Targeted by thieves. via Flickr
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I found out that my mom’s Yahoo account was hacked last year after she stopped responding to emails (something only I’m allowed to do without prompting hysteria). When I told her she should immediately update all of her accounts—she uses the same login for just about everything—she stared at me blankly, totally oblivious and unconcerned. After I insisted, she waved me off, annoyed that I was giving her homework while we were trying to enjoy a rare dinner together. The woman has a master’s degree in computer science, but like most of us, prefers the illusion of perceived safety over the grim reality, not that I blame her. Everyone’s personal bandwidth is limited and the protocol settings on your home firewall—if you’re astute and ambitious enough to have one (highly unlikely)—is the last thing anyone wants to think about.Generally speaking, whether due to carelessness, ignorance, or downright apathy, we’re piss poor at managing our personal security.
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Which finally brings us to encryption, or at least our faith in its invincibility that allows Bitcoin to become a multi-billion dollar market. Only time will tell if that trust is ultimately misguided. I’m not smart enough to speculate on the theory of unbreakable cryptography, but experts far more intelligent than me have been caught off-guard. Thanks to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, Reuters uncovered a probable NSA “back door” that used popular encryption products. Known as dual elliptical curve encryption or secp256r1, the algorithm was widely considered the industry standard—at least until it wasn’t.To Bitcoin’s credit, it’s a potential landmine that Satoshi inconceivably sidestepped, either out of genius foresight or just dumb luck, explains Chris Pacia:Such are the fine lines between the once secure and the suddenly insecure, which can come down to the flip of a coin and the reason why the notion of a fundamentally more secure system is a complete fallacy.
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