17 October 2019 (Crete, Greece) – While I was at the Athens Democracy Forum last week I had a long chat at one of the breakfast networking events with some of the cyber security mavens attending the event. They passed on the following from [name withheld; anonymity required for his/her work], a self-proclaimed “code monkey by day, philosopher by night” who is a white hat paid to crack the security systems of corporations. But at my request, a close friend at Black Hat verified his/her identity/work.
I have taken the his/her outline and added a few links and tweaks to illustrate several of his/her points:
Step 1: Preliminary Requirements
Go through each email you can think of that you’ve used in the past 10 years. You’ll want to recover them if you’ve lost access, so that you can access other websites you may have signed up to using them.
Step 2: Deleting old accounts from forgotten services
Use the search function on your e-mail and look for phrases such as “Sign up” or “Welcome”. Recover account and login into each service that pops up (from which you received a sign-up email).
Step 2b: Now look around the service for a delete account function, Google around by searching “”delete account” + “<service>”. If there isn’t one, google or look around for a support e-mail to request for them to delete your account.
Step 2c: For some services, you may want to purge all content and messages before you delete the account, as the account may be archived and a hacker or external entity may access this information at a later date. That’s something to bare in mind.
Step 3: Checking if your information has been compromised already.
Now you should have a list of all your usernames and all the services, ranging from streaming services to e-mails. You need to use something called boolean searches to properly use Google to locate this info.
Step 3b: I’ll be using “s to denote normal quotations, as you will need to use the normal” signs to perform these searches. You need to google your account name “<account_name>”. Sometimes maybe your account name + password like so: “<account>” + “<password>”
Step 3c: You should see possibly pastebin links or underground databases publicly accessible on the internet, or possibly leaked private information. This is normal. It happens to a lot of services. Note down what passwords/information was comprimised.
Step 3d: Some database leaks are a bit more private and are still being shared/sold in private circles, but you can use this website: haveibeenpwned.com. To check if you’ve been compromised, you can change your live information to be different.
Step 4: Removing yourself from Google.
So now you’ve deleted your Facebook accounts, but when you google your name and location using boolean searches, there is cached information/links about yourself. There is a solution for that, called the Google Console.
Step 4b: You can use Google Console at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals?pli=1
You can request for them to delete/update their search engine (which usually takes months organically) to remove those cached results if you provide a link to each. Go through various Google searches and do this.
Step 5: Protecting yourself against Google legally tracking you (for the most part).
You should be disallowing Google to legally touch any of your data. Here you can go through each of Google’s services: https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols
Step 5b: Protecting yourself against other services
Any other services you wish to use, you need to strip down the privacy settings to the absolute core. If you want to use Facebook, make sure you make it almost entirely private, so people can’t access private photos.
Step 6: Deleting old e-mails
Now you’ve just access to your old e-mails, it’s time to delete them too. Delete any e-mails you no longer need access to. DO NOT DELETE E-MAILS YOU MAY NEED IN THE FUTURE. If you do need them, change security questions and password.
Step 7: Securing accounts
You should be REGULARLY changing your passwords on services every 6 months. Why? Because new hackers gain access to new databases daily, and they’ll start using that information to bruce force, or in the future, to personally attack you.
Step 7b: Do NOT use any passwords similar to each other.
Hackers are smart. Especially when it’s a personal attack. They will easily combine your old passwords with your home address, or date of birth to accomplish finding your password to something they need. Once they are in, some services will give them access to EVERYTHING and it’s damn near impossible to get them out after they are in. Good news is a lot of services are updating this, so that you can only have one session active at once. Before you never knew who was in.
Step 8: PROTECTING your internet connection.
You should be using a VPN when using the internet. DO NOT use a VPN when dealing with banking services or anything confidential, but do use it when publicly surfing the internet. Using DuckDuckGo in combination with this will help.
Step 8b: Using a VPN that has no logs.
You need to make sure your VPN has had a PUBLIC audit to ensure that it has NO LOGS. This means that it has no record of what you have used their internet connection for. And when you use a VPN, it’s hard for your ISP to know either.
NOTE TO MY READERS: A VPN is only as good as its provider. As I noted in a recent Tweet, some VPNs are set up solely to capture your data (click here). I know of only two security-focused VPNs (meaning it blocks threats & trackers) and that’s @FSecure and @FreedomeVPN.
Step 9: USING Burner accounts
You should be using burner accounts on known intrusive services such as Google by using a fake name and information. This is LEGAL and you should do it to avoid having your information data mined across services.
Step 10: REGULARLY deleting your internet content.
You should be regularly deleting your tweets and old photos. This data can be used against you to cross-reference your accounts and find more personal information. Hackers will find a target and analyze them for months.
Step 10b:
Hackers will use your old internet information to do some of this analyzing in retrospect to piece together who your social circle is to find a vulnerability. Anyone can be attacked. You just haven’t been a target yet. Defend yourself through prevention.
NOTE TO MY READERS: don’t believe him/her? Here is but one example of a tsunami of stories I have collected:
The reflections in a pop star’s eyes told a selfie stalker exactly how to find her. In September, a Japanese man was arrested for reportedly stalking a pop star and attacking and groping her at her home, according to Japanese news organization NHK. For the story click here.
And this is nothing. This is merely one of the many simple tracking tools EVERYONE has access to today. I have bought some of these tools on the Dark Web, and many have been given to me by my cyber security network. My team is going to use some of these tools next week at a major e-discovery event to hack into as many attendees as we can to demonstrate the point.
A few points on this post:
• This merely skims the surface of protection. In the coming weeks I’ll try to add more steps I learned for extra security.
• The above content was from someone who began hacking accounts and systems at the age of 11 and is now 22.
• There is much more talented and scarier threats out there now, especially as regards your money which almost all of us access online.
• My cyber security team will try to put together an opsec feature in the future.