Net Work
Alan Winstanley
This month, Net Work looks at the never-ending problem of online security. From domestic
fridges to critical national infrastructure, everything is online and we are all vulnerable.
R
ecently the author’s ten-
year-old deep freezer decided
to throw a tantrum: although
the digital display on the door panel
showed ‘–18°C’ as normal, breaking
out my digital thermometer I found the
temperature inside was actually +5°C.
The whole interior had defrosted over
the weekend but unfortunately the
freezer had no low-temperature alarm.
A lingering chemical smell alluded to
a refrigerant leak, so the hunt was on
for a new one from the usual online
sources – preferably a European one,
but I couldn’t help noticing the Chinese
Haier brand popping up everywhere I
looked. Haier is a major manufacturer of
white goods and electrical appliances,
and claims to own 10% of the world
market, having bought America’s GE
appliances business in 2016 and the
Candy brand in 2019 (which includes
the Hoover brand, popular in Europe).
Haier’s Chinese-made appliances
undoubtedly have a high ‘showroom
appeal’ when viewed online; they
are feature-laden and competitively
priced. Some models feature Haier’s
‘Instaswitch’ that converts it from a
deep freezer to a refrigerator at the
touch of a button. (I mused that my
old South Korean freezer had done
the same thing, all by itself.) More
to the point, Haier Instaswitch freezers are Wi-Fi connected, which they
claim alerts users of abnormal temperature rises caused by an open door or
a power cut, for example. Owners can
also control the temperature through
their smartphone, Haier says. This appealing idea sounded like a deal-maker
– at first, anyway.
Online reviews seemed generally favourable, although some users felt that
the app wasn’t very effective in practise. There’s always a question-mark
hanging over the lifespan of such apps,
given that many smart TVs, radios and
PVRs outlive the essential apps that
help owners to control them. Apps
can go obsolete all too soon, leaving
dissatisfied owners high and dry. Personally, I wasn’t willing to suck it and
see and, after downloading the freezer’s manual, I saw that changing the
door hinge over was a complicated
and fiddly two-man job.
Keep it local
Being unable to check
the build quality either,
I eventually opted for a
German brand, sourced
from a local independent
store instead. Working
like my personal shopper
or Daigou (see Net Work,
February 2019), the store
cheerfully compared the
online specs. which saved
me all the trouble, they
suggested a suitable freezer, reversed the door in
their workshop, delivered
and installed it, and took
away the old freezer and
packaging all at a competitive price. Life shouldn’t
just be about price: if one
factors in the many hours
China’s Haier lays claims to 10% of the world market for that one spends fruitlesswhite goods. ‘Instaswitch’ models (two shown) have Wi-Fi ly searching online before
(fingers crossed) buying
and can double as a fridge or freezer.
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at arm’s length, in my view any premium paid in ‘buying local’ is worth
it just for the personal time freed up,
and it helps keep the local economy
ticking over too.
Surprisingly though, the German-designed unit still has some
odd compromises: it seems that few
freezers have digital displays showing
the temperature inside in real time,
and my new freezer hadn’t one either.
The LCD merely shows the desired
set-point instead, although at least
mine has a high temperature audible
alarm built in. It also has a blinding
LED light inside, and you have to open
the door to check the digital display
anyway, which is mounted above at
head height! The force needed to pull
the door open was enough to drag the
freezer across the vinyl floor, something I cured by placing some discs
of Scotchbrite material under the
front feet, or bicycle puncture repair
rubber could be used. (To help, the
freezer was raised off the floor using a
small inflatable ‘air wedge pump’ from
eBay.) For a European appliance costing over twice the price of the Haier,
these avoidable shortcomings were
both ridiculous and frustrating. One
can see why Chinese brands such as
Haier are fast making ground in the
marketplace, and online shopping
puts them within easy reach of consumers. Haier appliances are available
on Amazon and major UK appliance
websites. Alternatively, South Korea’s
LG offers a wide range of Wi-Fi enabled appliances for the smart home,
controlled by LG’s ThinQ app.
Readers might enjoy some nostalgic
glimpses of the electric appliances of
yesteryear, particularly some quaint
film presentations of American domestic appliances from a century ago.
GE’s electric cookers (stoves) and refrigerators were very advanced for
their time when compared with British
post-war equivalents. Enjoy the show,
starting with life in the ‘GE electrical
home’ in 1915 at: https://youtu.be/
gU2G9Frxyi4 (with awful music); ‘A
Design for Modern Living’ (1935) at:
https://youtu.be/SVfZCKCzEWg and
Practical Electronics | August | 2021
Westinghouse foretold the advent of the video doorbell in this 1950s film –
but not cordless telephones! The object resembling a toaster is the screen.
