Tag: Computer Science

Security Risks of Storage and Operating System-Capstone Project

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What is an Operating System?

An operating system is a piece of software that runs on a computer. It manages the computer’s memory and processes, as well as all of its software and hardware. An operating system also allows you to communicate with the computer without knowing how to speak the computer’s language.

What is Data Storage?

Data storage allows users to save data onto a device. This makes it so that if a computer were to power down, the data would be retained. This also allows users to instruct the computer to pull data from storage devices instead of entering it manually. However, there are two kinds of data storage: cloud storage and hard drive storage.

In this post I will be talking about the security risks of both kinds of data storage, and the security risks of an operating system.

Security Risks of an Operating System

One of the many risks of an operating system are that it can simply be coded poorly, which can lead to errors in security and easy accessibility to hackers. You can imagine this like building a house without locks on the windows, so anyone who is determined can get in. Another security risk is that if you have a bad authentication systems, which could allow a hacker to steal a password and other login info to a computer’s operating system. This is like having locks on your doors that could be opened by any key. One more example of a security risk for an operating system is exposure to malware. Malware is a software that is specifically designed to disrupt, damage, or gain unauthorized access to a computer system. Hackers can often give a virus or some other kind of malware like a Trojan to the OS and then get data from inside the computer. A virus is a specific type of malware that self-replicates by inserting its code into other programs. For more information on these different security risks, check out this website.

Security Risks of external Hard Drive Storage

People often feel that having information stored on a hard drive is very safe, however, there are actually many security risks involved with saving data to a hard drive. One of those risks is simply user error, like the hard drive being damaged, stolen, or even lost. This is one of the most common ways people loose the data saved on a hard drive. Having external hard drives is also a security risk for large companies because their employees may have physical access to it, this means that they must trust that their employees won’t steal a hard drive that might contain important data. There have been multiple occasions in the past when people have stolen and sold crucial information from a company for thousands of dollars. Additionally, data on hard drives are susceptible to viruses or malware, as explained above. For more information on these different security risks, check out this website.

Security Risks of Cloud Storage

Saving data to the cloud puts most of the responsibility of keeping your data safe on your storage provider. However, anything that affects your storage provider, whether it be a power outage or their data being infected with malware or viruses, it will directly impact your data. This also means that you have to trust that your storage provider won’t accidentally expose your data to the wrong person. Another security risk is that many storage providers won’t automatically back up your data, they expect you to do it. This leaves you vulnerable to data loss. One more security risk for cloud storage is when you are uploading your data to the cloud. Data is uploaded to the cloud through an API, and if your API is insecure it could allow hackers to access you data as you upload it to the cloud. For more information on these different security risks, check out this website.

Here is a list of all the security risks I just talked about, and some basic solutions to solve them.

Security Risk Solution
Operating System Malware/Viruses Installing antivirus programs or having them preinstalled
Poorly Coded Find any problem in your code before hackers do. You could try to hack into your own data to find security problems
Bad Authentication Systems Monitor the dark web for people selling your passwords
External Storage Malware/Viruses Don’t plug it in to unknown devices
Damaged/Lost Make copies/back up the data
Stolen Hard Drives Encrypt the data so that if it’s stolen thieves won’t have easy access to the data
Cloud Storage No Longer Have Control Of Your Data Choose a good storage provider, encrypt your data, and back up your data to multiple services
Storage Provider Might Leak Critical Information Encrypt your data before uploading it to the cloud
Won’t Automatically Back Up Your Data Back up your data to another storage provider or a hard drive
Your API Might Be Insecure Make sure that the data your uploading to the cloud is encrypted, and use a strong authentication system

Works Cited

My Capstone Project Partner, Amon’s Blog
Operating System Security Issues
Security Risks Associated With Portable Storage Devices
7 Cloud Storage Security Risks You Need to Know About
(and my mom, a former president at GoDaddy)

DNS Masking

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What is DNS Masking?

To understand DNS masking, we must first understand DNS forwarding. DNS forwarding is the concept of creating multiple links that all lead back to your website. However, when doing this, it could result in someone clicking a link titled “coolcars.com” and bring them to a website titled “bestcars.com”. This is fixed with something called DNS masking. DNS masking is the concept of changing how viewers see domain names. What I mean by this, is that if you were to click on “coolcars.com”, you would still be brought to “bestcars.com”, but the domain name that you see would be “coolcars.com”, even though its the same website.

