Chapter 6 Summary

        The chapter is particularly interesting to me, as I am constantly in fear of having my identity stolen after seeing it happen to others around me. That is one of the biggest reasons I chose to pursue my current CIS major; in order to protect myself against a threat, I must understand it. Most of the time, my intense fear of being stolen from causes me to freeze and to not engage in online activities that I would otherwise like to partake in. As far as I have been concerned, the safest connection is no connection. I, like many other people, am a daily recipient of phishing scam attempts. Sadly enough, it has become a routine part of most of our lives. I did not know, however, the lengths to which scammers go to convince people that their spoofed websites are legitimate. It never occurred to me that spoofed websites could include popup windows that look exactly like a browser’s address bar with the legitimate website’s URL. This fact makes me even more reluctant to use online banking services and whatnot.

        Before this reading was assigned, I did not know what encryption was exactly. I heard the term thrown around here and there in conversation about cyber security, but I had no idea how it worked, and that it basically was just an algorithm’s translation of information that is meant to be protected. The common practice of encryption is certainly reassuring, but I am concerned that as the power of computers constantly grows, there will be easier ways of deciphering these algorithms and cracking the encryption in the near future. It brings to mind the question, will we always be capable of just making a longer key, and will that always be enough to prevent cracking?