Notpetya: One of the worlds worst cyber attacks. This is cyber war. There is nothing else to call this. It may not have made national news, but it should have. Following is a link to a story on the Notpetya attack, an episode from Darknet Dairies about Notpetya, and a link to the book written about it. 

Andy Geenberg wrote both the article and the book. He tells the story that is technical to explain the cybersecurity aspects of the events and adds his story telling skills to make the story both engaging and terrifying at the same time. This is NOT fiction.

The wired.com story:

The Untold Story of NotPetya, the Most Devastating Cyberattack in History

https://www.wired.com/story/notpetya-cyberattack-ukraine-russia-code-crashed-the-world/

Find the book here:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/597684/sandworm-by-andy-greenberg/

The last link is to an episode of the Darknet Diaries. It is a podcast that gets deep into the technical stuff. Andy Greenberg is also interviewed in the podcast. It's about an hour long and worth every minute.

https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/54/

(I recommend Darknet Diaries. Great podcasts with great information. https://darknetdiaries.com/)

What is your takeaway on Notpetya:

This is a blog posting a link to a blog that has a listing of other blogs. Simple enough.

Check out this link to other cybersecurity blogs. Some very general, some with very specific topics. You will find something interesting here:
https://blog.feedspot.com/cyber_security_news_websites/

Who is listening to you? Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook? Probably. Maybe. Definitely. You decide. Here are a couple of pages about devices listening and how to stop it. This is not a complete list, or the entire story, but it should raise an eyebrow and get you looking at your settings.



https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/9/20/20875755/smart-devices-listening-human-reviewers-portal-alexa-siri-assistant


https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2019/11/18/technology-spying-prevention/


https://www.cnet.com/how-to/alexa-delete-what-i-just-said-heres-how-to-prevent-amazon-from-listening-in/

Phishing, and Spear Phishing, are examples of email social engineering attacks that can be very effective. The best security hardware, the perfect firewall, and the crack IT support team can be rendered useless by these attacks. This YouTube video, produced by Cisco, demonstrates how it can play out and what the consequences could be from the attack, in this case a ransomware attack.