Some Pros and Cons of DNS Masking

Pros

  • Creates a professional brand experience for your viewers
  • Your domain is more likely to be recognized by search engines

Cons

  • Search engines will detect multiple different domains with the same content, which is bad because it results in only one URL being indexed, and it might not be the domain that you want. If this happens, then it’s a big disadvantage
  • Your users might distrust you because scammers often cloak URLs

Here are some other ways that URLs can be hidden. These are also some examples of how many scammers will try to get you to click links to their websites.

This is a link that leads to something not described in the link name

My Blog

This is a button that acts as a link so you have no information on where it will take you

This is a link that takes you to its source when you hover your mouse over it

Click here

This link downloads a file when its clicked

click for free $$$

Net Neutrality-Pros and Cons

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Benefits of Net Neutrality

When we use the internet to view websites, stream movies, get email, or anything else, the content we request comes to us through an Internet Service Provider. Net neutrality is the concept of everything on the internet being fair in that every website or streaming platform’s data gets sent at the same rate. Without restriction, a website or streaming platform could pay an internet service provider to send their data before another websites data. This can cause people to form opinions about which streaming platforms and websites are best because of how long they take to load. Overall, net neutrality is important because it keeps what we see on the internet unbiased in the sense that everything we see is sent at the same rate, so we don’t have more or less loading time when watching shows on different streaming platforms or opening different websites.

Down Sides of Net Neutrality

Internet service providers supply data from millions of websites and streaming platforms to millions of people, they are the gateway between us and the internet. However, this should also mean that they get to decide at what rates they send out specific data. After all, it is their business that they own, and pay expenses for, if they want to make some extra money by offering to speed up the rate at which your data is sent for a price, shouldn’t they be able to?

Message Encryption Investigation

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We learned about encryption using Matrices, RSA (asymmetric) Encryption, Key Sharing and how to send messages WITHOUT sharing keys in class. What are some other ways that messages can be encrypted or sent securely?

What Are Some Other Ways For Messages To Be Encrypted?

One way messages can be encrypted is by using a hexadecimal. Hexadecimal is a base 16 number system that uses numbers 0 through 9, lower-case letters a through f, and uppercase letters A through F as digits. You can look at my other post about binary, which is a base 2 number system to help you understand how hexadecimal works. Hexadecimal can be used to encrypt messages just like binary, every number has a specific symbol that it relates to. Here is a website you can use to see what numbers in hexadecimal relate to which symbols. Using this method I can encrypt the message “Hexadecimal Encryption” using hexadecimal so that it looks like this, 48657861646563696d616c20456e6372797074696f6e. Here is a website that you can use to encrypt or decrypt your own messages in hexadecimal.

What Are Some Other Ways For Messages To Be Sent Securely?

One other way that messages can be sent securely is called symmetric encryption. This method is also called private-key cryptography or a secret key algorithm. To encrypt a message using this method both the sender and the receiver must have access to the same key. The recipient needs to have the key before the message is encrypted. This method works best for closed systems because there is less risk of a third-party intrusion. Symmetric encryption is faster than asymmetric encryption, However, on the negative side, both parties need to make sure the key is stored securely and available only to the software that needs to use it. Because of this sometimes it is better to use asymmetric encryption even though it takes longer.

Binary

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UNDERSTANDING BINARY NUMBERS

Most of us are used to representing numbers with ten digits, 0-9. This is called a base ten number system. Binary is a base two number system. This means there are only two digits that are used, ones and zeros, yet you can still write any number in binary. When counting in binary, every digit from the left is worth double the previous digit, here is an example:

Value 16 8 4 2 1
Place 5th digit 4th digit 3rd digit 2nd digit 1st digit

The value of each digit is included in a number if in that place is a one, however if a zero is in that place the value of that number is not included. Using this you can see that if I were to write 01010 it would be equivalent to writing the number 10 because I am using the eights place and the twos place, 8+2=10.