(Image: YouTube / History comes to life).
‘Pushbutton Magic’ (1948) at: https://
youtu.be/sfiFFYpOB9Y
In comparison, there is a 1930s
museum piece of a British cooker at
https://tinyurl.com/yvhc6wcx – while
Westinghouse envisioned the ‘Total
Electric Home’ of the future in a fascinating 1950s film, see: https://youtu.
be/jyrTgtPTz3M
Incidentally, these links are readymade for you to click on in my Net Work
blog at: www.electronpublishing.com/
net-work-blog/
Phishing without mercy
We’ve all had them – authentic-looking ‘phishing’ emails from fraudsters
that try to lure you into clicking a link,
perhaps leading to a bogus copy of an
authentic website where your personal details or logins can be captured
by criminals, who will then proceed
to drain your bank account without
mercy. Alternatively, the phony website might install malicious scripts
on your computer, then connect to
servers run by crooks which unleash
ransomware on your system. A ‘spearphishing’ email can be especially
tricky to spot, as they look deceptively genuine; cyber criminals can steal
names and email addresses for use in
a convincing mailshot, supposedly
coming from a recognised and trusted institution.
Savvy users soon recognise bogus
spam mails that start with a generic ‘Dear Recipient’ or ‘Attn. userx<at>
gmail.com’, but on a busy computer it’s all too easy to click malicious
links without thinking. A technique
called ‘Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance’
(DMARC) is gradually being implemented. This authenticates emails and
stops bogus ones from masquerading
under a genuine domain or sub-domain name owned by, say, a bank or
state institution.
Practical Electronics | August | 2021
GE ‘Pushbutton Magic’ – demonstrating coloured
pushswitch controls on a 1948 GE ‘Stratoliner’ oven
(Image: YouTube / Museum of Innovation and Science)
At the time of writing, the author their only desire was to ‘make money’
has been hit by waves of phony UK
and not inflict damage on society.
Government emails advising about
eligibility for the fifth SEISS grant A plague on our houses
(funding for the self-employed during Ransomware is undoubtedly a 21st
Covid-19). They are easily recognised century scourge, and the threat is beand can be forwarded, preferably with coming so severe that this form of
the headers, to the UK Government’s cybercrime is potentially being elevated
National Cyber Security Centre for to the status of a terrorist threat. Alattention. The NCSC says that they though official guidance is not to pay
act on every report, and as of 31 May a ransom because that merely encour2021, they had received more than ages more attacks, sometimes Bitcoins
6,100,000 such reports, allowing them will change hands under the table in
to remove more than 45,000 scams and the hope of receiving a valid decryptake down 90,000 malicious URLs. tion tool from the criminals, although
In the UK, the email address to for- it can take many days to unlock and
ward phishing emails (not spam) is: get systems online again. In the Colonial Pipeline case, it appears that
report<at>phishing.gov.uk
In both private and state-owned sec- some $4m in Bitcoin was paid due to
tors, sophisticated social engineering the urgency of the fuel problems but,
methods can be used by impostors in what is probably a first in the cyberwho sometimes spend months gar- security industry, most of this ransom
nering the confidence of individuals was subsequently recovered by the
before slipping an infected payload FBI using some undocumented techonto their network. Apart from visit- niques. A phishing campaign from a
ing compromised websites, malicious ‘help desk’ then tried to trick Colonial
file attachments such as a PDF or a workers into downloading more mal.zip file containing executables, or ware disguised as a ‘system update to
innocent-looking Word or Excel files protect against ransomware’.
The world’s largest meat protein
that contain harmful macros, can unleash devastating damage on networks producer, JBS, recently paid an $11m
and bring organisations crashing to a
halt. Recent targets of
ransomware attacks
include the US firm
Colonial Pipeline in
May, which caused
shortages in fuel supplies coinciding with
spikes in demand as
homeworkers started returning to the
office. The attack
was pinned on the
DarkSide ransomware
group, which reportedly ‘apologised’ Colonial Pipeline – just one of the latest high-profile critical
afterwards, stating infrastructure victims of ransomware.
