cybercrime

There’s nothing like the feeling of picking up a new piece of tech. Fresh hardware and software always come with that new toy feeling, even if it is just a new application to keep our workplaces organized as they expand in size and scope. Adding top-of-the-line software to a machine often lends a newfound sense of security to a home office or a workplace. There are, however, unexpected downsides whenever new software or hardware is adopted. One of the most significant breaches of trust is the Day 1 exploit. When a new product or piece of hardware launches, the technology is expected to operate as intended. Unfortunately, hackers and other bad actors enjoy finding the smallest openings in the newest tech. Often a Day 1 exploit will be caught early enough for the developers to patch over the holes, but what happens when they aren’t quick enough to act? What be done as a consumer placing trust in a tech company? How do workplaces protect themselves against these exploits? 

 What is a Day 1 Exploit

A Day 1 exploit is the closest real-world hacking comes to the hacking we see in the movies. Simply put, a Day 1 exploit is an opening a hacker finds during the first day of a product’s release. These exploits can be as simple as realizing a password input prompt can be bypassed or as sophisticated as finding holes in the code after mining and reading the code that runs the software or device. The thing to realize about Day 1 exploits is that they can happen to any product upon release. These exploits crop up as a result of typical human oversight. 

In April of 2022, Apple was forced to rush out a Day 0 patch (a patch pushed out before the release of a product or service) for a potentially disastrous exploit that had been baked into their devices. The exploit in question would have given bad actors kernel access to macOS and iOS devices. Had these exploits not been found in time, then bad actors would have had complete and total control over the devices of Apple users for a distressing amount of time. The malware that could have been born out of this potential Day 1 threat would have wrested the data out of the hands of hundreds of thousands of businesses across the world. 

These security holes are found as often as new technology hits the market. What would the tech world look like had Apple not caught its oversight in time? That is the danger of the Day 1 exploit. These exploits typically give bad actors access to the deepest parts of a machine. They are particularly viscous and easy to distribute once discovered. Tech companies dedicate entire workforces to quality testing their code before allowing them to hit the digital shelves of the world because the reputation hits associated with giving hackers unfettered access to a hard drive are usually catastrophic. Day 1 and Day 0 patches are typically required installations before a user is granted permission to use for this reason. Irritating update prompts exist to protect end users from the mistakes tech companies make during development.

How to Protect Your Business From These Exploits

The unfortunate reality of Day 1 exploits is that there is no way to know when an organization will fall short on its research and development. These exploits are a phenomenon that naturally arises as a consequence of the intersection between human failure and human ingenuity. How then, are businesses able to defend against the unknowable? Protecting an organization or personal workspace from day zero exploits is a manner of understanding and implementing strong digital hygiene. 

First and foremost is creating a secure data management plan. When a workplace comes into contact with the internet, points of failure are instantly introduced into a system. The internet is a magnificent and dangerous place to work, but that danger can be easily mitigated with a few easy-to-implement best practices. One of the most popular methods of control a hacker will implement these days is the ransomware attack. The goal of a ransomware attack is to deny access to crucial information by locking users out of their own machines, and in some cases, it will involve locking down entire personal networks. 

Creating easily accessible secure backups of all of the data required for a workplace is easily the simplest and most secure method of preventing a ransomware attack. Decentralized, encrypted storage spaces are incredibly difficult to breach from the outside.  This means a successful attack on a system via a Day 1 exploit will fizzle out regardless of how successful hackers are in locking a machine out of its data. Some of the most security-minded workplaces may want to consider keeping private data off of hard drives entirely. Ransomware and other malware attacks try to pull data directly out of a machine’s memory,  the easiest way to prevent this from happening in the case of an exploit is to simply keep data from living locally. Keeping decentralized backups of crucial data will create a cloud of security that is easily accessible no matter where the point of access happens to be located.

Using encrypted methods of communication wherever possible will provide not only privacy but a digital footprint that is nearly impossible to track. Consider for a moment the difference between an email attachment and the secure fetch method provided by AXEL Go. In a workplace seized by bad actors with access to servers ripe with abandoned email attachments, these attachments can be easily cracked open and sucked dry of their private information. Secure fetch methods generate a unique sharing session with a customizable expiration date that is encrypted from end to end and may easily be password protected. Secure fetch is a file sharing method that quickly and easily allows transfer between colleagues while giving every party involved total control over their sharing session.