Value 16 8 4 2 1
Binary Number 0 1 0 1 0
Numbers Included in Binary Number 0 8 0 2 0

Here are some more examples of how to write different numbers in binary:

Number Representation in Binary
One 00001
Two 00010
Three 00011
Four 00100
Five 00101
Six 00110
Seven 00111
Eight 01000
Nine 01001
Ten 01010
Eleven 01011
Twelve 01100
Thirteen 01101
Fourteen 01110
Fifteen 01111
Sixteen 10000

HOW CHARACTERS ARE REPRESENTED IN BINARY

Using the first 8 digits in binary you can create numbers 0 through 255. There are also exactly 255 symbols you can type on he computer, including letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and more. Every binary number 1-255 represents its own symbol. Here is a website that lists all the symbols that can be represented with binary.

HOW BLACK AND WHITE IMAGES ARE REPRESENTED IN BINARY

Black and white images can be represented in binary by simply identifying which pixels in each row are on, and which are off. Every pixel in an image is either on or off. To represent this in binary ones are on and zeros are off. To find what pixels are on in a row you can count the number of pixels that are off in a row and then how many are on. So if an image had a row that looked like this: 000110, it could be represented by writing 3,2 in binary because there are three pixels that are off on the left fallowed by two pixels that are on.

HOW COLORED IMAGES ARE REPRESENTED IN BINARY

Colored images can be represented in binary almost the same as black and white images. When finding the color of the pixel, 0 still represents white, or off, but 1 and every other number in binary has its own color assigned to it. For example 01 (or 1) is blue, 10 (or 2) is green, and 11 (or 3) is red.

HOW AUDIO IS REPRESENTED IN BINARY

Audio can be represented in binary by using a microphone that can convert sound waves into voltages. Then the voltages can be checked at regular intervals and the voltage value can be converted into a binary number. This series of binary numbers can then be saved as a sound file and can be recreated at anytime by turning the numbers back into their original voltages which can make speakers or headphones vibrate so they recreate the sound.

All available attributes for the “iframe” element using HTML

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Here are a list of all available attributes for the “iframe” element using HTML

You can change the height and width of an iframe using “height=”_px” and width=”_px””

you can allow full screen in an iframe using “allowfullscreen” (double tap to view full screen)

You can use “referrerpolicy” to specify what referrer information to send when fetching the iframe

You can use “name” to give the iframe a name, this lets you create target links for iframes so you can change what you see in the iframe


John Cena prank call

Other attributes for iframes are “loading”, and “sandbox”. You can use “loading eager” or “loading lazy” to decide if the iframe should load immediately, or wait until some conditions are met, and you can use the sandbox attribute to enable an extra set of restrictions for the content in the iframe

10 advanced CSS programming techniques

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Using CSS you can make images expand when your cursor hovers over them

Using CSS you can round images

cat belly

Using CSS you can make animations

Using CSS you can mirror images in any direction
(don’t the images look similar)

cat belly
painting

Using CSS you can make shadows around words or images

You can change the opacity of images using CSS

cat belly

Using CSS you can flip text

Using CSS you can flip text

Using CSS you can create gradients with any colors

Using CSS you can use images as borders

Using CSS you can create columns to write in

HelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHelloHello

10 CSS attributes

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Here is a list of 10 CSS attributes

Using CSS you can center text

Using CSS you can change the color around text

Using CSS you can change the opacity of a color

Using CSS you can change the background of text into an image

Using CSS you can change text color

Using CSS you can add borders around text

Using CSS you can dot the edges of a border

Using CSS you can round the edges of borders

Using CSS you can make, and change the height and width of images or shapes

Using CSS you can make, and change the height and width of images or shapes

Using CSS you can make links that have different colors when you hover your cursor over them, click them, or once they have been visited

All available attributes for the “img” tag in HTML

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Here is a list of all the attributes availible for the “img” tag in HTML

The “Hight” and “width” attributes let you change the size of your image

dog carrot
dog carrot

You can make interactive images so you can click the image and have something happen by using the “ismap” attribute


button

This is another way to make interactive images, except this picture has different links inside of it, click the phone to get more information on the topic, the computer, or the coffee, you can do this by using the “usemap” attribute

Workplace

Computer Phone Cup of coffee

The “loading” attribute lets you makes images not load immediately, but instead load later, for example it might load only when you scroll near the image, here is an example:

