Net Work
Alan Winstanley
In an era of lockdown and social distancing the Internet is more important than ever. This
month, Net Work looks at apps, security and some pleasingly welcome diversions.
W
elcome to this month’s
Net Work, the column dedicated to home network and
Internet users. Currently banished from
setting foot outdoors, the majority of
households seem to have migrated
online, so much so that streaming services including Netflix and Amazon
Prime have reverted to broadcasting
in standard definition to save bandwidth, and the streaming of sports
fixtures on BT and Sky Sports have
also been curtailed (not helped by the
English and Scottish Premier Leagues
being suspended anyway).
During lockdown, the Internet has
saved the day for many, and legions of
local communities have busily organised themselves into online mutual aid
groups dedicated to helping with pharmacies, shopping errands and similar
tasks. The remarkable endeavours of
many public-spirited people are bringing out the best in communities; in
Britain, details of these groups can be
found on https://covidmutualaid.org
or search Facebook locally for your
nearest Covid-19 Mutual Aid Group.
Readers at home and overseas might
also be interested in the UK’s National
Covid-19 Mutual Aid Groups have sprung
up everywhere in the UK – search the
map to find your nearest one.
10
Health Service (NHS) website at: www.
nhs.uk which is both authoritative
and refreshingly advertisement-free;
its ‘Health A-Z’ directory explains a
vast range of medical conditions and
is often a good starting point for further
research, though it tends to be overly
cautious with its advice.
Social media to the rescue
Social media came of age during the
trendy era dubbed ‘Web 2.0’, and in
recent weeks the web has hosted countless Whatsapp chats and live streaming
events to help keep everyone’s spirits up.
Everything from live quizzes to online
disco parties, free games and much more
besides will be found online during
these challenging times. Whatsapp sessions are encrypted from end to end
(which cannot be disabled) and for
virtual get-togethers, the Houseparty
social network app, a simple face-toface video chat service now owned
by Epic Games of Fortnite fame, has
become all the rage. Houseparty handles live, unmoderated video feeds
and Houseparty users should be sure
to lock their virtual room to avoid gatecrashers. As Houseparty is very popular
with younger users, more safeguarding
advice (especially for parents) is on the
UKs Internet Matters website at https://
tinyurl.com/v3chsq9. You can download Houseparty from Google Play or
the App Store. (Bad news for Firefox
users: on a PC desktop it only works in
Google Chrome.)
The main alternative to Houseparty
that’s caught on recently is the video conferencing suite Zoom, which is aimed
more at the business, health-care and
professional sectors. Zoom has worked
well for remote networkers, schooling,
webinars and team workers stuck at
home. At the end of March, the British
Government used Zoom to host its first
ever video-linked cabinet meeting, but
debates rage on about Zoom’s security
and lack of end-to-end encryption. Like
Houseparty, steps are needed to prevent ‘zoombombing’ or gatecrashing
by outsiders. Zoom’s ‘Basic’ package is
free and offers a maximum 40-minute
session with up to 100 participants:
Video conferencing site Zoom offers
40-minute-long free sessions – check its
security meets your needs.
perfect for scheduling online school lessons, for example. For larger meetings,
paid-for tariffs are available and it also
works in Outlook, Chrome and Firefox,
among others. If you’re happy with its
security, you can sign up at Zoom.us
but be sure to read those all-important
usage tips in the Resources area. British video-conferencing supplier Starleaf
(www.starleaf.com), which owns its
entire infrastructure, reports a boom
in business for its certified high-security remote networking services due to
the lockdown.
