Nota Bene

Once again, it’s the last month of the year already. The reservoir outside my office window has long frozen over (with fishermen sat atop it with their rods poking through holes made in the thick ice), and it’s brrrrr freezing, it goes without saying. There’s the somewhat disturbing crackle of the anti-ice chemical pellets underfoot and under-wheel; there are traffic jams seeming to be longer than usual; and there are days when you don’t set foot outside in daylight (it’s dark late in the mornings and early in the evenings). Business-wise, December is also a month for summing up, for progress reviews, for stocktaking, and for finalizing budgets and plans for the future.

So yes, December can be a dark, dull and wearisome month. For us at KL though, there’s one event to make up for all that. Of course it’s our annual Christmas/New Year blow-out. A small get-together – of ~2500 KLers and guests from around the world – for some serious festive letting down of the hair, kissing under the mistletoe and all that. And this year it happened last Friday…

https://www.instagram.com/p/BOMIBd1gMCS/

Read on: Awards to the best KLers first…

Hi folks!

Herewith, the next installment in my ‘Uh-oh Cyber-News’ column – the one in which I keep you up to date with all that’s scarily fragile and frailly scary in the digital world.

Since the last ‘Uh-oh’ a lot has piled up that really needs bringing to your attention. Yep, the flow of ‘Uh-ohs’ has indeed turned from mere mountain-stream trickle to full-on Niagara levels. And that flow just keeps on getting faster and faster…

As a veteran of cyber-defense, I can tell you that in times past cataclysms of a planetary scale were discussed for maybe half a year. While now the stream of messages is like salmon in spawning season: overload! So many they’re hardly worth mentioning as they’re already yesterday’s news before you can say ‘digital over-DDoSe’. “I heard how they hacked Mega-Corporation X the other day and stole everything; even the boss’s hamster was whisked away by a drone!”…

Anyway, since the stream of consciousness cyber-scandals is rapidly on the up and up, accordingly, the number of such scandals I’ll be writing about has also gone up. In the past there were three of four per blogpost. Today: seven!

Popcorn/coffee/beer at the ready? Off we go…

1) Infect a Friend and Get Your Own Files Unlocked for Free.

Read on: Effective Hacker Headhunting…

This is a veeerrrry strange place. It’s a place that’s completely isolated from the outer world – isolated by man, that is (not naturally isolated like, for example, Kamchatka). In fact, more isolated (by man) than the Chernobyl or Fukushima nuclear power plants. To get into it and get over to those there hills on the horizon is completely impossible, even theoretically – neither by ground nor air. You’d be shot!

An absurd paradox of paradoxes, if ever there was one: they call this place ‘demilitarized’. Turns out to be one of the most heavily militarized strips of land on the planet! Yes folks, this is the Korean Demilitarized Zone – the DMZ.

Read on: A brief history of the place…

After what has possibly been my longest ever ‘stay’ in Moscow (er, but I ‘live’ here:) – a full month! – I recently resumed my habitual routine of not being in the same place country for long. It’s good to be ‘back’; but the downtime in Moscow was great too. But I digress…

Anyway, I eased myself into the business-globetrotting thing steadily – taking not a full leap to the other side of the world, but a mere little jump not all that far away, relatively. And the first thing I noticed after landing that made me all curious was this here sign next to the lift in the offices we were visiting:

Read on: Stairs are there to keep you fit…

Recently, sharp-eyed users congratulated me with a ‘billion’ items in the Kaspersky Security Network. Thank you! Although, I need to explain what that ‘billion’ is.

First of all, don’t worry. This is not a billion something or other you don’t want on your computer; no, it’s something different, and it’s a little complicated. So let me start with some basic definitions.

Read on: How to get as close as poss to the ideas cybersecurity…

And so it’s come to pass: the abbreviation ‘DDoS‘ has entered the lexicon to such an extent that it often doesn’t get written out in full these days in the general interest newspapers. Well, some actually may still not know what it stands for, but everyone and their dog does know that a DDoS is very bad thing for a certain large target, with something very important suddenly not working, with employees twiddling their thumbs as the network’s down, and with their tech-support’s telephones requiring an ice bath as they’re so hot from ringing – and disgruntled clients swearing down them all the time. What’s more, everyone and their cat also knows that normally a DDoS attack gets carried out by unknown, mysterious – and just plain bad – cyber-enemies.

