The first mobile app I’d like to discuss is YouTube, an app that most everybody is familiar with. Available on almost every device with internet connection capabilities, YouTube is a video sharing platform with millions of users worldwide. YouTube’s age demographic ranges all over from young to the elderly, everybody has a use for YouTube’s video sharing capabilities.

YouTube, like many other apps has paid services that it’s users can purchase to unlock various features.  YouTube’s paid service called YouTube Premium allows for several privileges not afforded to normal views on the platform. Some of these privileges include things such as ad free watching, background playing of videos, downloading of videos, and access to YouTube Music premium.  YouTube has a secondary paid membership for specific YouTube channels, for users to show their direct support to said channels.

The second mobile app that I’d like to discuss is Discord, an app that is mostly directed towards teens and young adults. Available on most devices, Discord is a heavily text based communication app, with limited video and audio calling capabilities. Used by professionals, semi professionals, and various internet communities, Discord is widely used for anybody wishing to connect with one and other.

Similarly to YouTube , Discord as a paid subscription service, called Discord Nitro. At a rate of $100 a year , Discord Nitro unlocks various features. Some of these features include custom emoji’s, higher video quality, better personalized profiles, the ability to show off your Discord Nitro status, bigger file uploads, and the ability to directly support servers of your choice.

https://www.youtube.com/

https://www.youtube.com/premium

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6304294

https://discord.com/

https://discord.com/nitro

There are an incredibly vast number of ways for anyone on the internet to demonstrate “bad” behavior. Sometimes these “bad” behaviors even have real-world consequences and can hurt real people. In the grim example I plan to discuss, the lives of ten people were lost, and three more people were seriously injured as a result. Though it hasn’t been discussed in mainstream media other than to be brushed off as a “conspiracy theory”, it has been rumored by some, that members of either the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), had instigated the shooter who on May 14^th killed 10 people and injured 3 more in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. While the accusation that the United States of America would use government agencies to instigate massacres against its’ own citizens is a heavy thought to bear and it is currently unknown whether the accusations have any credible standing. There is another immoral behavior that took place in regard to the event and which occurred through the internet, this time solely at the hands of the perpetrator of the heinous Buffalo store shooting. 18 year old Payton Gendron, livestreamed his assault of the Tops Friendly Markets supermarket in Buffalo, New York through the popular streaming website Twitch, before the stream was taken down. Obviously, as the one livestreaming himself slaughtering innocent people , Payton Gendron is the main purveyor of the “bad behavior” that unfolded during over twitch on the 14th of May, 2022, although it could also be reasoned that Twitch as a company is somewhat involved in the incident as the livestream happened on their platform, although they struck down the video as soon as they possibly could. The outcome of this “bad behavior” was the ending of 10 lives, and the injury of 3 more people. Clearly there is loss associated with the death of loved ones, a loss that cannot be calculated in monetary terms, but as well there was destruction to property, and the influence over any positive or negative reputation that Gendron may have had before his killing spree, as well as a blow to the reputation of the United States federal government if the aforementioned rumor is brought up in court and proven to be in any way true. Currently, Payton Gendron is still going through the legal system and likely to be charged severely for his inhumane actions. It is difficult to learn a practical sort of lesson from the events that unfolded, although perhaps something of an indirect takeaway is the effect that unrestricted access to the internet has on the young human mind as the isolation of the covid quarantine and access to the internet are prominent factors in the current investigation into the shooter’s motives.

In digital space there are a plethora of dangers and threats can disrupt the flow of internet traffic. As the IT Supervisor for a small corporation, I’ve identified the top 5 sources and types of digital threats that our company should work to be better equipped against. The first of these threats is those of Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS), which is defined as when a high volume of internet traffic bombards a targeted server, service, or network as a means to disrupt normal traffic, in a metaphorical sense, opening the digital floodgates and overwhelming the server’s ability to process network requests. Secondly, I think the next biggest threat to the company’s digital wellbeing is likely to be DNS hijacking, a strategy implemented by third party perpetrators in which they forward site visitors to a fake website that allows them to steal login credentials, and all manners of personal and confidential data. DNS cache poisoning is yet another serious threat to internet users as this method of attack re-routes internet queries to malicious websites that could be laden with computer viruses or other harmful things. Domain infringements are another serious threat as occasionally, cyber-criminals will spoof domains by making something extremely similar, if not the exact same, as their target’s domain or IP and can do a number of malicious things to harm the viewer and the company. The final threat is expired digital certificates or domains, either of which would pose a risk of an entire website shutting down or becoming simply inoperable.

https://www.cscdbs.com/blog/digital-threats-to-businesses/

There are a number of ways to protect against the many digital threats that seek to destroy or harm website infrastructure and internet ecosystems and I have compiled a number of protections we’ve put in place to prevent against such threats and addressed ways our processes may be further strengthened. Firstly, to mitigate threats such as DDoS attacks, we often monitor for things such as poor connectivity, slowed performance throughout the website, unusually high demand for a specific page, among a number of other unusual activities, although each factor could be circumvented to some extent. Another of the various threats we’ve taken steps to prevent is those of DNS hijacking, which to mitigate, we use Google’s DNS resolver servers with the DNS IP of 8.8.8.8 which is a well known DNS ip and therefore could lend to a hacker guessing the in-use ip and hacking us through there. DNS cache poisoning is extremely similar in nature to DNS hijacking and so we’ve been able to deal with it in much the same way we deal with DNS hijacking, although it has some of the same downfalls as well. To combat potential domain infringement, we have already registered our domain under trademark rights and so we are able to easily fight back against domain infringements in a legal manner, this gives very little room for any cyber-criminals to commit infringement offenses against the company other than perhaps intellectual property infringements. Our final digital threat is that of expired certificates and domains for which I, the lead IT supervisor, have been entrusted with keeping up to date and preventing any issues with expired digital permissions, which could be foiled by simply not paying attention to when the renewals must be done.

To further strengthen our protections against the aforementioned digital threats, there are a number of steps we can take. For protecting ourselves against DDoS attacks, one easy way to prevent them is to invest in Amazon’s DDoS protection, known as their AWS program. The most effective way I’ve found to protect against both DNS cache poisoning and DNS hijacking, is through utilization of centralized DNS configurations, such as BlueCat. In regards to fighting domain infringement, we’ve already taken the best route we can by registering our domains and intellectual properties through legal avenues that will help to enforce trademark and copyright laws should someone infringe on said rights. Finally, to prevent any risk of domain or digital certificate loss through forgetfulness, I would advise the implementation of automatic domain and certificate renewals.