13
Kaspersky Anti-Virus – the author’s online
weapon of choice which works across
multiple devices. There are plenty of
alternatives, so do shop around.
ransom, it is reported, after suffering a
cyberattack on its networks. With food
production and fuel shortages now
threatened by ransomware, the UK
security services have held exercises
to test the resilience of key infrastructure against such risks.
Ireland’s HSE (Health Service Executive) was also hit by a major ransomware
exploit attributed to the Conti criminal
group. Serious disruption to healthcare
was caused, but the villains reportedly had a change of heart and gave the
HSE the file decryption tool for free,
along with a menacing threat to publish
private medical data if the HSE failed
to further engage with them.
One technique that cybercriminals use to ramp up the pressure is
to threaten to also release data onto
the web, a method called ‘double extortion’ because both data encryption
and data theft are involved. An emerging trend is ‘triple extortion’ where
the cybercriminals also go gunning
after the data subjects whose private
information they have stolen, in the
hope of raking in smaller ransoms
from those whose personal information has been compromised.
Just a few weeks ago two University
of Florida hospitals had to shut parts
of their IT network after being struck
by ransomware. Two schools in the
county of Kent, England were also hit
and had to close in June when pupil
data was encrypted by hackers. It may
be cheaper just to rebuild and restore
systems from scratch. Japan’s Fujifilm also suffered a major ransomware
attack in June, but reportedly refused
to pay a ransom and, commendably,
14
restored its systems from backups
within a week instead.
Vulnerabilities lurk everywhere, and
the cyberthreat intelligence company
Check Point Research (https://research.
checkpoint.com) recently described
possible weaknesses in certain staple
Windows components that seldom receive any sort of make-over. Some could
impact the security of systems running
Microsoft Office software, for example. Hence, several Microsoft patches
were released in May and June to fix
the latest problem, but it also shows
how our computers could be storing
up headaches for the future as older
Windows components that are taken
for granted may contain as-yet undiscovered vulnerabilities.
Some versions of Windows 10 are
now at end of life or heading that way,
and will not receive any more updates or security patches. The website
https://endoflife.date/windows gives
a useful summary. Windows Update
will gradually push the latest (21H1)
onto systems to keep them going till
December 2022. You can confirm your
current Windows version via: Settings/
System/About. In case users aren’t
aware, you can simply press the Windows key and then immediately type a
keyword like ‘version’ or ‘update’ and
Windows 10 will give you the necessary links to follow.
There’s much talk of the next release
of Windows: prior to the annual Microsoft Event that was held on 24 June,
Microsoft uploaded a video of ‘meditative sounds’ based on old Windows
system sounds at: https://youtu.be/fMr4Qm5ZWrI – it’s exactly 11-minutes
long, is that a clue about things to come?
Antivirus choices
An antivirus product is part of
everyone’s online armoury and will
hopefully intercept and quarantine
any infected files, or block access to a
suspicious website, before any harm
can be done. Many anti-virus packages
have the odd irritating foible or two,
and the author’s choice of Kaspersky
Anti-Virus is no exception, but it’s competitively priced and seems to offer
good all-round protection on multiple
devices, including mobile platforms.
Other anti-virus brands are popular
with their loyal users, and some may
bundle a VPN, password management,
cloud storage or ‘safe money’ security
to protect online banking transactions.
Try searching for ‘Symantec’ and
you’ll end up on Broadcom’s website
instead, which sells enterprise-level security software. Symantec’s
former consumer products are now
sold under the familiar Norton brand
(www.norton.com) owned by Norton
Lifelock and, at the time of writing,
Norton 360 Deluxe (5 devices) costs
£19.99 in Year One and £84.99 a year
thereafter. Watch out for costly automatic renewals that sleep-walk you
into subscribing for another year if you
don’t cancel. In comparison, Kaspersky Internet Security (5 Devices) is
discounted to just £18.14 for one year
for a downloadable version, if bought
via Amazon. The software licence
is delivered flawlessly, and serial
numbers are emailed and also stored
by Amazon in the user’s Games and
Software library for future reference.
Multi-device, multi-year licences
are available. Alternatively, Avast
Software still offers a free ‘lite’ version that’s better than nothing and
might be enough for occasional users
(download it from: www.avast.com).
Paid-for versions cost £39.99 (Year 1)
and £79.99 per year thereafter (10 devices). Other reputable brands include
McAfee, Panda Cloud Security, Eset
and BitDefender. Many of these anti-virus programs can be bought and
downloaded via Amazon, but there
will undoubtedly be discount offers on
the web so it’s worth checking around.
