**[Note: You need to be able to legally work in the Netherlands

Right-Hand Cybersecurity

Hey there, Hacker! Thanks for checking out the brand-new HackerNoon app! You might have some questions about how to navigate this whole thing, and that’s why we’re here to help. One of the most important things you can do is create an account on HackerNoon (don’t forget that you need one to use the app!), so we’ll get you started on how to make one. Creating an Account on the HackerNoon App The first thing you want to do if you want to set up an account is click the “I don’t have a HackerNoon account yet.” below the Login box. After that, input the Email address you would like associated with your HackerNoon account and create a strong password to go along with it. Alternatively, you can also sign up with your Google email or Apple ID by tapping the corresponding icon and using your Google or Apple Account. Now, we get to specialize your HackerNoon account so you can get the stories you want to see. We have over 20 cataloging every story on HackerNoon, ranging from Programming to Cybersecurity to Gaming to Startups to Finance. Choose your favorites or click “skip for now” in the top right if you just wanna get right to the main page. Tech Categories And with that, you have set up your account, and you’re on your way to reading some great stories. Easy as pie! Welcome to the family, Hacker! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/aGyxSDiFJP0?embedable=true Logging into the HackerNoon App if You Already Have an Account If you already have an account, tap the “Already have an account?” button underneath the Sign Up page. 2. Simply log in with the email and password you used to sign up to HackerNoon originally, and you’re good to go! 3. Alternatively, you can also sign in via Google or Apple by tapping the corresponding icon and using your Google or Apple Account. It’s that easy! Deleting an Account on the HackerNoon App If you would like to delete your account (please don’t go!), complete the following steps: From the home page, click your profile icon in the bottom right-hand corner. Tap on the “Account” tab. Hit the big red “Delete Account” button on your screen. Hit the big red “Deactivate Account” button when it pops up. A verification code will be sent to the email address associated with your HackerNoon account; head over to your email to find the six-digit code. Input your six-digit Verification Code to delete your account and tap the Deactivate Account button. You can always reactivate your account by logging in with the same email and password and then tapping “Reactivate Account.”

How To Create an Account (or Delete It) on the HackerNoon App

When it comes to AI projects, the phrase “When in doubt, hire it out” rings true. Of course, that’s easy for me to say since I run an AI company, but hear me out. Software projects, especially automation, can easily slide into one of two, or both, bad outcomes. I want to help you be aware of, and avoid common pitfalls. The first bad outcome is the project that never ends. There’s always “one more hurdle” to get over. I’ve found most of these projects have the wrong people doing the work. These projects will end 2–3X over budget and will take way too long to complete. The second bad outcome, and this is the worse of the two, is when automation is built and it doesn’t do what’s intended. Now, you’re left with a bad process that is automated, so you must create a new process to fix the automation’s mistakes. Instead of freeing up your team to do bigger and better things, you’ve freed up your team to babysit an AI. How do you avoid these outcomes? By building the perfect AI project team. There are two methods for doing that: the first is the done-for-you option, and the second is the done-by-you option. Method 1: Hire a Product Development Company When it comes to building AI tools, your first option is to hire a product development company. My company, Teammate AI, is an example of this. We take care of everything for you. We design, develop, test, deploy, and scale. We create the AI algorithms and maintain them, scale your server capacity, and handle cybersecurity. If you decide you want to turn your newfound AI capability into a new business unit, we even turn it into a SaaS company with you. Our process is straightforward. We start by coaching leadership teams and finding opportunities, and then we serve as the product development team. Then, if the client wishes, we turn the new AI product into a revenue-generating business unit. Before we design your solution, we want to design your problem (and yes, your problem can be designed). In an AI world, we want to frame the problem so that the problem is solved once-and-for-all. This means that you, the end-user, and the client, never have to touch it again. Next, we design the solutions that best fit your business. We talk about what’s possible and our confidence to get the job done on time and within budget. If everyone decides to move forward with the AI project, we can develop the solution in consultation with your subject matter experts and your end-users. Method 2: You’re On Your Own With companies like ours, if you’d like to only gain clarity with coaching and product design, you can do that. You can then hire an implementation team separately. This drastically lowers the cost to an agency, but you’re managing implementation. That is the YOYO method—in other words, “you’re on your own.” With this method, the budget and product quality are what you make it. Additionally, it does require some key hires, the most important of which is the solution designer. This is your right-hand person and the individual responsible for project success. A solution designer is an individual who speaks the business language and the technical language. They know what the limits of AI are, they can create and present solutions to your problems, and they know what resources to bring on to accomplish the task at hand. Most importantly, they can give you a ballpark range of the investment required to get the job done. A solution designer is the person you want to run the entire project, including making hires for talent. At a minimum, they need to hire a project manager, a data cleaner/validator, full-stack application developer(s), Deep Learning/Machine Learning developer(s), QA/Tester(s), and people who can do graphic design/app design. Your AI Project Team’s Responsibility Which method you choose will depend on your budget, expertise, and what solution you need to be built. Both have their pros and cons, so think carefully before making a decision. Regardless of what method you choose, your AI project team’s responsibility is to manage the project and deliver the solution. It’s not your responsibility to demand certain project methodologies, deployment strategies, and technical specifications unless you’ve got an IT team working with your AI project team. There’s a difference between software that works and software that works for your business. You can expect that your subject matter experts will test the solution. This testing will ensure the solution solves your specific use case. Let me give you an example. Track Account Executive Activity with AI Let’s pretend that your sales manager or general manager would like to track account executive activity for job performance. Your performance reviews right now are based solely on reaching a quota, but you’d like to track more leading indicators. Your immediate move is to hire a solution designer, who comes up with a viable solution: store data in a database and use a technology tool called Tableau. The solution is viable, and in fact, it’s relatively common. While it does require developer investment, it’s very doable. You move forward with it. Top-performing sales reps and underperforming sales reps are now measured by more metrics than just a quota, and your sales manager starts tweaking aspects of your territories, prospecting, and sales funnel to optimize close rates. It’s so freeing to see each sales rep’s activities every week. Tableau is easy to use, and sales management is way easier. In the long term, this change becomes such a huge component of your performance reviews that your leadership starts looking for ways to track activities across the business. The business, over time, becomes more and more data-driven and predictable, leaving you with a self-managing company. Make AI Work for You The example above is just one way that you might be able to make AI work for you. And, coming up with and then implementing this solution is doable using either of the methods I described. Ready to bring AI into your own business? Consider which processes you want to automate. Then, think through your team’s knowledge base, your budget, and what you want to accomplish. That will help you decide which method is right for you. Once you do, you can pull the trigger and get AI working for you. For more advice on how to implement AI in your business, you can find AI as Your Teammate on Amazon. Evan Ryan is the founder of Teammate AI, helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses using artificial intelligence. Teammate has launched and powered businesses such as Lede AI and ContentX, which use AI to write, edit, and publish content—all without human intervention. Over the past five years, Teammate has helped hundreds of businesses save millions of hours by using AI in everything from small tasks to complex, multi-day processes. Evan spends most of his time showing entrepreneurs how to save time with AI and designing solutions that help teams stop being human computers and start creating bigger, more dynamic value. Learn more at TeammateAI.com .