Try AXEL Go Today

AXEL Go is an incredibly versatile tool in the fight for cyber security. Implementing our decentralized, encrypted storage into a workplace will create a robust bulwark between sensitive workplace data and any clever exploits hackers are able to slip through the cracks.

AXEL Go is a file storage and sharing service designed to revolutionize how we think about security online. Our user experience design is focused on handing top-of-the-line security to any business of any size. Our AES-256 bit encryption and decentralized server structure thwart cyber attacks on big businesses as competently as it protects local operations. No matter how tight the budget for your practice may be, we are the perfect fit for secure, intuitive storage file sharing. You can try AXEL Go premium for free for 14 days. See what security backed by our $10,000 guarantee can do for your business.

Citations

“Blog | Day One Exploits: How To Effectively Reduce The Threat”. 2022. CIS. https://www.cisecurity.org/insights/blog/day-one-exploits-how-to-effectively-reduce-the-threat.

2022. https://www.trellix.com/en-us/security-awareness/cybersecurity/what-is-a-zero-day-exploit.html.

“What Is A Zero-Day Exploit | Protecting Against 0Day Vulnerabilities | Imperva”. 2022. Learning Center. https://www.imperva.com/learn/application-security/zero-day-exploit/.

“Apple Rushes Out Patches For 0-Days In Macos, Ios”. 2022. Threatpost.Com. https://threatpost.com/apple-rushes-out-patches-0-days-macos-ios/179222/.

“Top 10 Common Types Of Cybersecurity Attacks | Datto Security Solutions”. 2022. Datto.Com. https://www.datto.com/blog/cybersecurity-101-intro-to-the-top-10-common-types-of-cybersecurity-attacks.

There are many reasons that cyber security plans fall short in the workplace. When dealing with bad actors, nearly everything can be a pitfall in some respect or another. That means that every advantage you can create in your favor is crucial in the fight against security breaches—one of the most unassuming proponents of poor cyber security practices is user experience design. The world of design often operates in the background. When it’s good, we don’t notice. When it’s bad, we notice it right away. How does poor user experience design impact cyber security practices in the workplace? What can we do to change that to create a more secure internet for all?

What is User Experience?

Broadly, user experience (UX) design is the field of design that focuses specifically on understanding how a user will interact with a product with the final goal of improving the fundamental experience of integrating it into their daily lives. It prioritizes the user’s moment-to-moment experience over the presumptions of the product designers. Good user experience is practically invisible, and it takes teams of highly proficient people to create a system that feels natural and easy to use^[1].

UX designers focus on three basic questions when designing product interfaces:

• How does the user interact with this product?
• How can we empathically solve the problems our product presents?
• What underlying assumptions or objectives do we need to understand in order to meet our user’s needs?

We care about solid user experience design because it’s the only way you can ensure a product is used to its maximum potential. It is well understood that people will often take the easiest path to their goals. Daniel Kahneman and his book, Thinking Fast and Slow^[2] explores the ways in which our brains optimize our cognitive loads by constantly taking shortcuts throughout the day. This, unfortunately, leads to corner cutting in many circumstances, many of these corners we don’t realize we’re cutting. UX designers understand the corner cutting we are primed to engage in and design product interfaces that reduce the maximum amount of friction wherever possible.

We can use something less abstract than cyber security tools to think about how UX touches our lives and reduces feature friction. The locks on our homes are simple to use. A key and lock mechanism is the only thing standing in between us and home security. We can easily imagine a world where this is not the case. If we move the keyhole down to the very bottom of the door or create a locking mechanism that requires multiple steps to engage, the sheer frustration of entering and exiting our homes would lead us to disregard the utility of our deadbolt.

This principle is one of the myriad reasons cyber security tools are left by the wayside in the workplace. Employees and business owners understand how important it is to secure shared drives. They keep our passwords private and lock their desktops when they leave for lunch. The security breakdown tends to arise when obstacles stand in between employees and the work they need to do^[5]. 

Costly social engineering breaches that poke holes in the security plans of corporate giants like Verizon or MGM happen simply because their security plans had so many steps that sidestepping them entirely was the quickest way to get the job done^[3]. High-stress work environments and shrinking workforces contribute to costly corner cutting. Still, poorly designed cyber security solutions are among the most significant contributors to this rash of security breaches.