In previous Net Work columns, I’ve
suggested, and would repeat the advice
here, that it is worth taking an ‘air
gapped’ backup of valuable data onto
an external hard disk or possibly a
pocket SSD.
For storing lower volumes of data,
plenty of cloud-based storage is available, including Microsoft OneDrive
(5GB free), or Google Drive offers which
15GB free (Google account required).
Apple’s iCloud offers Windows users
a program for syncing data hosted on
a PC with their Apple devices. Phone
security experts Certo Software recently
published a blog about hackers targeting the iCloud in order to gain access to
victims’ phones. Certo tested a number
of spyware products to see if it is still
possible for hackers to gain access to
the iCloud via these apps, as well as
sharing advice on what you can do to
protect yourself. iCloud users can read
more at: http://bit.ly/pe-aug21-cert
Many of us still stash data away
on optical disks as well, but perhaps re-read last month’s Techno
Talk column in which Mark Nelson
described major problems that CDs
and DVDs suffers during long-term
storage: sadly, optical media isn’t as
reliable or robust as we’d all like it
to be, so perhaps check out those archived disks sometime.
Last, on the subject of taking backups, Windows computer enthusiasts
may like Macrium Reflect (free edition
Practical Electronics | August | 2021
www.poscope.com/epe
Ealing, London now boasts the UK’s fourth Amazon Fresh ‘Just Walk Out’ store.
available from www.macrium.com) or
the interesting-looking Casper 11 from
Future Systems Solutions. Macrium
is a sophisticated, fast and powerful
backup program that does a fine job
of running backups on schedules over
a network (onto a Synology NAS in
my case), but it is quite a handful to
configure at times. Casper 11 is designed mainly with disaster recovery
in mind. It creates a full image copy
of your system drive that can be used
as an external boot disk, so you can
carry on working as normal while a
system is rebuilt in the background.
Its maker claims that you can be back
up and running immediately if disaster strikes.
This could be an ideal backup application for a pocket disk or USB 3.0
drive, although FSS warns that not
all PCs support booting from USBtype devices. Casper 11 for Windows
costs from $59.99 and both 32-bit and
64-bit versions are provided. I hope
to test Casper myself in due course,
also to test how well a boot disk might
function on a different PC altogether.
You can download a free trial from:
www.fssdev.com/products/casper/
Other news
Recent Net Work columns have described the groundswell in electric
vehicle production with numerous European and Chinese brands launching
EVs, despite there being a paucity of
public EV charging points. Owners
are likely to face another menace as
EVs become a more familiar sight:
the theft of a car’s charging cable
itself. Stolen ones are quite valuable
for scrap metal, but are also finding
their way online as ‘replacements’. No
doubt cables will become an attractive
nuisance for vandals or bored kids. I
found some useful practical advice
on how to safeguard your EV cable
when it’s in use on a YouTube video
at: https://youtu.be/mYHhqekij3E
Practical Electronics | August | 2021
Ofcom’s annual report, Online Nation
2021, cited some trends in UK internet usage in a 185-page analysis. In
September 2020, UK internet users
spent nearly four times as much time
on smartphones (averaging 2 hours 19
minutes a day) than they did on computers (37 minutes). Youngsters aged
7 to 16 spend almost four hours a day
online, mostly for gaming or watching
streaming video, while young people
in the 7-17 age group named YouTube
as their favourite. By the age of 11,
some 59% of children were hooked
on social media, even though the minimum age limit was 13, Ofcom says,
and 95% of kids used it by the age of
15. Google and Facebook consumed
some 40% of the entire traffic across
the board, though younger users aim
for Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.
The full report is online at: http://bit.
ly/pe-aug21-ofc
Amazon Fresh has opened its fourth
‘Just Walk Out’ store in the UK. Located
in Ealing, London, it uses a combination of advanced technologies to check
what shoppers actually put in their
basket, and simply charges the total
to their account without them needing to go through a checkout.
The sale of halogen bulbs is finally
being banned in Britain as part of the
move towards using more fuel-efficient
LED bulbs. If your favourite light fittings use dimmable halogen bulbs, for
example, now is the time to consider
stocking up if you don’t want to scrap
them just yet. The ban takes effect on
1 September. High-energy fluorescent
tubes are in the firing line as well –
from 2023.
Don’t forget to check those readymade Net Work links on our website,
and, as always, remember that I can be
reached by email: alan<at>epemag.net.
See you next month!
The author can be reached at:
alan<at>epemag.net
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