How to Build the Perfect AI Project Team

Over the past decade, Facebook has added new privacy features the way farmers used to build additions onto their houses: Haphazardly and only as needed. As a result, users are left with a sprawling array of choices. Turn this corner, and you might realize that every third-party app you’ve ever authorized still has access to your account. Turn that one and you’ll stumble across the fact that you’ve been sharing photos publicly, even though you thought they were only shared with your friends. Checking every single privacy option takes time — but it’s time well-spent if you care about controlling your privacy online. Before we start exploring those random rooms, though, it’s important to note that while you can control what other people see when it comes to your Facebook activity, you can’t control much of what sees. Facebook is “free” — but you pay by allowing them to collect and sell information about what you do on the platform. So if you opt in to the network, you’re also opting into giving up a certain amount of privacy. That’s just how the network keeps running and if that’s something you’re not comfortable with, you’d be better off disabling your account than reading the rest of this guide. Facebook Let’s start with the basics. Privacy Checkup Tool Facebook recently introduced a Privacy Checkup tool that’s great if you just want to make sure your basics are covered. To access it, click on the question mark icon  in the upper righthand corner of any Facebook screen. This pulls up a drop-down guide, and “ ” should be a little past halfway down. Privacy Checkup In the Facebook app, tap over to the Help & Setting section, and scroll down until you see Privacy Shortcuts on the list. Tap Privacy Checkup to get started. If you don’t see it, it might not be available yet for your area or device — Facebook hasn’t rolled out this feature for everyone yet. Facebook will guide you through three steps to make sure you’re sharing your posts with the right people. Let’s go over each step now. Posts The first thing you’ll be checking is who can see your posts. You can choose from the drop-down whether you want posts visible to: The includes people both on and off Facebook Public are people you’re friends with on Facebook Friends … are all of your friends except for ones you specify Friends Except , which will make your posts visible to only you and invisible to everyone else. Only Me If you click “ ” you’ll also have the option of “ .” Changing the setting here will affect all of your future posts — it becomes your default setting for posting. More… Specific Friends However, if you want to make certain posts available to different audiences, you can do that with each individual post in the future. Just click on the little bar at the bottom righthand corner of the post to change the privacy setting for that post. Apps From the user’s perspective, it’s a lot quicker to just click and authorize Facebook as a login for a third-party app than it is to type in all of your information. It’s important to note that when you authorize a Facebook login on a third-party app you’re not only potentially giving that app access to your Facebook account (especially in the beginning of third-party logins, when privacy was less protected) but you’re also building a daisy-chain of connected logins. The longer that chain is, the more susceptible you are to cybercriminals if any of those accounts are compromised. So the best move is to delete any apps you’re no longer using from your Facebook profile. Just review the apps that are currently connected with your Facebook account and click the little “x” on the ones you don’t want to be connected to anymore. You also have the option to delete any posts associated with the app from your timeline and whether or not you want your use of the app to be visible to anyone else online. Profile The basic privacy check for your profile gives you a quick look at the info that Facebook has deemed most likely to be an issue: Your email, birthday, hometown, and relationship status. For each one, you can choose whether you want that information to be available to “Public, “Friends,” “Friends except acquaintances,” “Only me,” “Custom,” or “More Options,” which is where you can pick groups that you belong to. For those of you feeling a little self-conscious about getting on in years, you can choose to share the day but not the year — or vice versa, if you prefer. But don’t think this is everything visible on your profile! Go to your profile page, where you can edit Work and Education, Places You’ve Lived, Contact and Basic Info, Family and Relationships, Details About You, and Life Events. Each one is fully editable — you get to choose how much information you want to share, and with whom. It’s worth noting that while it’s a good idea to take a look at your whole profile, Facebook did kind of nail it with this one. The information they have you check in the Privacy Checkup is really the most sensitive stuff, so if you’re feeling overwhelmed by how much you need to do, it’s okay to skim this part. Privacy Settings Accessing your Privacy dashboard So that was the basics. And for most people, that will probably be enough. But we know that many of you want more control — and in the case of internet privacy, that’s always a good thing. Your Privacy dashboard offers more controls so you can fine-tune your privacy levels on Facebook. On desktop: To access your Privacy dashboard on the web, click on the downward pointing arrow button in the upper righthand corner of your Facebook screen. Scroll down and click on “Settings.” Once you’re in “Settings,” click on “Privacy” in the left-hand toolbar. In the mobile app: Navigate to the Privacy dashboard in the Facebook mobile app, tap over to the Help & Setting section, and scroll down until you see Privacy Shortcuts on the list. Managing access to your profile If you went through the Privacy Checkup, this part should be taken care of already. If you, you can manage your access to