Today's Voice; Notes for Countering Cyber Attacks

"Showcase" is a platform to familiarize with ideas and activities happening by the Iranian community worldwide and in the virtual world, which you may be unaware of. In "Showcase," a website or a virtual activity will be introduced to you, and a brief conversation will take place with its organizers and idea creators. You can also email [email protected] to include your website in "Showcase" and connect with us. Amin Sabati, a digital security researcher, believes that the best way to counter cyber attacks is "user education" and states that in the realm of digital security, the risk for an uninformed user about software is higher. He, who teaches digital security in simple terms to ordinary users in one of his projects called "Fearless," emphasizes that "cybersecurity is not complicated; it just requires a bit of attention and patience." The website "Today's Voice" contains notes by Amin Sabati on digital security, the web, and education, accessible at www.aminsabeti.net. We have had a conversation with him about his blogging activities and the establishment of various educational projects to increase the knowledge of ordinary internet users. Mr. Sabati, you graduated in chemical engineering and mechanical engineering. What led you to digital security, social media analysis, and internet censorship? Generally, technology and the internet have always been among my interests, and I also wanted to study engineering. My overall idea was that studying engineering and playing with numbers makes a person more creative and somewhat structures their thinking. Therefore, I first studied chemical engineering, although I was initially interested in electronic engineering, but when I started chemical engineering, I found it more exciting. Then I came to the UK for further studies in mechanical engineering, although I always engaged in technology and social media alongside studying these fields, and about six years ago, I gradually became interested in digital security because it was exactly what I was passionate about: a mix of computer science with a touch of humanities. Why a touch of humanities? Because most successful cyber attacks have occurred due to human error, and thus, people's awareness in this matter is important. It is also worth mentioning that I have always been interested in educating others; for example, I taught for about two years in high school and then privately taught many people in mathematics, physics, geometry, and chemistry, and I have been active in digital security for several years, teaching others. When was the "Today's Voice" website established, and what were its goals? The "Today's Voice" blog is essentially the final result of several blogs I previously had. The first time I started blogging was on October 7, 2003, when I wrote on a blog called "Free Tribune," and then I launched another blog called "Window" and after that, "Engineer Jojir," but finally, "Today's Voice" took shape in February 2007, where I initially wrote about daily topics and what was happening in Zahedan, the city where I lived when I was in Iran. When I started writing on "Today's Voice," my main goal was to show a new image of Zahedan and express my views on various issues, and since internet filtering in Iran was just beginning to take shape at that time, I became interested in this issue and internet freedom. Since then, I have always written about the futility of internet filtering and that ultimately, censors will fail. As we see now, internet filtering in Iran is not very effective, and many people easily bypass the filtering wall. Additionally, for a while, I published news and incorrect information disseminated by news agencies and websites inside Iran as news gaffes on my blog and analyzed it from various angles. About three years ago, I focused my blog on digital security and its margins, and how we can protect ourselves against governments, internet scammers, and hackers. Here you can read a summary of my blogging story. On this website, there is a section called "My Projects," featuring projects such as "Sundays with Digital Security," "Fearless," "Gathering," "Blogban," and "Unmask the Arzeshi." Are these projects complementary to each other and actually separate phases of a larger project? No, these projects were executed based on interests I had at the time, and many of them faced failure. For example, Blogban was a project intended to gather and rank the best posts of Persian bloggers, which failed due to the decline of the Persian blogging community. Gathering was supposed to be a series of online gatherings based on Google Hangout, which also failed. Unlike Blogban and Gathering, the Unmask the Arzeshi project was a successful project that examined the activities of individuals who consider themselves supporters of the Iranian government in the online space. The main goal of this project was to highlight that the internet space, contrary to what many believe in recent years, does not only include opponents of the Iranian government. Ultimately, Sundays with Digital Security was an introduction to the Fearless project, where every Sunday I discussed the most important news in digital security, and based on many users' requests, I concluded that I should activate a separate website focused on digital security, which I named "Fearless," meaning without fear. "Fearless" is actually the first digital security encyclopedia in Persian, aiming to increase Persian-speaking internet users' knowledge in digital security, and it includes various sections that you can view by visiting its address. Which of these projects do you evaluate as more successful, and what are your criteria for the success of that project? I believe the most successful project has been and will be "Fearless" because it has emerged from a six-year experience and aims to address an important need that has not received much attention in the Persian web, which is nothing but digital security. One of the strengths of Fearless is that it teaches digital security in very simple language to ordinary users and emphasizes to users that cybersecurity is not complicated; it just requires a bit of attention and patience. Education and clarifying ambiguities and rumors about various social networks and information technology play an important role on your website. Do you publish this information only for ordinary users, or do you also consider specialized users? And do you have any differentiated statistics on the quality of visitors to your educational content on your website? To be honest, I am not that engaged with statistics and such things regarding my blog. However, my main goal is to dispel a series of rumors and false news that are published for various reasons by individuals and, in some cases, Iranian officials. With over ten years of blogging experience, one thing that has always bothered me is that people make decisions based on incorrect information. At the same time, I have always tried to help if a user wants specialized information about a specific point, but overall, my target audience is ordinary users. Do you think the impact of the educational materials published on "Today's Voice" is measurable? What has been the impact of these materials on the readers of the website, and how have you realized this impact? Generally, measuring the impact of an online article is very difficult, and for this reason, I honestly do not have a precise answer. However, based on the feedback I receive from users and that they share their problems through the blog or email and I solve them, I must say I am personally satisfied with its impact. For example, when many users were talking about unlimited eavesdropping by Iran, I explained the situation completely by writing several articles like this one, and through emails and comments, I found satisfaction with its impact. Many other websites and blogs also republish some of the points, which indicates their positive impact. In the discussion of digital security, such as hacking websites and emails, to what extent do you consider the problems that different individuals face to be due to a lack of education? In such incidents, is the main problem the lack of information among users or the technical capabilities of the government? It definitely goes back to the lack of information among users, and if users have sufficient information, the possibility of their accounts being compromised is significantly reduced. For example, if users know what phishing and social engineering are and activate two-step verification on their emails and other accounts, they eliminate the possibility of remote access to their email accounts, and the only way would be physical access to the laptop. Overall, in the world of digital security, if you have an updated operating system, updated antivirus, a strong firewall, etc., but the person using the computer is uninformed, the existence or absence of all the items I mentioned is almost irrelevant. Therefore, "education" is the best way to counter cyber attacks, and one should not be overly afraid of the capabilities of governments.