Google’s chief ethical hacker says Kiwis should adjust to cybersecurity

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The person in charge of Google’s security and ethical hacking teams says Kiwis need to start taking shape on online safety.

It comes after a survey found that most New Zealanders were apathetic about the matter, even when many knew their passwords had been compromised.

A consumer research conducted on behalf of Google New Zealand by YouGov found that seven out of 10 kiwis did not always take steps to improve their online security, despite nearly a third admitting that they knew of a compromised or hacked password.

Parisa Tabriz / Furnished

Google’s director of engineering Parisa Tabriz is in charge of Project Zero, a group of elite hackers who are constantly looking for vulnerabilities like Google Chrome.

13% admitted sharing high-risk passwords with friends and family, and 6% sent messages or emails to someone.

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Speaking to Stuff from California in the US, Google technical director Parisa Tabriz said she was not surprised by the results, with poor password security worldwide.

What we see is that many people use the same password for multiple accounts, when you talk about the web there are dozens of sites.

123rf

Many New Zealanders are satisfied with their online safety, says one expert. (Archive photo)

This could create weaknesses, because if one of these sites is insecure and is hacked, the bots could browse the Internet looking for other sites where the same email address and password have been used.

Tabriz said that people often put off changing compromised passwords because it took a long time and required multiple steps on each site.

Even though users didn’t consider themselves a valuable target, Tabriz said there were still plenty of ways to profit from account hijacking.

These included mass account hijacking, or chasing hundreds of victims, and then changing passwords and redeeming user access, or using any information within accounts to access accounts. banks or to extort the owner.

The main reason kiwis weren’t taking steps to protect online accounts and passwords was simply not knowing where to start, according to the survey.

Parisa Tabriz / Furnished

Parisa Tabriz is known in the industry as the Security Princess, having jokingly written the title on her first business card.

One in five kiwis believed that a password was enough to keep them safe. This is despite two-factor authentication being widely recognized as a best practice, Tabriz said.

Two-factor authentication is the process used by banks and email providers. Upon login, a code is sent via SMS or e-mail, which must be entered to access the account.

The process can also use third-party apps, such as Google Authenticator, which require a separate code generated by an app that only the user has access to.

However, 18% of kiwis said they didn’t know what two-factor authentication was.

Google’s public policy spokesman for New Zealand, Ross Young, said he thinks this: If a password is locking the house, the alarm is two-factor authentication.

Only one in four (26%) use a password manager, tools designed to provide strong passwords.

For most people, just having strong, unique passwords for each account will improve your security so much that you can almost ignore the rest of the advice, Tabriz said.

As part of his role, Tabriz is in charge of Project Zero, a group of elite hackers who are constantly looking for vulnerabilities like Google Chrome.

The five best ways to stay safe online:

Use a password manager to create and store strong passwords for each account

Enable two-factor authentication for each account that has this feature

Make sure the connections to the site are secure, you can recognize it by the gray locked padlock that is displayed by the URL on most browsers

Always check if URLs and links are suspicious, usually it’s a clue if the link doesn’t start with https

Don’t open suspicious attachments, and if you’re worried, use Chrome or Google Drive to open it. They automatically scan the file and warn if there are any signs of a virus.

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