your profile here, including who can see your posts, who can contact you, and who can find you when they search for you on Facebook. Timeline Review If you click on “ ,” you’ll be brought to the Timeline Review page (mobile app users will need to tap back one screen to find this section). Use Activity Log You can review that’s been posted on your Timeline, as well as what activity is visible to whom. This is where we really get into control freak privacy and it’s up to you how deep into the weeds you want to dive. With that in mind, we’re going to go over the generalities of each section and you can do what you want with that information. everything Under “Activity Log” you can see every action you’ve taken on Facebook. Each action has its own icon telling you exactly who can see it — take a look and make sure you’re not sharing information that you’d prefer to keep private. Items to Review Items to Review is a list of posts you need to approve before they’re put on your timeline. If you haven’t opted into that option — or if you’ve been reviewing items as they come along — this space will be blank. If not, it will have items for you to review. The option just under Timeline Review — Tags Review — is the same, but for tags. These will be someone else’s posts that you are tagged in, such as a friend’s photo or a link that they’ve tagged you in. Your Posts Your Posts shows your own activity log - posts that you’ve shared on your profile. You can retroactively edit the privacy level of each post, hide it from your timeline, or delete it altogether. Posts You’re Tagged In and Posts By Others These are lists of posts others have tagged you in, such as photos, videos, status updates, or links to articles they think you might find interesting. You can see here whether or not the post has been shared to your timeline, and if not, you choose to show or hide it from your timeline, as well as report the post if you find it offensive. Posts You’ve Hidden As you can guess, these are posts you’ve either hidden from your timeline or posts you have not yet approved for your timeline. You can choose to add a post to your timeline here or report it. Or leave it alone to keep hiding it. Photos, Photos of You, Your Photos You’ll find photos you’re tagged in or photos you’ve shared in these lists. You can choose to share these photos on your timeline, hide them from your timeline, or untag yourself. Likes You may be surprised to learn that if your privacy settings are public, everything you like on Facebook is shared on your public timeline - meaning an innocent “thumbs up” on an out-of-context post might raise some eyebrows. At any rate, it’s a good idea to routinely visit your Likes list. It’s not uncommon to accidentally or unknowingly thumbs up a post, especially if you’re scrolling down your feed on a mobile device. Comments Review all the comments you’ve left here. You can see if you’ve made the comment publicly or which privacy level it was made at. You can’t adjust the privacy level after you’ve left the comment, but you can delete it. More Under comments is a “More” button, which will reveal a drop-down that includes every other type of post that could be on your timeline or your friend’s newsfeeds. Take a quick look to see if you’re concerned about any of these, but there’s a reason they’re hidden behind a drop-down — and it’s really just because they’re usually not a big deal. All Apps Finally, if you’re curious about what your apps are posting to Facebook, click on the “All Apps” option. Here you can see both a chronological timeline of everything that’s been posted to your wall via an app and what each individual app has posted. You can also control the visibility of each post with the drop-down option to the right. Limit past posts Back in Settings, there’s an option to limit the audience of past posts. That means that no matter what permission you gave previously, of your old posts will be switched over to friends. This is a handy option when, for example, you’re applying for jobs and would prefer that potential employers had a more limited view of your activity online. all To put this feature into effect, all you have to do is click “Limit Past Posts” and then confirm that you want to do that. And if you want a more surgical approach as opposed to slashing it with a hatchet, you can always go in and individually change permissions on each post. Who can contact and find me? If you want to enjoy Facebook but don’t want to be accessible to everyone in the world, you can limit both who you want to allow to contact you and who can look you up on Facebook. Under “Who can contact me?” you can choose who on Facebook is allowed to make friend requests — “Everyone” or “Friends of friends.” Under “Who can look me up?” you can decide whether or not people can look you up via your email address, your phone number, and whether or not external search engines link to your profile. Timeline and Tagging With the addition of tags, Facebook made it possible for other people to identify you in posts. That’s great if those posts are, say, pictures of a friend’s kid’s birthday party. It’s less great if those posts are pictures of a friend’s party. However, if you just tweak the Timeline and Tagging Settings a little bit, you can control those tags before they’re shared with everyone from your grandma to your boss. bachelorette Who can add things to my timeline? The first section lets you choose who can post things on your timeline, as well as when those posts will go live on your timeline. If you don’t want to post on your timeline, choose “Only me.” If you want to make sure you know what’s going to be posted before it’s up there, enables the option to review posts. anyone Who can see things on my timeline? This is the section where you get to choose who can see both what you’ve posted and what friends have posted on your timeline. There’s also a “View As” button, which lets you see how your timeline looks to the public a specific person. It’s a great way to review what you’re revealing on your profile. or Managing tags With tagging, anyone can add your name to any image. But with the managing tags section, you get to decide both who can tag you and where those tags will be seen. The first option is “Review tags people add to your own posts before the tags appear on Facebook?” which can be toggled to “enabled” or “disabled.” If a stranger asks to tag your post, you’ll always be notified before it’s added but this helps you decide what your friends can tag.