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    Been hacked? What to do next

    • General
    • by Jacob Riggs
    • 12-05-2020
    4.17 of 64 votes

    Please note, the advice below is tailored for online accounts of a personal nature. Any online accounts with existing or potential access to work related data in the context of employment will usually need to follow a more refined internally sanctioned incident response process (likely in accordance with the NIST industry standard). In such circumstances, please refer to your company

  • How to validate file integrity with checksums

    4.61 of 77 votes

    A checksum is a unique string derived from a block of digital data for the purpose of detecting any changes which may have been introduced during its transmission or storage. In short, checksums are a file integrity validation measure. If you download a file from an untrusted source, a checksum can help you validate that the file you have downloaded

  • How to generate PGP keys

    4.66 of 87 votes

    To receive PGP encrypted emails and sign your own messages, you will need to generate your own key pair. There are both easy and advanced (best practice) ways to go about doing this. Here I will try to guide you through the process. The easy method Use an online third party web service such as PGP Tool. This is simply

  • How do PGP keys work

    4.58 of 88 votes

    PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption has become a long-standing pillar for protection and security for one primary reason: it permits you to send a coded message to somebody without sharing a key in advance.Suppose you wanted to send a sensitive message to someone without anyone else being able to access the content. Perhaps the best arrangement would be to encrypt

  • A simple way to view documents safely

    4.67 of 73 votes

    Working in the media industry has shown me that the weakness of many journalists is their desire to click on and open things that promise something they want. This presents a security risk, one often compounded by the demanding speed at which reporters must compete to ingest information and make rapid editorial decisions. The reality is that journalism commands a

  • I got a letter of appreciation from Harvard University

    • General
    • by Jacob Riggs
    • 17-02-2020
    4.84 of 86 votes

    Recently, I received a letter of appreciation from Harvard University after responsibly disclosing a critical vulnerability. The letter reads:HUIT Information Security would like to thank Jacob for responsibly reporting Server Side Injection (SSI) along with instructions for reproducing the problem. My report was well received and their triage and remediation efforts were swift.Thanks, Harvard.