These True 4 Internet Crime Stories Will Make You Care about Rivetz.

Disclaimer: I am not associated with the rivetz team in any other way than am an investor in the rivetz tech. I fell in love with the idea after doing my long hours of research. Feel free to do your own research. Kindly invest responsibly in the ICO.

Clevado
Clevado
Aug 25, 2017 · 7 min read

Online security seems such an abstract and distant field, where other people get hurt, but you somehow stay safe, either by luck or internet savvy. But the truth is, it could happen to anyone, and it might even have happened to you in the past. Before I start telling the stories I would explain in a nutshell what Rivetz is and give a good note about Steven Sprague the Founder of Rivetz who helped me out on this post.

Rivetz is a state-of-the-art toolkit for harnessing the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to protect your secrets, your finances, and your privacy. It’s like a hidden vault (already embedded in most phones) that no OS or software can eavesdrop on.

What is TEE?

The trusted execution environment provides isolated execution of code on the main processor. When the TEE is powered on, the code that is executed inside the TEE is signed and the signatures are verified before any code executes. Each step verifies the signature of the next step before it runs. As designed, this chain of trust guarantees the “integrity” of the code is verified. The last signature “the health” of the device can be checked assuring nothing has been changed.

Who is Steven Sprague?

Steven is one of the principle industry evangelists for the application of trusted computing technology. Steven served as President and CEO for 14 years at Wave before transitioning to the board of directors. A popular speaker on cybersecurity and trusted computing, Steven has a strong technical foundation in the principles, capabilities and business models of incorporating trusted hardware into everyday computing, and is skilled at translating these concepts into layman’s terms. I call him an hardworking CEO, always ready to respond to the community despite the fact that he is currently busy. He has held several physical and online interview talking about Rivetz. I score him 9/10 for his hard work.

They say that nothing beats learning from experience, but sometimes it’s best to learn from other people’s experience rather than your own. This is one of those opportunities. Here are the real stories of 4 people whose system was compromised by cyber criminals and what they learned and what Rivetz can do to prevent such stories in future.

1. Tom was blackmailed using his hacked account at Ashley Madison

Sometimes it’s not your fault. The websites you use get hacked and your information is exposed. Your instinct will be to say: “but I don’t have anything to hide!” Well, that’s not exactly true, is it?

Tom started using Ashley Madison several years prior to it being hacked in 2015, as a way to cope with a strained and difficult marriage. The secret liaisons he formed on the website helped alleviate many of the tensions and stresses between him and his wife, to the point where the couple started to become functional again.

After the hack, cybercriminals contacted him and demanded 500$ to remove his name from a publicly searchable registry and not send an email of his AM affairs to his family.
Tom refused, believing that if he paid them, they would know that he had something to lose and could be blackmailed further.

In the end, Tom had to live knowing his affairs on AM could be exposed at any time by the hackers, people who took it up upon themselves to impart justice on people in circumstances they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, understand.

Rivetz solution: In this case TEE would help as it is possible to maintain encryption of customer details and eliminate username and password. The result is Email does not need to be used for confirmation There can be very strong Privacy without complete anonymity. But when the user’s identity is protected then the users of the service can be safe. This is mostly done by having a RVT token provided by the TEE to log you in, that is connected to a real human identity but only with permission.

The story: In Ashley Madison’s wake, here’s one man’s story of sex, sorrow and extortion

2. How ethical hackers took full control of her system

Sophie is a technology reporter at the Daily Telegraph and as part of an assignment, she accepted to be part of an ethical hacking experiment. Basically, a group of ethical hackers would try to compromise her system without her knowing how, when and where. Sophie only knew that it would happen at some point.

For a whole month, the hackers did an extensive research on Sophie, crawling through her Twitter and Facebook pages, Daily Telegraph articles and even found out her date of birth from a website on family trees.