** The next question asked, “When you’re tagged in a post, who do you want to add to the audience if they aren’t already in it?” This lets you decide whether or not people on your friends’ list can see posts that you’re tagged in.** And finally, “Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded?” This one is a little trickier. Remember those name suggestions that Facebook makes when you’re tagging an image? This is where you get to decide whether or not you want your name to be suggested. While this might seem harmless, it’s important to note that opting into this feature gives Facebook permission to include your face in their database of images. This is untested waters — we don’t yet know what else those images could be used for — and Facebook is actually . facing a lawsuit about this feature Manage Blocking Blocking is one way that Facebook gives users control over who can see their posts, who can contact them, and who they never want to hear from again. It’s great for pushing back against online harassment or, in more serious cases, keeping people safe from stalkers or other people who might want to do them harm. Restricted list First of all, you have the ability to put people on a restricted list, which means they won’t see things you share only with Friends. It’s a way to stay friends without sharing with them — and without them knowing that they’re not seeing everything you post. everything Block users Blocking someone is a more complete move. If you put someone on your block list, they won’t be able to see anything you post, tag you, invite you to anything, the message you, or re-add you as a friend. It does not, however, affect games and groups that you both are a part of. Block messages Pretty self-explanatory: This allows you to block messages and video calls. It doesn’t, however, prevent someone from posting on your timeline, tagging you, or commenting on your posts and comments. Block app invites Sick of your aunt constantly trying to get you to play Farmville? Put them on this list and Facebook won’t show you any more app invites from her. Block event invites We all have that friend who lives across the country but still invites us to every event. Put them on this list and you won’t get those invites anymore. Block apps This section lets you block apps, preventing them from contacting you or getting any info about you that isn’t already public on Facebook. Block pages The same goes for any pages you choose to block — they won’t be able to interact with any of your posts or comments. However, you also won’t be able to post on their page or message them. Managing Ad Tracking As we mentioned before, Facebook is “free” because they collect and sell your user data to advertisers. Facebook uses four main sources (and they’re careful to use language in their guide that suggests there are other sources they’re not telling us about): activity on Facebook, the information you’ve shared with a business, “other online activity,” and your location. Activity on Facebook apps and services This one is pretty straightforward. Facebook shows you ads based on Pages you’ve liked, pages your friends have liked, information from both your Facebook and Instagram profiles, and places you’ve checked in to on Facebook. In your ad settings control for this option is under “Your ad preferences.” This is where Facebook tracks everything you’ve interacted with on the site. You can choose whether you want to see ads for each thing, but you can’t turn them off altogether. Information shared with a business If you’ve given a company your email address or phone number, they might add it to their customer list, which they’ll then cross-reference with Facebook’s ad program to show you relevant ads. Facebook says this info can come from loyalty programs, “information compiled by data providers,” and when you make a purchase in a retail store. Other online activity Have you ever noticed an ad on Facebook that relates to an item you were recently looking at on another site or a site you recently visited? That happens because that site is using , which is a piece of tracking code Facebook has developed to let retailers directly target people who interact with their site. If you visit a site that uses Facebook pixel, downloaded a mobile app of a company that has it embedded, made a purchase, or added an item to a shopping cart, even without checking out, that action may be tracked. Facebook pixel You can control whether or not your activity on other sites is tracked with a Facebook pixel in the section titled “Ads based on your use of websites and apps.” Ads on apps and websites off of the Facebook Companies Facebook has something called the Facebook Audience Network. It’s basically their own ad agency. Companies that pay to participate can “expand their Facebook ad campaigns” beyond Facebook properties and on to any mobile app or mobile app on computers, phones, and connected TVs that participates in the program. To opt-in or out of the Audience Network, toggle to “yes” or “no” in this section. Facebook’s privacy policies are constantly shifting. Every time the company adds a new feature a whole new set of potential issues arises. We work hard to keep this guide up to date but it’s always a good idea to check on the site itself for more information. Good luck! In any case, Avast Secure Browser is here to help you with your security and privacy needs. Why not give it a try now? It’s free! . Click here to learn more And, last but not least, do not forget to ! cast your vote on 2021 Noonies Awards

