and I don't carry a lot of money.
Sign up for Mint, and quickly scan all of your transactions on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. It's a good idea anyway, so that you can easily account and keep track of how well you're doing at saving.
I have not found this to be the case.
> Sign up for Mint
I don't intend to increase the available surface area for attacks by giving my credit information to a third party. Nor do I need this kind of a monthly or bi-monthly hassle.
Point taken on the attack surface area, that's definitely something I've always been worried about, and I have no counter.
That's why it's also a good idea to carry 2-3 cards, since there's always a chance any single one might develop a problem.
If all of the 2-3 cards are used in the same places, they would be equally at risk of a problem.
The only way to manage the risk is to have a card that is rarely used, or cards that are separated by vendor risk.
There are some banks that simply won't cancel the card until you visit your local branch. A tricky maneuver when it's 2000 miles away (I don't know if they've changed this now). Likewise, there are things that are hard to find if you use your cards a lot and don't keep detailed receipts on everything you buy. This happened to me when I discovered someone's been deducting a small sum from my card for several months without me noticing as I was overseas. Of course they could only take care of the last charge before cancelling my card.
What bank would ever require a visit in person to deactivate your current card? That would be insane, since the bank would simply be opening itself up to more losses, since it (and not you) are responsible for fraudulent expenses.
Like I said, I don't know if they still do this.
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~tygar/papers/Keyboard_Acoustic_E...
A mechanical or electric typewriter full of moving parts? Sounds like side channel city to me.
Your normal-ish executive will have the ability to work in places without LOS from non-credentialed personell (eg, high rise apartment, gated community, interior conference rooms, etc). The NSA or MI6 could of course rent the flat across the street, or have a sub-contractor con his way into employment, but this type of stuff is outside the remit of your basic opportunistic threat. And it leaves evidence and paper trails unless you are the mossad or cia whomever and can fake identities like passports, bank accounts, etc.