Almost two months after the experiment began, the hackers launched their attack. They pretended to be whistleblowers in control of sensitive government information and sent her an email with some of the files attached.

The malware infection occurred the moment she opened the file, and the attackers got access to everything, including email address and web cam. And it wasn’t even that difficult to do.

Rivetz solution: Trusted computing can eliminate the bulk of this case as the user’s account details are protected by hardware so in the end even a compromised system can’t gain access. While certain data might be exposed if it is stored. In the clear a machine could do much to help the user protect their data. All of the cloud data would be secured as credentials can not be stolen.

The story: How hackers took over my computer

3. They took control of his car by remote hacking

Andy Greenberg, a senior writer at Wired, once took part in a groundbreaking experiment which tested how car hacking could be done. What did the experiment involve? His car would be remotely hacked while he was behind the wheel.

As Andy drove on the highway, the hackers started to progressively take control of the car. First they activated the air vents and windshield wipers. Next, the transmission was cut and finally, they remotely activated the breaks. And they did all of these things with Andy behind the wheel.

The experiment uncovered a massive flaw in Jeep’s cars which was later fixed, but given how cars are destined to be even more connected to the Internet than before, such attacks are bound to leave the experimental arena and become reality.

The previous two tales were happy endings, but keep reading for more cybercrime examples.

Rivetz Solution: Strong authentication and known device messaging could solve this problem. Assuring that the instructions to critical systems are only coming from other Known devices and not the hacked stereo system is critical. In addition, provable instructions will help systems be debugged and hardened over time as the systems evolve. These are things Rivetz is developed to do.

The story: Hackers Remotely Kill a Jeep on the Highway — With Me in It

4. When customer support falls prey to a social engineering hack

What happens when costumer support gives away your information? This Amazon user’s tale is an insightful one.

An impersonator once found out some of Eric’s fake information he used to register a website by looking into a public WHOIS registry for website owners.

The impersonator then used Eric’s fake information in a conversation with an Amazon customer support representative and found out his real address and phone number. Using Eric’s real information, the impersonator got in touch with various services and even managed to issue a new credit card on Eric’s name.

Eric got wind of his impersonator’s efforts by reading the customer support transcripts, and also found out his real purpose: to get the last 4 digits of his credit card.

Amazon didn’t do anything to protect Eric’s account, even though he repeatedly signaled the problem, so he finally decides to switch from Amazon to Google. As a parting note, he gets an email from Amazon implying they have provided the impersonator with the last 4 digits of his credit card.

This story about this guy’s tumultuous experience with Amazon will make you think twice about storing confidential information in your online accounts. The fact that Amazon failed to protect his account and look into the matter shows how a lack of cyber security education can endanger users.

Rivetz Solution: This is why Rivetz have invented hardware security to eliminate the risk that the human accidentally gives up their credentials, the keys held in hardware are software tamper proof and can’t be stolen Rivetz significantly eliminates this vector of attack. These data files need to be replaced with keys and encrypted provable information. The blockchain is one of the great inventions that will help us to separate. Keys and personal data. The integration of Rivetz and blockchain eliminates this type of risk entirely. Provable protection of Keys can assure a new model to reduce impersonation. It will never be perfect but we can make it harder.

The story: Amazon’s customer service backdoor

Conclusion: It is of no doubt that Rivetz solutions are very much needed in the cybersecurity space, this would in turn bootstrap growth in the Blockchain and IOT space.

Reference: https://heimdalsecurity.com/blog/12-true-stories-that-will-make-you-care-about-cyber-security/

Learn more about Rivetz here: https://rivetzintl.com/

Read up the whitepaper here: https://rivetzintl.com/rvt-white-paper-1.02.pdf

Watch this Interview with Steven Sprague:

My bitcointalk profile link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1063498

My eth address: 0xcEc5971D18a3bd78594e8fDf9B4B464060Ef614c

Rivetz ICO ends in 16 days from today 25/08/2017.

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