Your Facebook Privacy Guide for 2022

What is a Password Manager? Malwarebytes defines a password manager as a “software application designed to store and manage online credentials and it also generates passwords” ( ). The passwords are typically stored in an encrypted database and protected behind a master password. malwarebytes The purpose of a password manager is to keep all of your login credentials all in one place so you don’t have to scramble to remember what your password for a specific website is. It makes it easy for you to keep all of your account usernames and passwords in one spot and locked via a master password, which is the only password you need to remember. Once you enter your master password into the password manager, it unlocks the password vault and can retrieve any password that you need. You can also autofill your login credentials in browsers with the password managers. Although the autofill feature is beneficial, the rest of this article will discuss why you should disable autofill on your browsers and the security concerns that come with it. Password Manager Examples Here are a few password manager examples: LastPass Bitwarden KeePass Dashlane 1Password What is Autofilling? Autofilling is when your password manager fills in the username and password into a website’s login page with your saved credentials. Benefits of Using Autofill in Your Password Manager By using a password manager, you have the ability to autofill your login credentials on any website as long as you have the autofill for your password manager enabled. This makes it so that you don’t have to memorize your passwords anymore for a certain website. You can even use the password manager to auto-generate a highly secure password for you for a website or application if you don’t want to come up with one on your own. Although there are many benefits of using autofill with your password manager, security experts are encouraging people to disable autofill in your password manager because there are autofill features that can be exploited by hackers. Should you Disable Autofill? The answer is YES, you should disable autofill and I will tell you why. The biggest concern with autofill is privacy and how a hacker can easily obtain personal information. It is simple to trick a browser or password manager into giving up saved login credentials. The hacker just needs to “place an invisible form on a compromised webpage to collect users’ login information” ( ). Back in 2017, Finnish web developer, Viljami Kuosmanen, published a demo on that shows how an attacker takes advantage of the autofill feature that is provided by most browsers. Kuosmanen “discovered a vulnerability that can expose your stored data to a malicious person via phishing” ( ). In this attack, once a user visits the phishing website, they will be presented with “a series of text boxes where it asks for some basic information” ( ). If you use autofill to enter in the information, then the hidden text boxes are actually collecting your information without your knowledge. Once successful, the hacker now has access to your login credentials, credit card information, and any other sensitive data. techadvisory GitHub Social Engineer PCMag Hackers are not the only one trying to use your login credentials, some “ad networks are using tracking scripts to grab email addresses stored in your password manager for autofilling”. The purpose of doing this is to not hack your personal information but to get a better understanding of the websites you visit so they can target more appropriate ads towards you. Prevention Against Autofill Attack The best way for you to prevent any attack is to disable autofill in any browser you use. It's better to copy and paste the password from your password manager than to autofill it. If an organization allows the usage of password managers, then it is important to educate all employees to not click on any suspicious links or emails received. Phishing emails are hackers' favorite way to deceive users into getting the information that they want. How to Disable the Autofill Feature on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari It is important to note that the autofill feature is enabled by default and this is how you can disable autofill in each of the listed browsers. Chrome Click on the three dots on the upper right hand corner of the browser Go to Settings Expand the Autofill section and then select on what you wish to disable autofill (you can toggle the OFF setting if it has been enabled) Firefox Click on the three lines at the top right of the screen Click on Settings Select on the left side of the screen Privacy & Security Scroll down until you see then uncheck (if it is checked marked) Logins and Passwords Autofill Login and Passwords Safari Click on the menu → → tab → Unselect and any other options listed that you do not want to have autofilled Safari Preferences Autofill Username and Passwords Hopefully by now you have a better understanding of password managers and how you can disable autofill in your browser. If you didn’t know much about password managers then I hope this article helped explain that. Autofill with password managers does have its advantages however the privacy security concern should raise some red flags. Hackers will always do their best to obtain personal information without the person’s knowledge. Therefore, it is very important to make sure what can happen if you continue to use autofill in your browser. Companies should be doing their best to prevent attacks from occurring as a loss of credentials may cause serious if not permanent damage to the organization.