The “referrerpolicy” attribute specifies which referrer information to use when fetching an image

The “longdesc” attribute specifies a hyperlink to a detailed description of an image, this lets you give explanations for images on the same webpage as the image, or on external pages


cat

Cat picture

This description is on the same webpage as the picture on top, but the bottom pictures description is on a separate webpage

The “srcset” and “sizes” attributes let you make different size images to help with screen size and resolution differences, for example, if you were to look at a website on your phone you would technically be looking at a different image at a different size than if you were to look at it on your computer, this is so the image doesn’t take up your whole screen, if you look at the picture of the chinchilla and shrink your screen, you will see that the picture is now a different size

chinchilla

10 Elements I learned in HTML from using “inspect source” and “view source” that I didn’t know before.

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Here is a list of 10 HTML elements that I learned by using “inspect source” and “view source”

“svg” is used to make shapes, it defines the height and width of the shape, put it is used with other elements to define what shape and more, an example of another element it works with is “path” it is used with a d tag to define the traits of a shape. Here is what the two elements can do:

“iframe” is used to make a small area that can let you scroll through another website from your website, here is an example:

“details” lets you make a small summary or headline, and when you click it, it expands and show you more about the topic, here is an example:

“details” element

when you click that summary this pops up

“nav” lets you make a set of navigation links, it basically lets you link to specific parts of a website, here is an example:

“script” allows you to use coding styles from other languages, for example you could use JavaScript inside HTML. Here is an example:

One thing “input” allows you to do, is make clickable buttons, and “label” allows you to title those buttons, here is an example of what the two elements can do:

 
 
 

“main” identifies the main content of a document, here is an example:

This is currently stated as the main content of this blog post

“button” allows you to make clickable buttons that you can interact with, here is an example:

More examples of all of these can be found atGoDaddy.com, feel free to check it out.

Pros and Cons of “view source” and “inspect source”

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“View source” and “inspect source” are ways to view the coding of websites on the internet. Both “view source” and “inspect source” have times when they are more helpful than the other, but what are some of the things that make them unique or different from one another? One of my favorite things about “inspect source” is that you can zoom in on certain parts of a web page and see how its coded, where as “view source” has all the code clumped together in a big block. The good thing about “view source” is that on certain websites it will lay out all the coding very neatly and clearly, but on other websites it will be so crowded you don’t even know what your looking at.  Another benefit of using “inspect source” is that when you move your cursor over a line of code it will tell you what element on the web page corresponds to that code, and vice versa. Overall, I prefer “inspect source” because it is more reliable a more consistent result/format where as “view source” may be harder to read.

10 things you can do with HTML that you can’t do with the standard visual editor.

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10 things you can do with HTML that you cant do with the visual editor on edublogs

You Can Highlighting Text

You Can Change The Font

You Can Make Text Subscript
You Can Make Text Superscript

You Can Make A Table Like This One
With A Few Categories Like This One

You Can Place Text On Top Of Other TextYou Can Place Text On Top Of Other Text



you can make lists with descriptions
-like this one
-with lots of points
or descriptions

you can make small borders around words

or you can make big borders around words

Capstone project, evaluating websites.

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I wanted to know more about how we can stop global warming so I found this site, “How You Can Stop Global Warming”. I wondered how I could find out if this information was true or not so I decided to use Cornell University’s four part system to see if the source was reliable.

Accuracy

First I had to check who wrote the article and if they had the credentials and information to write this article. I found out that the author, Melissa Denchak, has a culinary diploma and loves writing about food, meaning she probably doesn’t really know enough, or have the qualifications to write about global warming. I also had a lot of trouble finding any way of contacting them which is also a step in the wrong direction.

 

Authority

 

Next I had to find out who published the article to see if it was a separate party from the website that the article was on. Sadly, the article was published by the same website that the article was posted on, the NRDC. There was also no bibliography or reference list, just a scramble of links inside the article, once again, a step in the wrong direction.

 

Objectivity

After that I had to find out if the information used was detailed and unbiased. As I was going through the many links used in the article, I noticed that many of them were actually links back to other articles on the NRDC website meaning that they might not actually be the best source of information for the article, but instead a free advertisement for NRDC. 

