How Civilized People Become When A Gun Is Pointed At Them (CCW Saves The Day)

Three bikers attack a motorist. Lady with a handgun comes to his rescue. I’m always amazed how people who can’t control their emotions suddenly chill when a gun is pointed at them.

These bikers were very lucky. The video shows they initiated the assault and once the guy fell to the ground, if the lady had bad intent, she could have shot both of the attackers. It could be deemed the guy’s life was in peril and she feared for his life. It was best she didn’t need to fire. If she had shot, I’d call it justified.

The problem with too many young punks today is they feel they have the right to physically attack others. This is why honest citizens who follow the rules need to learn to defend themselves.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/04/13/speeding-bikers-box-in-driver-sparking-road-rage-incident-when-fists-start-flying-a-woman-shows-up-to-end-the-violence-with-a-gun/

Surrounded by 20 Thugs and No Gun…

You’re security conscious and have a CCW. You can’t carry at work and come home unarmed. Arriving home you find yourself surrounded by 20 to 30 “youths” from the local community center playing dice in your back alley.  The precious little flowers.

You ask them to leave and they begin assaulting you, throwing rocks at you and poking you with sticks. What do you do? How will the cliffhanger end? Read the story here:

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2016/03/09/st-paul-assault-gun/

Seriously though. In my home state of Minnesota, this NEVER EVER happened like 30 years ago.

Going In Debt For Preps; Adobe Flash; In An Instant: Shootout

 

“I think many people are in denial about being debt, just as they are in denial about the need to prepare.” http://apartmentprepper.com

There is a great article and discussion over at Apartment Prepper about whether to pay off debt or buy preps.

It sucks when the only thing you’re stockpiling is debt!

My advice: Have two weeks of food on hand. If you live in a bad neighborhood, purchase a firearm for defense and a few boxes of ammo. Install good deadbolts. Have a fire extinguisher, smoke detector, and CO detector. Once you have this, pay off the credit card debt. The interest on credit card debt can eat you alive. Every $1,000 in interest you save down the road can be used to purchase preps.

It’s a cliché, but being in debt is like being a slave. You need to free yourself first.

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If you have Adobe Flash, update it ASAP. Better yet, delete it.

A company specializing in computer hacking into other companies was hacked. They were selling spyware to governments, police agencies, and anybody else who wanted to infiltrate your computer and spy on you.
Here’s a look into the strange world of computer hacking.

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In An Instant. This is a TV show about survival situations. This episode is about surviving a shootout.

This officer showed incredible composure and presence of mind.

Good lessons:

1) Lock your reinforced doors. The older gentleman wouldn’t have been murdered if he had a door that couldn’t have been easily kicked in.

2) Forget the BS about a handgun being something to fight your way to a rifle. Real shootouts aren’t Doom. The officer had an AR-15 in his trunk. He was behind his trunk. He had his keys. The shootout lasted for minutes. He couldn’t get to his AR-15. The weapon you start a shootout with is the weapon you’ll end the shootout with.

3) Pay attention to your instincts. Why was the guy adjusting his mirror? Why was the guy parked in this spot overlooking the store? When the officer had a bad feeling, he should have listened to his inner voice. Stop and don’t continue on as usual. Let the inner voice register.

4) Shoot and Move: Remembering that saved the officers life. If you’re under fire, get to cover immediately.

5) If you carry a gun professionally, learn to shoot with your weak hand. Luckily bad guy don’t practice this. His fire became ineffective.

6) If you take a prisoner or detain someone, don’t allow them back into an unsecured environment where they could have a weapon. Taken by surprise, the bad guy put his hands up and got out of his car. He had an open container of alcohol. That’s enough reason to cuff him and have him sit down outside. The officer instead let his guard down, because he thought the guy was just sitting in his car drinking. He wanted to let the guy be more comfortable. The officer let him back into the car where he had a gun.

It’s another cliché, but in horror movies, a young guy hears a noise, investigates, and after a bit of tension sees a cat. He relaxes his guard and gets an axe in the head. Just because somebody puts their hands up and appears to comply doesn’t mean the situation is over. Don’t lower your guard prematurely.

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A good guide to doing a one handed pushup.

Security Concept: Attack Vector

Our last discussion looked at the security concepts of lock down and layered security. Attack vector is another important security concept. Different agencies and organizations have different words for this but it all comes down to the same concept.

Your adversary wants to attack you and they will attack you through some perceived weakness, a vector. Vector means a pointy little arrow. You can think of the arrow going through the path they’re trying to attack you. If a burglar kicks in your front door, the attack vector is the front door. Burglar crawls in through window, attack vector is the window.

In our last post, ThoughtfullyPrepping correctly said the best “lock down” to your PC being hacked over the Internet is pulling the connection to the Internet. The Internet is the primary attack vector hackers use to get into your system. We can subdivide this into smaller attack vectors. Some of the most common computer hacker attack vectors:

1) Your web browser
2) Your e-mail client
3) JAVA installed on your system
4) Flash player
5) Acrobat Reader

Some attacks go through one thing and then use another: A web browser attack taking advantage of flash player. These last three items have had tens of thousands of vulnerabilities over the years. How can you nullify attacks through these popular attack vectors?