Should You Disable Autofill? - Here's How to Protect Your Passwords

If you are interested in Ethereum and smart contract development but you aren't exactly an ace software developer, or maybe you have no coding knowledge at all, then you are in the right place. In this article, I briefly talk about my background and how I was able to go from no coding experience to creating my first decentralized application within a year. I've been in the cyber and tech world for about eight years, but I've had little to no exposure to the software development side of things. I left my last cybersecurity job back in March, days before the world started freaking out about COVID, leaving me unemployed for months due to the lockdowns. What better time, I thought, to finally pick up a coding language or two? Smart Contracts Picking a coding language, or languages I should say, was easy. I wanted to get into blockchain engineering and smart contract development. Why? Because for once in my life, I wanted to get ahead of the herd. I wanted to get ahead of something that is not only fascinating but revolutionary. Not only that but smart contracts, along with decentralized oracles and blockchains, provide a layer of trust in agreements that is orders of magnitude higher than we have today. When you combine the fact that agreements in some form or another power all global trade and commerce with the fact that trust is the most powerful economic force in the world, it seemed like a no-brainer for where I wanted to take my career next. Smart contracts will dominate, and there will be a serious need for blockchain engineers and developers. Smart contract development on Ethereum primarily uses Javascript and Solidity. Javascript should need no introduction, but Solidity might. Solidity is an object-oriented, high-level language for implementing Ethereum smart contracts. If you aren't entirely familiar with what a smart contract is, Investopedia's definition is: A is a self-executing with the terms of the agreement between buyer and seller being directly written into lines of code. smart contract contract What You Need To Know When creating an application on Ethereum, you have to not only have knowledge of how to create a smart contract, but also how to create a front end, or a user-facing website. Together, these two pieces essentially combine to form a decentralized application. I started with Solidity but quickly realized that it wasn’t the greatest programming language for a beginner to start with. Instead, I pivoted to something a little more well-known — Javascript. Decentralized applications and smart contracts use Javascript pretty extensively for the front-end, testing, and connecting your smart contract to the web 3.0. Without having a reasonable foundation in Javascript, you won't get very far, so I recommend starting there. While I was working on learning the fundamentals of Javascript, I also took a few courses here and there on HTML and CSS. I wasn’t aiming to become a pro front-end developer, I just wanted the basics down so that I could build out a website and plug it into a smart contract without the website looking like crap. Once I started to feel somewhat comfortable with Javascript and HTML/CSS, I moved on to a front-end Javascript library called React. I chose React because it has a great community, and is one of the most popular front-end libraries when it comes to decentralized application development. I'll have to warn you that although React is super cool, it's a bit of a beast to learn. Don't skimp on the fundamentals before moving on to frameworks or libraries. Smart Contract Code Without further ado, let's get into the smart contract code for my Ethereum application. Just as a warning, though - this is a high-level walk-through, so don't expect a detailed explanation of every little aspect of the code or the application. Don't get too caught up in the details or what every little part does if you aren't familiar with Solidity. Just know that the code essentially takes in a string, or any combination of letters and numbers, stores it in an array, and writes it to the blockchain when the user hits the submit button on the website. Along with the string, the application records whatever blockchain address you were using at the time. Scroll back up to see what the application looks like after recording a few messages if you need to. The code above has two functions. The first function takes in a variable that allows you to change the message and then push the message into the array. The second function simply just returns the strings that you saved in the array when it is called. And that's about as complex as it gets. setMessage savedMessages getMessage I originally wrote this smart contract on a free Solidity coding platform called . Remix allows anyone to write smart contracts on their website, deploy them to a test blockchain, and interact with the functions to test them out. It's an awesome tool and I highly recommend you check it out. Remix Front-End Moving on to the front-end, as I mentioned earlier, I used React for this project. The benefit of React is that it allows us to break up our application into what are called components which are separate pieces of Javascript and JSX code that make up the website. In the React website that you can see at the beginning of this article, I used a CSS framework called Bootstrap for styling. It's yet another thing to learn but makes styling your website considerably easier. In the Navbar in the upper-right hand corner of the app, you can also see the blockchain address that I was connected to at the time. It took a good amount of React code to put together my application, but I found it pretty cool to not only see how smart contracts "plug in" to front-end websites, but to actually make it happen myself. The React code essentially manages the user interactions with the website and calls certain functions within the smart contract, which in this app's case, recorded the strings to the blockchain and displayed them back to us on the website. I'm not going to cover the front-end code or go into detail on everything you need to know for that, but if you wanted to at least look at the code, you can check out my . Github repo Putting It All Together I'm obviously skipping over a lot here, but there you have it - my first decentralized Ethereum application! I wish I could tell you that you only needed to know Solidity and Javascript to make this all happen (if that weren't a large enough effort in itself), but unfortunately, there is a lot more that you need to know. To name a few - private blockchains like Ganache for testing out your application locally, testnets, mainnets, knowledge of the underlying Ethereum blockchain architecture and how smart contracts work behind the scenes, development frameworks such as Truffle or Hardhat, and blockchain wallets and gateways such as Metamask. As you can see, there is basically a mountain of information that you need to know that goes into creating even the most basic Ethereum application. But don't let this scare you off! If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. And hopefully, if you are anything like me, this stuff excites you and you love to learn. I estimated that over the course of one year, I probably put in on average 2-4 hours a day learning how to code as well as learning the surrounding blockchain development technologies. That equals anywhere from 600-1,200 hours to build a basic Ethereum application! It hasn't exactly been smooth sailing or a nice straight linear path to get to this point, but it's important to realize that it's a marathon, not a sprint. You don't need to be a genius to learn any of this either. Consistency, passion, and a solid work ethic are all that it takes. If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more, please stay tuned, as I have plans for much more content around Ethereum, Solidity, and smart contract development.  This includes why I think blockchain engineering is a great career choice, the best learning resources that I've come across, and in-depth Solidity walkthroughs.

I Went From No Coding Experience To Creating An Ethereum Application Within One Year