Home is where you hang your <at>
With more of us staying at home or
networking away from our workplaces, online security is obviously as
important as ever. As someone who
depends entirely on Internet access
and a home network for a livelihood, I
was recently asked about the risks that
homeworkers might face during these
challenging times. Top of my own list
of precautions was ransomware prevention, followed by (obviously) virus
protection. Aggressive ransomware can
completely wreck a system by encrypting its files, as well as reaching across
a home network and trashing network
drives, meaning a lot of data can go up
in smoke. (A reminder to never pay a
ransom: it merely encourages crooks
and there is no guarantee your files
Practical Electronics | June | 2020
would be unlocked again anyway.) I
described in previous columns how I
take a local backup of last resort onto a
removable USB pocket drive, or users
might consider the cost (and speed) of
cloud storage instead. Some archiving software such as Macrium Reflect
stores backups in a proprietary format
so, if disaster struck, both the original program and its software licence
number would be needed before backups could be accessed again. If you
decide to upgrade your PC, there is
no guarantee that costly software can
be ported onto a new machine: check
licences for details.
At present, it pays to be vigilant by
guarding against bogus ‘CV19’ emails,
SMS text messages (smishing) and
phony websites offering support, bogus
health-care products or non-existent
protection equipment, or mails that
may click through to virus-infected
websites that will steal personal data
or load ransomware onto your system.
Now is also a good time to think about
removing your personal data from redundant online accounts. This can
only help safeguard against personal
data theft, especially from websites
that play fast and loose with your
private details hosted on their servers. Try www.AccountKiller.com for
instructions on closing your account
on a myriad of websites.
2FA is the way
Account hacking is as rife as ever, with
crooks eager to hijack personal accounts
for their own fraudulent purposes. To
prove that even seasoned web users can
fall victim to fraud, the author’s own
eBay account was hijacked by a gang
of car criminals some years ago, who
used it to try selling stolen motor vehicles online. The local police knocked
on my door one morning and quizzed
me, ‘friendly fashion’, about my newfound interest in online car sales. The
crooks had somehow acquired my eBay
logins from the dark web and changed
the email address, before listing stolen
trucks under my username, complete
with a 100% seller rating.
To help combat fraud, users should
set up Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
on their eBay, PayPal, Google, Microsoft
and Amazon accounts, which requires
the use of a one-time code to verify the
user (see March 2020 Net Work). Microsoft and Google users can also install
authenticator apps to help with this.
Routine credit and debit card transactions are being toughened up due to EU
legislation enforcing Strong Customer
Authentication (SCA), with 2FA (eg, an
SMS text with a one-time eight-character PIN) being utilised to authenticate
some transactions. Although it should
be pointed out that not even SMS messaging is totally secure, the benefits far
outweigh the risks. It’s becoming increasingly important to register a mobile
phone number with banks, credit-card
providers, PayPal and more, so check
that your contacts details are up to date
for your key online accounts. A useful
tip: the Pushbullet app (Android only)
can pop these 2FA text messages onto
your PC desktop or tablet, so you can
read them on-screen while you’re still
surfing online. Free lite versions of
Pushbullet are available.
For those who are housebound or
rarely use a mobile phone, BT landlines can automatically receive SMS
messages using the BT text-to-voice
service, though messages can be a bit
difficult to understand at times. The
author successfully configured PayPal
2FA texting to a mobile phone, with a
BT ‘Call Guardian’ landline number
as a backup.
FIDO, fetch!
Website logins have become the bane
of every web user’s life. The FIDO (Fast
Identity Online) Alliance is a consortium
dedicated to developing passwordless
authentication instead, and a range of
The Yubico Security USB Key
is an entry-level hardware
token compatible with
FIDO2 protocols for
securing your
logins. An NFC
version is
also available.
popular websites now interfaces with
this form of added security. It doesn’t
cost much to get started and if you like
the idea of using your own ‘mechanical’ key (or ‘hardware token’) instead of
punching in passwords, then a Yubico
Security USB key could be an answer.
This popular Swedish USB device is
designed to help prevent account takeovers or hijacking, and it utilises the U2F
(Universal 2nd Factor) open standard
devised by Yubico and Google, of which
FIDO2 is the latest iteration.
The entry-level Yubico USB key
claims to work with Facebook, Twitter,
various Microsoft online services, YouTube, United Kingdom GOV.UK logins,
Gmail and many others with a simple
touch on the key (check the data sheet at
https://tinyurl.com/rx9v8c7). It’s waterproof, battery-free and crush-resistant
and is available from Amazon for just
£19, or choose the NFC-capable model
for £25 to tap on many mobile phones.
