BLBG Meeting 13th December

What do etiquette, ethical hacking and efficiency have in common?

They were all discussed at the BLBG meeting last Tuesday 13th December.

Sonia Sabbah, a Lebanese brought up in the UK, returned to her native Beirut and decided that a manual of how to treat one’s fellow (wo)men was needed. She has written a comprehensive guide on how to behave on the road (treat it as shared), in nightclubs (don’t bring weapons!), restaurants (don’t flick your fingers to attract the waiter’s attention) and … well perhaps you’d better buy the book “Etiquette in the City: Beirut” to find out.

A fish in sea (say it out load) were up next. As well as being a BLBG sponsor , they are a UK consulting, design and software development company. Kais al-Kaissi is building their client set in the Middle East from a base in Beirut and gave us a quick run through their capabilites.

And then we welcomed Tony Chebli from Credit Libanais, a poacher turned gamekeeper if ever there was one. Starting as a teen-age hacker of web-sites he now uses his skills and capabilities to advise companies on how to avoid “being promoted from Target to Victim” of Cyber-Crime.

And what skills! Here’s a man who can guess your password by seeming to crawl around inside your skull and work out how you think. He knows how to turn a simple document into a stealth weapon. He knows how to hide himself inside your computer and make it do naughty things in your name. I’m glad he’s on our side!
If it were just him who could do it, that would be fine, but no, there’s a lot of people out there and the baddies are busy – some web-sites are being attacked at the rate of seven times a second or over 5,000,000 times a day, and the average is thirty times an hour.

What’s more anyone with a computer and credit card is at risk of fraud, identity theft or being turned into a zombie, OK not a a real “Village of the Damned” one, but creepy it is to have your stuff, in this case your PC, taken over by faceless controllers.

So what do we do?

Well, it’s the usual common sense stuff that gets the best reward. Here’s a loose translation of what your Mum and Dad taught you as a kid. “Don’t talk to strangers” equals “Don’t open strange emails”. “Don’t leave your door unlocked” becomes “create difficult passwords” – me123 isn’t good enough. “Be alert” becomes “Keep your computer up to date”. “Beware Greeks bearing gifts” becomes “Don’t use free software from an unknown source”. And last but by no means least, listen to those in the know. Like Tony.

Now it has to be etiquette to offer thanks to all our speakers for their effort, enthusiasm and knowledge.