All web browsers remember a list of the web pages you’ve visited. You can delete this list at any time, clearing your browsing history and erasing the tracks stored on your computer, smartphone, or tablet. Each browser has its own separate history, so you’ll need to clear the history in multiple places if you’ve used more than one browser. In Google Chrome : 1) Click or tap the menu icon with three dots on the upper-right side of the browser window. 2) Click or tap > History (CTRL+H). History 3) On the left hand side, scroll to . A box will appear which will ask you how much history you want to delete. Clear Browsing Data 4) If you want to completely clear out your history, also click the boxes for and cached images and files. Then click . That’ll clear out your previous searches. cookies and other site data Clear Data 5) You may also want to prevent Chrome from auto-completing searches in the future. In , (also found by tapping on the three dots on the upper-right of your browser) click , and scroll to . Under Other Google Services, find and toggle this switch off (to the left). Settings Sync and Google services Other Google Services Autocomplete searches and URLs 6) If you need to clear your mobile history, tap on the three dots, then on . Click on , then tap . History Clear Browsing Data Clear Data For : Firefox 1) Click or tap the menu icon with three lines on the upper-right side of the browser. window. 2) Click on the icon from the drop-down menu. Library 3) Click on the icon that comes up in the drop-down menu inside the Library tab. History 4) Click on the sidebar. You’ll see options ranging from “Today” to “Older Than 6 Months.” View History 5) Right-click on the option you want and press . Delete 6) For mobile, tap the three-bar menu icon on the upper right side of the browser, then tap . Settings 7) Tap Search, scroll down, and then clear the check box. Show search history For Safari (desktop): 1) Click the menu, then click the tab. Safari History 2)Click on . Clear History and Website Data 3) From the drop-down menu, choose the time frame you want to delete (most likely .) all history 4) Click . Clear History For Safari (mobile): 1) Go to the icon on the home screen. Settings 2) Scroll down to . Safari 3) Tap on . Clear History and Website Data 4) Keep in mind that this process deletes every bit of your browsing data, as well as browser cookies. For Internet Explorer: This will depend on the version you are using. For older versions: 1) Click on the button (the star icon) in the top right hand corner. Favorites 2) Select the tab and click on how you want to view your history (date, site, etc.) History 3) Right-click on whatever you want to delete and select the option. Delete For IE 10 or 11: 1) Click on the button (the wheel). Tools 2) Select and then . Safety Delete Browsing History 3) This will give you several options on deleting files, cookies and history. Microsoft Edge: To clear your browsing history in Microsoft Edge, click menu > Settings > Choose what to clear. You can also press Ctrl+Shift+Delete to open these options. Ensure the “Browsing history” box is checked and click “Clear”. You can also choose to clear other types of private data from here, including your download history, cached data, cookies, and tabs you’ve set aside. Just check the type of data you want to delete and click the “Clear” button. To delete search activity from Google Maps, YouTube and Other Google products: On your computer : 1. Go to your Google account (https://myaccount.google.com/) 2. Scroll the left hand panel and click Data & personalization. 3. Under “Activity and timeline,” click My Activity. 4. From the left hand panel, click Delete activity by. 5. Select the date or time you wish to delete and hit delete. On your Android phone/tablet: 1. Open your device’s Settings app to Google or click on the Google icon from your phone’s main screen. 2. Click on Google Account or Manage Your Account (depending on which way you arrived at the account) 3. Click on Manage Your Data & Personalization 4. Under Activity and time, click My Activity 5. To the right of the search bar, click on the three dots and select Delete activity by 6. Select the date or time you wish to delete and hit delete. On your iPhone/iPad: 1. Open the Gmail app. If you don’t use Gmail, go to https://myaccount.google.com/) 2. Click on Menu (three bars), then Settings, then your account, Click on Manage your Google Account 3. At the top, click on Data & Personalization 4. Under “Activity and timeline,” click My Activity 5. At the top right of the page, click on the three dots and select Delete activity by 6. Select the date or time you wish to delete and hit delete. This article was originally posted on Knowlab

