We will now interrupt the regularly scheduled program for this good old blades micro podcast. Today's episode is focused on cybersecurity, but more specifically how it relates to social media. Now, if you are a modern knife maker on Facebook or Instagram, you might see posts every once in a while where somebody says that their account was hacked. Now, uh hack attempts or um intrusion into your account from a threat actor, so a hacker or somebody who has uh malintent for you might express itself as uh as a hacked account, right? Somebody gets your password, they infiltrate your account, and then they take control of it. But there is another dynamic in um social media where specifically a threat actor is masquerading as you using a different profile, all right. So the the behavior might look the same, but it's really not. So I'll I'll go over two uh scenarios here and we'll kind of walk through what that looks like and how how to detect it, and then how to uh mitigate against it, right? In social media, you have a username and a password that's associated with uh an account, all right. And a hack is typically uh one way or another where a threat actor uh finds out what your your password are your username and your password, and then they use that to log in, and typically they will lock you out of the account, so they'll change the the password for your Facebook or Instagram account, and then you no longer have access to it. What threat actors will do typically is they will use the account to ransom for money, or they will use it to try to dupe other users uh from your account, so the people on your friends list, where they can continue the facade and gain money or financial benefit from it. So the easiest way to protect against a hack is to enable multi-factor authentication on your accounts. What this does is when you put your username and password in, it will then email or text you where you have to have a second handshake for authentication before you can log into an account. Where this is important is that uh username and passwords are fairly easy to find uh depending on what a hacker is is using to infiltrate you. Uh, you can click on a link, and that link could pull you up to a Facebook page or Instagram page where you're supposed to log in, but you were already logged in. So, unbeknownst to you, you'll put your username and password in, and they've just captured that in a different website, and then they can immediately log in and lock you out. What happens as well is you can actually have scenarios where you put a username and password in somewhere and it cap captures it because you have malware on your your machine, right? So if you're using a PC or or Mac, you you can you can have it where it sniffs at the the credentials and will then deposit them into a uh a threat actor's hands. Multi-factor is the easiest way to guard against this because you can never really be sure where your password is at. And this is true in cybersecurity in in general for every industry, uh, but more so the the common knife maker that's using social media typically is not very security conscious, and that's no fault of the user. It's just pretty much everybody who uses social media today doesn't really think about uh the hygiene of passwords where they're being used at. Sometimes it's the same password for their banking as it is for Facebook, which is really a no-no because if a threat actor has access to your password and you're using it in multiple places, well, they've just gained access to not only your social media, but then also potentially your banking, uh, you know, credit card information and other uh pertinent details where they can infiltrate you further. All right. In the case where a threat actor is trying to ransom your account, uh they'll be asking for uh a dollar amount for access back to it, and you you really don't have a lot of recourse. Uh the FBI doesn't care about it, local law enforcement doesn't care about it, it costs more man hours to process a case against cybersecurity with threat actors that live in jurisdictions that they can't touch. Uh typically it's overseas um in some European and Asian countries and in the Middle East. And anywhere a threat actor is sitting where they don't have jurisdiction, it really means very little uh to law enforcement. In addition with that, because of the cost, it typically is not something that they want to spend a lot of man hours on because the ransom might be for something fairly marginal uh when it comes to access to your account. And you can always make another account, even though you invest a lot of time and energy into social media sometimes. So, my recommendation in the case of hack attempts is enable multi-factor authentication and make sure you're using a strong password. Also, only use a password for for social media instead of using a password for social media that is shared with a bunch of other accounts. If you keep that secret, if you only use it for social media and you have multi-factor authentication enabled, it'll be a lot harder for a threat actor to gain access to your account. Almost impossible. But I will caveat that with saying that nothing is fully impossible on the internet, it's just uh really, really hard. The other scenario is spoofing or masquerading, and that is where a threat actor will clone your account. So they create a new profile in Facebook or Instagram or other social media accounts, and they they match it exactly or pretty close to what your live profile is that you you use. All right. The problem with this is that the threat is not against you, they are using you and the authority of your name, your person, to try to gain access and to uh attempt to hack or collect money from other people. A perfect example of