If you don’t need it, uninstall JAVA. You could go without flash player, but how then would you play sheep dash or online flappy bird? Too great a sacrifice. Inside your browser you can install an add on (flashblock) that blocks flash content from automatically playing. This give you control over which flash content is allowed. Keep flash player updated. Visit the Flash Player Settings Manager website to check your settings and choose stronger settings than the defaults.

You can replace Acrobat Reader with a less targeted and less bloated pdf reader like Sumatra PDF.

For an e-mail client, choose one that doesn’t support scripting or one which can turn it off. Avoid Outlook and anything that supports Active X on Windows platform. Don’t open attachments in e-mails from strangers. Just delete them.

You could run your web browser sandboxed, using the free program Sandboxie. It will break many sites, but you can install browser add ons like NoScript which keep javascript and other scripts from running. Turn the extension off when you need scripting. For privacy, add Ghostrey to your browser.

By looking at known attack vectors you can reduce your vulnerability to attacks. By listing possible attack vectors you can get a good idea of how you can be attacked. It gets you thinking about how you can secure each line of attack.

The greatest weakness is entirely missing an attack vector. You’ve secured your home. The doors are bullet proof. The windows, impenetrable. A tiny burglar crawls through your dog door. A missed attack vector.

In the book, I devoted a page to securing window air conditioners. Why? It’s an overlooked burglar attack vector. Most ACs just sit in the window frame, held in place by a few tiny screws at the top. Burglars can easily push the AC into the home and crawl through the window. If you have a window AC, spend some time to secure it.

Securing your garage door from having the traveller disconnected is another overlooked home security attack vector.

When you secure anything, be it your home, computer, survival retreat, vehicle, anything, make a list of possible attack vectors. Don’t be overwhelmed. If you’re on the ball, you’ll see a huge amount of attack area. You can’t bulletproof everything. You don’t need to. The vast majority of attacks look for easy vulnerabilities. Something as simple as a locked door discourages break ins. A reinforced door makes a kick in difficult. Most burglars will move on to the house down the road when confronted with a few hardened attack vectors.

The same is true with computer hackers. Unless you’ve pissed off the NSA, when a hacker finds their favorite attack vectors closed, they’ll move on to hacking somebody else.

Two Important Security Concepts: Lock Down & Layered Security

Two important security concepts are Lock Down and Layered Security. These concepts apply to personal home security and online computer security.

Lock Down means different things to different people. A prison lockdown is different from a school lockdown during the threat of a crazed shooter. Lock down implies containment of things as they are. It denies harmful forces the chances to make progress and advance. It keeps things as they are, allowing the white hats to ride in and save the day.

A computer user can “lockdown” his computer. This means the computer is hardened against malicious attempts to change it. There are commercial programs (AppGuard) which prevent malicious code from changing your software. There are free programs like Microsoft’s EMET which help you “lock down” weaknesses.

The simplest things can be the most powerful. Any computer user without adding any special software to his PC can tighten security with the simple “lock down” procedure of creating non-administrative user accounts for daily use. Limited user accounts have limited ability to change your operating system and install software. You can still browse the web, check your e-mail, and spend way too much time on youtube with a limited user account. What you can’t do is make fundamental changes to the operating system. You need to log in as administrator to do that.

If a hacker gets control of your limited user account, his rights are limited. His ability to compromise your system is limited. Researchers have shown 92% of the malware out there can’t overcome being contained in a limited user account.

Limited user accounts are an example of the concept of allowing the minimum access and rights and privileges needed to a person. Don’t let strangers walk through your house.

An intruder entered the White House. The news said the White House is the most secure house in the country. O Contrair. MY house is the most secure house. I keep my door locked and I don’t have tourists. “Ah, that’s my stack of dirty underwear. I’ve been meaning to wash it. Moving over here, we see…”

Layered Security is just what it sounds like. It’s layers of defense to stop an intruder. A pit bull behind a locked door is layered security. If the intruder gets past the door, he must still deal with the dog.

A good example of layered computer security is using a DNS name server like Norton DNS Connect Safe to complement your firewall and virus protection.

DNS is like the phonebook for the Internet. DNS works as follows: When you want to visit a website, your computer needs to find the IP address of the site you want to visit. It gets this information from your DNS, which is a computer usually run by your Internet Service Provider (ISP).

A secure DNS will look at the IP address you want to visit and check if the site hosts malware or viruses. If the site is malicious, the secure DNS will let you know and won’t connect you to the site.

If a virus/malware got past your antivirus protection and past your firewall, one thing it would try to do is “phone home” to connect to a malicious web server to download more viruses or to send your private information to hackers. When it tried to make this connection, if your DNS were secure, the secure DNS would likely deny this connection.

I don’t recommend Google’s DNS because of privacy issues. Google likes keeping personal information way too much. You can layer your anti-virus with Google’s VirusTotal website which checks downloads for viruses.

Give some thought to these two security concepts as they relate to your personal security. What layered defenses have you? What is your daily “lock down” and what is your emergency “lock down”?

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For airgun shooters, there’s some great information over at ThoughtfullyPrepping.

A great essay about where to start prepping. Not about fighting zombies, but about reality.