Complicated verification processes must take place behind the scenes, and we should strive to make security as straightforward as possible on the front end. Without the right user experience, the tools we use to protect ourselves simply fizzle out before they have the opportunity to protect our workplaces.

AXEL Go and User Experience

We understand how important user experience is in the cyber security battle. That’s why our file sharing service and all of our features are easy to access, clearly labeled, and simple to implement. The clean design of our application and the streamlined storage and sharing process is a nice secondary benefit to focusing on user experience. Still, primarily it is done to ensure our users and their businesses may enjoy the robust end-to-end encryption we provide^[6].

Features like our secure fetch that may be unfamiliar to workplaces that have never had the opportunity to use such a tool have been streamlined for ease of use. Our secure fetch is a method for retrieving a file in full (including unaltered metadata) from a client by generating a secure, password-protected link. Once this has been shared, no tech savvy needs to be employed to enjoy the fully encrypted document retrieval. We do the heavy lifting and keep it behind the scenes to reduce the cognitive load for each party involved.

Our goal when providing you with a private, secure, and personalized storage solution is to protect you and your business online. By understanding how user experience design affects this, we have removed the barriers between the user and innovative security solutions. We took the time to build robust, decentralized server structures with the express desire to protect our users against some of the most sophisticated cyber-attacks. Still, all of the work put into our blockchain-backed security would go to waste if our application was confusing or difficult to use.

Protect Your Business With AXEL Go

AXEL Go is a file storage and sharing service designed to revolutionize how we think about security online. Our user experience design is focused on handing top-of-the-line security to any business of any size. Our AES-256 bit encryption and decentralized server structure thwart cyber attacks on big businesses as competently as it protects local operations. No matter how tight the budget for your practice may be, we are the perfect fit for secure, intuitive storage file sharing. You can try AXEL Go premium for free for 14 days. See what security backed by our $10,000 guarantee can do for your business.

Citations

^[1] The Interaction Design Foundation. 2022. What is User Experience (UX) Design?. [online] Available at: <https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/ux-design> [Accessed 21 July 2022].

^[2] Kahneman, D. and Egan, P., 2011. Thinking, fast and slow. 

^[3] Xda-developers.com. 2022. [online] Available at: <https://www.xda-developers.com/verizon-data-breach-employees-data/> [Accessed 21 July 2022].

^[4] Allage, A., 2022. Council Post: Why Employees Violate Cybersecurity Policies. [online] Forbes. Available at: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/07/11/why-employees-violate-cybersecurity-policies/?sh=2b4517871d98> [Accessed 21 July 2022]. 

^[5] Securitymagazine.com. 2022. | Security Magazine. [online] Available at: <https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/94909-the-evolving-role-of-user-experience-in-security> [Accessed 21 July 2022].

On the internet, we have a duty to keep our data safe, secure, and private. Encryption is our strongest tool in that fight, but what exactly is encryption? What does it do to keep our data secure? How does that look different for the military and the civilian? 

What is Encryption?

Encryption finds its roots in the field of cryptography. The process of writing and solving coded messages became the foundation upon which modern encryption was built. In ancient history, the Roman used simple substitution ciphers by simply shifting their messages down a few letters, these days, you can find a substitution cipher in a children’s puzzle book, but for the time, this was considered one of the premier methods of protecting your data in transmission. As history progressed, we developed more sophisticated versions of effectively the same thing. 

Most famously, we used machines to develop and decode encrypted messages in World War II. Machines with turning drums would take an input, shift the output internally, and create complicated, coded messages that were simple to decode once given the proper information. The Germans used a more complex machine with more drums to create messages that were more difficult to decipher, and the Allies fought back by working tirelessly to crack their codes. We can think of Alan Turing and his code-cracking machine as the beginning of modern-day encryption. In fact, there are many similarities between early analog encryption and the complicated processes that our phones use today.