DDoS attacks have evolved very quickly, as you’ll find out reading this blogpost. They’ve grown much nastier and become a lot more technically advanced; from time to time the adopt utterly unusual attack methods; they go after fresh new targets; and break new world records in being the biggest and baddest DDoS’s ever. But, then, the world in which DDoS find themselves in has evolved very quickly too. Everything and the kitchen sink is online: the number of assorted ‘smart’ [sic] devices connected to the net now far outstrips the number of good old desktop and laptop computers.

The result of these two evolutions running in parallel – of DDoS’s themselves plus the digital landscape in which they dwell – has brought us equally evolved headlines: botnets made up of IP cameras and home Wi-Fi routers breaking DDoS records on size (Mirai), and massive DDoS attacks on Russian banks.

If, earlier, botnets were made up of zombie PCs, soon they’ll be made up of zombie refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, tumble dryers and coffee machines.

Read on: So what’s next?…

I’ve a real soft spot for the disruptive thinking. I also like surprising astounding folks. And I like astounding folks in proper, worthy ways. I like it when what we do makes jaws drop; when folks don’t believe – but try anyway, then they get to like it, and then they love it.

Ok, all a bit abstract so far. Let me be a bit more concrete…

Our latest jaw-dropper is… a desktop simulator game for cybersecurity! Never heard of that before? You wouldn’t – it’s never been done before!

It goes by the name of KIPS – which stands for Kaspersky Interactive Protection Simulation. It’s a business teamwork cybersecurity strategy simulation game, which lasts around two hours and is intended to encourage initiative and analysis skills and an understanding of cybersecurity measures. Must say, I wasn’t expecting KL to enter the gaming market – ever; but why not, if it gets the messages across best? And we’ve gone from green (i.e., inexperienced) gaming startup to green (i.e., KL corporate green:) full-fledged gaming provider in no time at all.

And this Thursday – December 1 – we’re holding the first world championship on KIPS!

Read on: No joke folks. This is really happening…

Ok. Let’s solve – not the trickiest – but still not the most trivial of tasks.

This year for Christmas I’d like a new laptop – a better, tougher one. I’ve only had the one I’ve got now a little over a year, but with my business schedule and the computer’s constant use and abuse, it’s on its last legs already. It looks tatty, and the keyboard feels like it’s going to fall apart. So, yes: I need an upgrade…

But what device should I get? Crikey. Where to start? Ah yes – at the beginning: with my requirements…

My user requirements aren’t too convoluted, but then again – they’re not mere email/ messenger/ Instagram/ Pokemon, either. Here they are:

• Office, email, browser, different editors and messengers;
• It needs to be able to withstand an intensive workload;
• I’d like a bigger screen than the norm (13″+);
• A full-size keyboard would be good too.

Straight away that rules out smartphones and tablets, and it looks like a mid-size laptop is the way to go.

But which operating system? Well, the list of options isn’t that long these days: Windows, Mac, Linux.

Every system is good – in its own way…

Read on: It turns out there is no choice…

And now for something completely different and non-industrial. In fact just the opposite – something about both natural and man-made beauty. Why? Here’s why…

Not long ago, somewhere (I can’t recall where) I came across the phrase ‘the most beautiful country in the world’. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but the old unconscious appears to have logged it for a future revisit. Oh that subconscious.

A few weeks later, sure enough, I was compelled to revisit it, and had a look on the Internet about this, and of course I found various lists of things like ‘The Top-10/20 Most Beautiful Countries in the World’. Thing is… most of it seemed to be talking through its hat, seemingly written by folks who’ve never been to Latin America, Central China, Kamchatka or the Kuril islands.

I admit, determining which are the prettiest countries in the world is tricky: beauty is a subjective thing, and that means that the criteria you use will also be subjective. I mean, what criteria should or could you use?

But, well, I’ve got a bit of a head-start on this – with my Top-100 Must-See Places in the World. With this list you (here – I) can calculate levels of beautifulness… but taking into account the sizes of the territories! This is so we get the ‘most beautiful overall’ instead of the ‘quantity of beautiful places in a particular country’.

Privyet all!

I’m lying low in MOW at the mo, but that doesn’t mean life comes to a standstill – far from it!

While I sit here in my office looking out the window at the falling snow, over in China, in the city of Wuzhen, the annual World Internet Conference is taking place (which I was at last year). And this year the organizers have decided to give awards to the best (in their opinion) cyber-projects. And guess who featured among the winners?!

Here’s congratulating all project members! Our solution for protecting industrial installations and critical infrastructure – KICS – won the award for ‘World Leading Internet Scientific and Technological Achievements’, alongside Tesla, IBM Watson and Alibaba!

The contest was entered by 500 companies, and we were in among the 15 winners – and the only one from the IT security field.