this is that when you have a friend request from a knife maker or a person on your on your profile, uh, and you you you wonder whether that account is legitimate or not. Uh sometimes you don't even do that. You will look at a name, XYZ, some person, right? And you'll just accept it because you're like, I know that person. That's that's cool. Um it might be even somebody who's popular or who has a reputation, and you just accept it because it's that person. The problem is that once you accept a friend request, oftentimes because of privacy restrictions on your account, you open your life to them in a profound way where they can see all of your other friends, they can see your location, they can see your images, and you open yourself up to not only uh spoofing on your account, but you also give threat actors a specific angle or visibility into your own life so that way they can potentially target you. All of this sits in the umbrella of social engineering in cybersecurity, which is one of my specialties. So I've been uh studying uh cybersecurity and working in the industry for 20 years now, and social engineering is one of my specialties. So, what happens with masquerading? Um, when a a threat actor creates the account, they will start to invite the friends from that you know, from your profile. All right. Then if they decide to, they'll start messaging those people. Maybe they'll get them to click a link, maybe there's some type of spiel that they have where they're trying to get them to sign up for some insurance or or some derivative where they have to enter banking information or they have to reveal something. You will not always know what the intent of a threat actor is, but the easiest way to guard against it is by validating that that profile is legitimate with the author. So for instance, I've had several friends recently that have sent me friend requests, and I will initially look at my existing friends and see if there's already a profile that exists. That's check number one. I if I do have their phone number or their email address or their profile, I will message or I'll message them somehow, all right, and validate whether they're this was a legitimate backup profile or they created a new profile for some reason. That's check number two. The third one is to look at the friends that that profile has, all right. So sometimes uh a profile's permissions will allow you to see mutual friends or the total amount of friends. If you have a profile that's brand new and the friends are limited to 20 or 30, you can generally surmise that that account is new. All right. In addition with that, Facebook does uh specifically does have some uh they have some checks on the profile, like the about section of a profile to show when the account was created. And if it's new, I would be more speculative that it's legitimate than not. Um, especially if a user has a an existing profile, all right. There are always scenarios where creating a backup profile or a secondary profile is legitimate, however, it is your responsibility if you want to keep from perpetuating a threat actor's behavior to check these things first. Now, recourse. When a an account is is masquerading or a threat actor is masquerading another account, the only recourse that you have is to report that to the social media organization. So in this case, Facebook, you would have to go to the account. Um, there are a few different areas where you could do it on mobile or on your desktop, and you report the account to them. They will look at the reason that you provided, and they they may or may not remove it. Typically, if the association with spamming or scamming is high enough, they will go ahead and cancel the account, and you shouldn't have to worry about anything. But do not accept the friend request, you can anonymously submit a report to Facebook or Instagram and and you can also block them. Uh, what is important to note though is when you post on social media and say your account's been hacked, or say that there is another account that's been hacked, you have to be aware that masquerading is not necessarily a hack to the account in question, right? It's a brand new account that they're trying to gain information from other people inside of your network. When a username and password is compromised, the only way to really see whether it's been compromised by people outside of the user who owns the account is with certain behavior. Specifically, you might see somebody start posting random links, you might see them post videos or banking uh sites or things like that that you might click on. Um, there are a subset of threat actors who will use adult websites or things like that on a person's page to try to funnel in people to click it and then potentially sign up. So the threat actor has a lot of tools in their toolkit to gain your information or to gain money from you. And those are usually the two primary ways that they do it. You want to be vigilant, report accounts that look fraudulent, validate with the user or the persona that is uh being masqueraded. And if you are hacked, uh there is sometimes little recourse for you if you if they've gained your username and password and locked you out. You have to go through an actual process with Facebook or Instagram or other social media providers where they will validate it and your information and your likeness, and it takes months sometimes. Sometimes you will never get it back. Enable multi-factor authentication, and you will have a lot less occurrences of this, and you'll be a lot safer. And also very strong password that is only associated with your social media account. I hope this helped. Ask questions if you have them, and uh, this is another episode in the micro podcast suite of Gotal Blades.