Cybersecurity & ePrivacy

The invention of computers was undeniably significant milestone for civilisation. Creation of that extensively versatile and multipurpose device was an advancement that commenced a new age - Information Age - in a history of humankind. However with new possibilities, new threats follows: cyber crime, cyber terrorism or cyber war. Computer ethics consists of rules, practices and areas that should be taken into consideration while designing, implementing and using information and communication technologies. It was a predecessor to ICT related legislation and expands current legal obligations for every individual involved.  The first of computer ethics commandments says: "Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people".   Often ethic codes are assigned to activities that have potential to be unethical, and within computer sciences the first thought is majorly hacking. In general, hacking refers to activities leading to acquire access to systems or data without permission...

At present, one of the most valuable resource - unless the most - is information. Data protection became essential part of almost any area of the everyday life. The broad term of data protection could be divided in two separate aims.    Most obvious goal is to keep and process data in a secure manner. CIA triad could expand the meaning of secure in this context (SecurityScorecard, 2021).  C for Confidentiality.  This component ensures that the right information could be accessed by individual with correct authorization. Unless information is public, any subject should have legitimate reason to access certain data. Permission should be granted only for necessary data and only for period of time when such data is needed. Authorization should be revoked immediately after access to data is no longer required. I for Integrity. Another fundamental component that protects information itself. Data has to be reliable and correct, thus must be kept safe from unauthorized chan...

Web applications are programs accessible and operated via Internet browser through interface usually in a form of a website. Examples of web apps are browser-based email accounts, online shops or search engines (EDUCBA, 2022). Difference between web application and website is that former often serve user with static or dynamic information, or act as a interface between human and application. Web based software often incorporate server-client architecture - the application is running on powerful computer and is accessible over Internet - server, and communicating with web browser installed on visitor's computer - client. This architecture allows service to be accessible from any device able to connect to the Internet and browse website, at the same time ensures provided data is consistent and actual. Every piece of software could be misused or exploited and this is also true regarding web applications. Moreover, web applications are at higher risk according to the fact beside secure...

Web tracking and device fingerprinting are activities or practises that are often tools for profiling visitors or users. Use of those techniques might be legitimate, however often are performed without consent or knowledge of the subject.   Web tracking is a practice of web service providers or third parties to analyse users' behaviour and engagement with the service. Web based tracking could be performed using cookies, device fingerprinting methods or scripts (Samarasinghe and Mannan, 2019). Usually web tracking is used to provide visitor of the website with more personalised content based on previous activity, to serve visitors with targeted advertisement, or even to sell visitors' data to third parties (Norton, 2022) . The other variation of web tracking is obtaining data for service improvement purposes. It is strictly service focused and allows to identify patterns of service usage or difficulties that visitors encounters often. Device fingerprinting is an invasive trackin...

In this post I will describe briefly my IT background and skill set.  As I mentioned earlier, I started from basics. Exactly, Basic programming language for Commodore C64. It is not confirmed, but very likely cave man used it to print their drawings on their cave walls. Let's forget about it. Around the age of 12 when I had desktop computer already, I started to learn HTML and CSS shortly after. I learnt very quickly but o be honest, at that time nobody expected too advanced and too good looking websites. If it was readable, it was pretty all right. No needed to worry that you will browse via your 80-inches TV or smart watch, if it looked good on my screen, it looked good everywhere else. No one could hack plain HTML, so no security measurements at all. Good old times. When I was about 16 I started to create websites for money. At this point it was already more complex: XHTML, CSS level 2 and JavaScript. I already knew foundations of PHP and MySQL databases. Now my websites could a...

After over 15 years of self-taught computer sciences and programming I made two observations.  At first, you can learn as general or as specific skills as you want. With a bit of motivation and self discipline you can grasp pretty wide assortment of skills, and you can master few in relatively short time. Learn how to use documentation, exercise and experiment, learn from more experienced but always question EVERYTHING - do not only copy others' solutions. Self-teaching rules! Right? The second observation is completely opposite. If you are learning by yourself, never using your skills at work, or in general - there is nobody that will start moaning once you do something wrong - you can mess up badly. In IT problems are not so obvious. Your design could seem to work well, you achieve desired outcomes, but does it mean it is all correct? Usually no, and that is why we have a lot of issues prone to exploitation - by accident, or by someone that able to predict events better than your...

Hi to everyone that somehow managed to visit my blog. I'm Bart and at the point of writing this, still under 30. I will try to smuggle here a bit of knowledge and my own thoughts, in a way it could be interesting and entertaining for both - you and myself.   I'm interested in computer sciences since I was nine, and was allowed to mess with my first computer-alike device: CommodoreC64. Playing video games was too boring, straight away I wanted to know how is it working. Already in age of 10 I completed my first ever project - text-based game written in Basic for C64, and this is how things stayed till present. I'm still coding, but more useful and complex stuff. For over 15 years I'm producing websites and web services.    While the technology progresses and my skills developing, I started to dig deeper in topics around pure coding. One `branch` of such topics draw a lot of my attention. In the world where everything in some way is processed with computer technology - fr...