In the modern day, we encrypt data in a similar, more sophisticated manner. Because information on computers must be transmitted in a precise manner, any slight shift to the data being transmitted will transform it into expensive gibberish that neither machine nor man can translate. Data encryption takes advantage of this by creating keys on either end of a line of communication to which only the authorized devices have access. The encrypted information is then scrambled in a unique fashion and only reconstructed when the proper key is slotted into the data. An encryption key is generally as simple as a string of common characters, but the mechanical beauty lies in the sheer number of possible combinations. Well done encryption will be entirely unparsable by any person or machine without the proper key, and faking one, even with the most powerful devices we have on the market right now, would take a shockingly impractical amount of time.

Our Encryption 

AXEL Go uses what is called AES 256-bit encryption. This military-grade encryption method was first developed in 2002 to bolster the cybersecurity of the most well-funded military on the planet. This means that this encryption standard was developed with some of the best resources money could buy and scrutinized by some of the most privacy-minded people. 

Before AES-256 bit encryption hit the scene, federal agencies were the Data Encryption Standard (DES). DES as an encryption standard was a 56-bit monster for quite some time, but eventually, computing power became so cheap and accessible that DES could no longer keep up. A single person with a suitable machine could crack a document encrypted with DES 56-bit in less than a day by the 1990s with brute force alone.

AES 256-bit encryption stands on the shoulders of encryption methods that stood before it. AES 256-bit is a symmetric key cipher. This means that the same key is generated on either end of the transfer. The data encrypted by the AES algorithm is broken up into several “blocks,” and each of those blocks is replaced with encrypted data decided upon by the encryption key. Once the data is rendered unrecognizable, it can only be reverted into a readable format by the proper key. The encryption process is performed in several different “rounds,” and the number of rounds of data replacement that have taken place before the data is considered sufficiently encrypted. AES 256-bit encryption is the most thorough iteration of AES encryption, and it has the backing of the NSA and protects many of the organization’s top secrets. It’s robust enough for the military, and bringing that technology to civilians in an easy-to-use format is the least we can do for the digital security of all.

How Does Encryption Protect You?

In the simplest terms, encryption protects us in the digital world by creating barriers to entry for everyone but yourself. When data is encrypted, you become the only person with the key to an incredibly complicated lock. Once the tools are in place, end-to-end encryption does the hard work of scrambling and reconstructing your data without any additional input on your part. 

An unfortunate aspect of modern-day privacy legislation is the tendency to pull back your protections in times of strife. A typical legislative response to international disasters, times of war, or changes in federal protection is to lean on the human tendency to seek protection. That reflex often materializes in the law as privacy overreach. Our doorbells, cell phones, and air conditioning control modules can keep track of our positions and habits, and that information can be turned over to third parties without us having a say in the matter.

When we talk about using encryption as a tool to protect yourself or your business in the modern world, the primary reason for this is to keep your data out of the hands of bad actors. Ransomware attacks have brought massive industries to a screeching halt. For instance, the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack is the perfect example of how we can lose out on millions of dollars in business, inconvenience hundreds of thousands of people, and shake our trust in our infrastructure. Hackers and other bad actors will always be the primary threat that encryption aims to fend off, but it is essential to understand that end-to-end encryption is a tool with many functions.

We encrypt data, not just because it keeps bad actors out, but because people have a fundamental right to privacy that is easily eroded if left unprotected. By going out of the way to create robust, secure protections of our privacy before the right to do so is challenged, we create a space online that is secure and belongs to you alone.

Embrace Your Right to Privacy

.AXEL Go is a file storage and sharing service designed to revolutionize how we think about security online. Our user experience design is focused on handing top-of-the-line security to any business of any size. Our AES-256 bit encryption and decentralized server structure thwart cyber attacks on big businesses as competently as it protects local operations. No matter how tight the budget for your practice may be, we are the perfect fit for secure, intuitive storage file sharing. You can try AXEL Go premium for free for 14 days. See what security backed by our $10,000 guarantee can do for your business.

Sources

“Advanced Encryption Standard: Understanding AES 256 | N-Able”. 2022. N-Able. https://www.n-able.com/blog/aes-256-encryption-algorithm.

Lily Hay Newman, wired.com. 2022. “End-To-End Encryption’S Central Role In Modern Self-Defense.” Ars Technica. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/07/end-to-end-encryptions-central-role-in-modern-self-defense/.

“Law Enforcement Access To Smart Devices.” 2022. Brennan Center For Justice. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/law-enforcement-access-smart-devices.