Tag Archive for: hackfree

Are your home’s router, TV, phones hack-free?

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Our homes are more connected than ever before. Between Alexa, smart home devices, and Wi-Fi throughout our houses, there’s no escaping the reach of the internet in our domestic lives. On the one hand, this has made daily living more convenient, with voice command or button services. On the other hand, by connecting everything in our home to the internet, we open ourselves up to hackers, thieves and cybercriminals.

When we talk about the threat posed by hackers, it’s important to remember that cybercrime, by definition, requires the use of the internet. The connections we use between all of our devices are the vectors that criminals use to attack us.

Once inside our devices or data, hackers can compromise our finances, steal important information and wreak havoc on our personal lives.

To safeguard our homes from hackers, the best strategy is to hack-proof the most common points of entry: routers, smart TV’s, voice assistants and smartphones.

Let’s go over the best ways to secure these essential home devices, allowing you to create a safer environment for you and your family’s personal data.

Hack-proofing your home router

Your router is your home’s overall gateway to the internet. Any networked devices must pass information through your router, making it the number one target for hackers looking to compromise your entire system.

Routers themselves typically have several features that allow users to defend against intruders, such as encryption, passwords and firewalls. While these are useful, routers can still have vulnerabilities if not regularly maintained. Consider this guide a form of “security housekeeping” that allows you to stay on top of your router’s weak spots with regular checkups and updates.

Stay up to date

As technology products, routers are constantly being updated and improved by their developers. Typically, router manufacturers will release software updates to your device when they spot critical security flaws or glitches that make their products more…

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Initial signs point to surprisingly hack-free election, but risks remain

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Three and a half years of election security upgrades, training and government information sharing appeared to pay off on Election Day as voting unfolded with the usual technical glitches but no evidence of successful cyberattacks.



a person standing next to a suitcase: A worker returns voting machines to storage at the Fulton County election preparation center n Atlanta.

© AP Photo/John Bazemore
A worker returns voting machines to storage at the Fulton County election preparation center n Atlanta.

The electronic poll books used to check in voters failed in several counties, one results reporting website suffered a brief outage and the internet failed in the election office of one of Florida’s most important counties. But as of Wednesday morning, there is no evidence that hackers were responsible for those incidents or any other disruptive activities, despite months of preelection warnings that Russian cyber operators were probing potential targets throughout the U.S. political system.

Federal officials and independent observers attributed the thus-far hack-free election to a successful partnership with state and local officials, who reported suspicious activity and enacted backup procedures when technology failed.

“This coordination is the most unheralded intergovernmental success story,” said Matthew Weil, the director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project. “Voters have had their confidence shaken in the elections process this year, but it is more secure and professional than at any point in our history.”

The security of the election machinery across U.S. counties and states remains far less than ideal in much of country, and breakdowns in newly purchased devices contributed to chaos and long lines during some of this year’s presidential primaries. But government leaders praised Americans for not overreacting to glitches or assuming the worst about them, saying voters seemed to recognize what officials have said for years: that foreign adversaries will do whatever it takes to undermine confidence in U.S. elections, and that jumping to conclusions does that work for them.

Covert military action may also have helped knock adversaries off balance. In recent weeks, according to The Washington Post, U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency retaliated against Iran for the…

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