[Cryptography] Interesting discussion of Web 3.0 ...

[Jerry Leichter]

> What's really slowing down this possible market is horror stories about 
> stolen emails, ransomware etc....
Ahem:  "QNAP issues ransomware warning to users: secure your devices or disconnect unprotected NAS... QNAP issued a security statement urging their NAS users to take immediate action and secure their data against ongoing ransomware and brute force attacks."

https://www.techspot.com/news/92909-qnap-issues-warning-users-secure-or-disconnect-unprotected.html

Basically, the remediation they are suggesting is to make sure their devices can't be accessed from the Internet.

QNAP is one of the better-thought-of NAS vendors, with a strong technical following.

Personally, I use a Synology NAS - though a variant sold by ioSafe, which is guaranteed to survive house fires, immersion in water, and similar hazards.  I keep thinking about making it externally accessible ... and keep putting it off.  Do I really want to take the chance?  If I want to make some stuff publicly accessible, there are plenty of Cloud services that will do that for me, and they're pretty good about security.  And if someone does break their security ... the only stuff that gets exposed is stuff I deliberately put out there.  I might back some stuff up to the cloud, but I'll encrypt it before sending it.

Of course, the ongoing trends have their flip side as well.  I recently got a fiber connection through Optimum.  The *only* way to get to the router in my house is through an Optimum website - they've completely disabled access to the on-device controls.  (They had to produce a full manual for the thing as part of regulatory approval, and you can find it and download it.  Nice stuff in there, but there's no way to get to it.)  I can't say that gives me the warm fuzzies....

                                                        -- Jerry