The whole idea of hacking, cyber security, and digital crookery can often seem very abstract and dull. That’s why I was excited recently to discover a site that makes these topics less abstract by displaying a real-time visualization of cyber attacks as they happen. The visualizer notes the source of the attack as well as the approximate location of the targeted system:
(you may have to refresh the page for the visualizer to display properly)
After watching this visualizer for only a few minutes, it really gave me a sense of scale of how large the digital battleground is and how constant the threat of attack has become. For those interested in staying up-to-date with cyber security news, this past week I discovered a great resource for keeping up with the latest news in cyber security: The Cyberwire, a digital “magazine” published daily Monday-Friday (excluding holidays).
Now is a timely reminder in the wake of the Adult Friend Finder and Ashley Madison breaches that all your online things need to be created with the assumption of them being public one day. It’s an unfortunate reality that this increasingly seems to be the case, whether it’s due to data breaches or government oversight.