How to Delete Your Browser History

Two days before New Years, something interesting happened in the world of cyber . The Department of Homeland Security released a report on hacking activities by Russian Intelligence Services related to activities against the U.S. . The report was somewhat interesting, however DHS also released a set of indicators in a .csv file with 956 lines of data. As the CEO of a new cyber security startup focused on using data in smarter, more interesting ways, this data tugged and pulled at me in a way that I did not expect. Over the next two days, in between (and through) family events, football games, dogs grabbing food off of the counters, I sat on a stool in my in-law’s kitchen and tuned out the world. There was something about this analysis that I could not ignore. security Government “On October 7, 2016, the Department Of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) issued a joint statement on election security compromises. DHS has released a Joint Analysis Report (JAR) attributing those compromises to Russian malicious cyber activity, designated as GRIZZLY STEPPE.” — https://www.us-cert.gov/security-publications/GRIZZLY-STEPPE-Russian-Malicious-Cyber-Activity This posting is meant to summarize some of the findings of the more detailed report that Dark Cubed published on New Year’s eve 2016 titled, “A Brief Analysis of the Cyber Indicators Related to GRIZZLY STEPPE.” Involvement of Tor-Related Infrastructure The first thing that stood out to me was the prevalence of infrastructure related to the Tor network. I stumbled on this as something significant during my reverse DNS analysis of the IPs released. Many of the DNS entries that came back included tor-exit or tor…this was intriguing to me. I then quickly jumped over to a popular list of Tor-related IP addresses maintained at . https://www.dan.me.uk/tornodes Of the 876 IP addresses released by DHS, 211 of them appear on the list of all Tor nodes, that is right around 24% of the indicators. Looking at it from the other direction, as of the time of writing, there were 6,909 IP addresses on that list of Tor nodes. So, the DHS list of IP addresses contained approximately 3% of all of the Tor nodes…while a small percentage, this is a significant number. Now, numbers and statistics are interesting, but visualization lets this really sink in. Much of the time I spent analyzing the data released in the JAR was in building graph visualizations using Gephi. The image below shows the result of the reverse DNS analysis and the influence of Tor. Visualization of Reverse DNS Data Sets From GRIZZLY STEPPE On the left hand side, we see the reverse DNS data set visualized. The items are grouped by the associated TLD (e.g. .com, .net, .ru). The relationships in the graph flow from TLD -> Domain Name -> Fully Qualified Domain Name -> IP -> JAR. On the right hand side we have colored Tor-related IPs, domain names with Tor in them, and their parent nodes red. It is shocking to see in one glance how heavily the data is influenced by the Tor network. The bottom line from this analysis is a simple question: Even if an attack is routed through TOR, should the Government (or anyone else for that matter) be releasing the related TOR nodes as a part of a data set such as this? Analysis of Geolocation In the released .csv file, DHS identified the countries associated with each IP. This lead me down the road of exploring what insights could be gleaned from a geolocation-based analysis. The first step of course was to simply map the IP addresses on Google Maps using the MaxMind database. The result was not necessarily helpful, but interesting nonetheless. Mapping the IPs from GRIZZLY STEPPE A quick glance shows that this data set covers quite a bit of territory and was rather expansive. For a more detailed analysis, I jumped back into building out some visualizations in Gephi, a painstaking, methodical process. “These cyber operations have included spearphishing campaigns targeting government organizations, critical infrastructure entities, think tanks, universities, political organizations, and corporations leading to the theft of information” — JAR-16–20296 The result was fascinating and in some ways looks like daisy. Like the map above, the graph reveals that this is a pretty diverse data set, but there are a few very intriguing nuggets. Geolocation Analysis of GRIZZLY STEPPE The first thing that stood out to me immediately was China and the Republic of Korea. Both of those countries were featured, yet only were tied to infrastructure that was identified by the JAR as being Command and Control (C2). Looking at Russia, there was of course a significant number of nodes, however only one was identified as C2. We see the same effect in countries represented by a smaller number of nodes such as Puerto Rico (3), Thailand, and Hong Kong. What this means exactly is not clear, but it is definitely and interesting result and worth more consideration. Analysis of Organizations A different way to look at the data set involves evaluating the organizations that are related to the IP addresses themselves. Again, this took a significant amount of time to build out the visualizations in a way that made them worthwhile, but the result was fascinating. Analysis of Organizations Related to GRIZZLY STEPPE This view provides us with insight into organizations that had more IP addresses than others featured in the data set. Groups like the Russian Broadband provider Scartel Ltd. are very prominent. We also see the influence of cloud providers such as Online S.A.S. (online.net) and Ovh Systems (ovh.com). We go into more detail in the paper, but the other interesting finding here is the three organizations associated with China that appear to be related to the C2 infrastructure discussed above. Dark Cubed Analysis The final, and most detailed section of our analysis was related to proprietary data that Dark Cubed has been collecting for almost a year now. A unique part of our offering is that we provide a real-time, fully anonymous information sharing network capability to our customers that enables shared analytics without revealing customer identities. This provides us with a very unique and interesting data set that lets us compare real network activity with sets of indicators like those released with GRIZZLY STEPPE. At best this creates a rabbit hole with no value, at worst, noisy threat intelligence companies might introduce these indicators into their data sets and create a world of headaches for companies large and small. This data provides a significant benefit when evaluating such data sets due to the fact that it lets us mash up suspected bad activity with real activity to see where indicators might be too noisy. The graph below highlights the organizations related to GRIZZLY STEPPE when influenced by that volume that Dark Cubed customers observed those indicators. GRIZZLY STEPPE Related Organizations By Count Seen in Dark Cubed By using real-world data to analyze these data sets, we can instantly see the introduction of unwanted noise. Why are indicators associated with Yahoo, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, EdgeCast (Verizon) included as something that network administrators should be looking for? At best this creates a rabbit hole with no value, at worst, noisy threat intelligence companies might introduce these indicators into their data sets and create a world of headaches for companies large and small. The second analysis we go into more detail on has to do with sizing the nodes based on the number of customers that observed the indicator. This provides us with a different perspective on “noisy” indicators. GRIZZLY STEPPE Indicators By Number of Customers We see above a relatively tight grouping in the middle associated with a group of C2 and non-C2 nodes that were seen on a large number of Dark Cubed customer networks. We also see a majority of the indicators were scattered across customers in a relatively balanced fashion. In our report we dig into more detail on the most broadly seen indicators, but (spoiler alert) they just appear to be noise. Based on our initial look into the data, this is the result of broad, unfocused scanning activity that occurs from these IP addresses on a regular basis. In our report we dig into more detail on the most broadly seen indicators, but (spoiler alert) they just appear to be noise. In fact, four of the largest “C2” nodes in the graph above are simply Yahoo servers. The third and analysis worth sharing outside of our more detailed report is when we overlay scores that we calculated for our customers when they observed these indicators on their own networks. Our scores range from low risk, high confidence to high risk, high confidence. The graph below shows the results of this analysis. GRIZZLY STEPPE Indicators By Customer Count, Colored by Threat Score As we can quickly see above most of the infrastructure associated with the JAR was already known to be suspicious for a number of reasons. The items in the middle that are scored neutral (yellow) or low risk (green) are Yahoo and Google servers by the way. We can say with certainty that of the infrastructure related to GRIZZLY STEPPE AND observed by Dark Cubed customers was not used by RIS threat actors. exclusively This is important to note because it indicates how noisy this data set really is. We can not make a determination on whether the infrastructure was or was not used by the Russian Intelligence Services (RIS) because we have not seen the incident response data. However, we can say with certainty that of the infrastructure related to GRIZZLY STEPPE AND observed by Dark Cubed customers was not used by RIS threat actors. exclusively Summary In closing, this project was a fascinating deep dive into the power of data analytics and re-enforced to me the necessity of using real network data to help remove noise from data sets such as that released in association with GRIZZLY STEPPE. It also re-enforced our vision of delivering threat intelligence and predictive analytics at scale to companies of all size in a vehicle that they can actually afford and use. As we continue to build and grow our early stage startup, we hope to be able to continue to contribute more data-driven analytics to help filter out the noise and allow organizations to protect what matters most. Read the Full Report Here: goo.gl/ZRcBRC Visit the Dark Cubed Website Here: https://www.darkcubed.com

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