Currency

Finally I had to check if any of the information or links on the page were outdated. I found that the article was published back in July of 2017 and has had some small updates from as early as August of 2021. Because of this all of the links in their website are still active and most of the information is still accurate.

Overall I think this article has a lot of information about global warming that can help you better understand what’s happening today, but I would not recommend using this website to get information. The author does not have the credentials to be writing this arctical, and there is also strong bias in her writing. Even more than that, there is also no way of contacting her which is strange for most credible authors. If you are also curios about global warming I would suggest that you don’t use this article to inform you because I believe that there are many better websites that could give you a more accurate understanding of global warming.

Limitations of Search Engines

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As most of us know search engines have the answer to almost any question you could have, but sometimes good answers can be hard to find. Although some search engines are easier to use than others they all have limitations. One of the many limitations that search engines have is that millions of search results come up every time you make a search. How are we supposed to know what websites have the information we need and which ones have good accurate and non-biased information? Another limitation of search engines is that people can get their websites listed at the top of the search results by paying the search engine. This makes it even easier to find biased information because the people paying to get  their websites at the top of a search page are usually big corporations or companies trying to sell their product. One more limitation is that search engines use what information they have about you to influence what search results come up, but the information they have on you might not be true, meaning they could give you the wrong information. All these things are just a few examples of the limitations that search engines have, so even though a search engine probably has the answer to your questions, you might need to do some digging to find it.

Information On The Internet

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Whether it be looking for the best car to buy or choosing who to vote for in the presidential election, it is important to have good information about the things that you are choosing between. It can be difficult to find accurate information that can help you make a decision. So how can you make sure that you are getting the information needed for you to make a good decision. One thing that is important is that you need to remember that not everything you see on the internet is true, but there a certain ways that can help you find out if what you see is real or not. There are a few examples of this, one way you can find out if what you see is real is by fact checking it on other websites. By doing this you can find out if the facts stated are actually facts, or if other people have the same opinions on the “decision” that you are making. Another way you could find out if what you see is real is by checking who published the article that you are reading. For example, if you check who published a website you are looking at and/or gathering information from, and you find out that the website saying “Nike shoes are the best” is published by Nike, it might not be true. Still, there are certain things that we don’t  decide for our selves. For example 

many of us are influenced to have certain views or opinions, there are two main ways this happens. One way is that we are influenced by our parents as kids to share their views and opinions, and as we grow up we keep those views and opinions. The second way is that we can be influenced by social media or advertisements. What I mean by this is that advertisements are made to be seen and remembered subconsciously, just by seeing an ad for Toyota might make you more likely to buy a Toyota instead of a Honda. How could finding true information be even easier though. I think that if google search had websites organized by there credibility and social bias (political view) so that true information with no bias would pop up first when making a google search it would make finding accurate information much easier. So next time you are doing research to find out what car to buy, try to remember that you should check multiple websites, and form your own opinion based on your needs in a car.

How We See Advertisements Today

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Whether you realize it or not, you probably see thousands of advertisements every day. These advertisements might come from watching TV, walking around and seeing bus ads or billboards, or even seeing food brands when cooking and clothing brands when walking around town. Even if you don’t notice these advertisements, they are there. Why do advertisements work? Well, one of the key things involved in making a good ad is having the viewer remember it later. In fact, if lots of people see the same advertisement they are more likely to bring it up in conversation, which helps the viewer remember the ad. One good example of advertising is out-of-home advertising. Out-of-home advertising can be anything like billboards and posters. A great example of out-of-home advertising is this picture of Jennifer Lopez, behind her you can see a large advertisement for GoDaddy on a digital billboard. This is a great idea because their ads will now be on TV for millions of people to see. Another example of advertising is guerrilla advertising, This is a type of advertising that involves the consumer participating or interacting with a piece in some way. I have recently seen one of these ads myself. My family was in Seattle for a week and there was a stand giving out SunGold kiwis. We didn’t think we liked kiwis but we tried them anyway. Since then we have bought multiple packs of kiwis. So when your walking around or searching the web, keep your eyes open for all the advertisements that you don’t normally notice. If you want to find out more about current advertisements from some of the sources that I learned from, then check out these websites:

How Does Advertising Work?

The Different Types of Advertising Methods Available to You

HOW MANY ADS DO YOU SEE IN ONE DAY?