It’s a simple and portable way of implementing passwordless security, but
do note that it will presently not work
with certain websites such as eBay and
Paypal that only use basic 2FA security. A directory of websites that support
2FA is at https://twofactorauth.org –
a ‘hardware token’ tick implies that a
website is compatible with a secure key,
but check the website for confirmation
if necessary. For higher security access,
such as protecting a Windows, Linux
or Mac logon, consider the Yubikey 5
Series instead, but the price leaps to
Die-cast enclosures
+standard
44 1256 812812
• sales<at>hammondmfg.eu • www.hammondmfg.com
& painted
www.hammondmfg.com/dwg.htm
www.hammondmfg.com/ dwg_SBVer.htm
01256 812812
sales<at>hammond-electronics.co.uk
Practical Electronics | June | 2020
11
www.poscope.com/epe
Stepping out: the Floppotron by Polish engineer Paweł Zadrożniak plays melodies
using some extreme stepper-motor action.
£45. Alternative 2FA hardware tokens
are produced by Feitian, but check for
FIDO2 compatibility.
A maxxed-out Humax
- USB
- Ethernet
- Web server
- Modbus
- CNC (Mach3/4)
- IO
- PWM
- Encoders
- LCD
- Analog inputs
- Compact PLC
- up to 256
- up to 32
microsteps
microsteps
- 50 V / 6 A
- 30 V / 2.5 A
- USB configuration
- Isolated
PoScope Mega1+
PoScope Mega50
Last month, I recounted the tale of my
Humax HDR-Fox T2 Freeview recorder that had nearly expired, risking the
loss of stored programmes. I’m grateful
to reader Ken Wood who emailed at
length to suggest some workarounds.
Ken is a regular long-service Net Work
reader, having previously been in touch
nearly a decade ago when I introduced
the excellent new Humax HDR Fox-T2
in the first place. Last month, I lamented
the dearth of comparable receivers and
recorders on sale today and highlighted
another reader’s suggestion for a network-attached HD HomeRun Freeview
receiver. Ken agrees, and added: ‘Other
than keeping our HDR-FOXes going, I
believe the best way forward is opensource hardware and software. We
don’t have sufficient incentive as yet,
but as more of our FOXes fail (I have
three running, one cold spare, and two
more out on loan) I anticipate users
might collaborate on putting together a Linux system from standard parts
(eg Raspberry Pi-based) with DVB-T2
USB dongles, and some kind of opensource home theatre OS.’ Until then,
my defunct Humax recorder awaits a
tear-down and I also noted that, inexplicably, my Samsung Smart TV has now
taken to changing HDMI source at 8.55
pm every night all by itself.
Time for some fun
- up to 50MS/s
- resolution up to 12bit
- Lowest power consumption
- Smallest and lightest
- 7 in 1: Oscilloscope, FFT, X/Y,
Recorder, Logic Analyzer, Protocol
decoder, Signal generator
12
It’s always a pleasure to watch engineers
on YouTube showing their skills, and
the Italian constructor Daniele Tartaglia demonstrates his lateral thinking
using a handful of parts and an awful
lot of imagination. If you have 30 minutes to spare, take a peek at Daniele’s
talent, starting with seven things to do
with a fan, at https://youtu.be/sb-pynoqPmU. His Mini CNC plotter is made
from old DVD drives, see https://youtu.
be/Q5ma1HDuotk. Daniele’s YouTube
channel is worth looking at, and he’s
also on Facebook.
We all know the whining and buzzing
noises that stepper motors make, but
take a stack of 64 floppy disk drives,
add a pair of screeching flatbed scanners, an array of bare hard disks mixed
in with an Arduino or two, and the
result is the Floppotron, an amazing
electronic musical instrument created
by Polish engineer Paweł Zadrożniak.
But I won’t spoil the fun – head over
to YouTube and enjoy https://youtu.be/
C9qy0utP2QM for starters.
Some elegant examples of simple
circuits tacked together with point-topoint wiring can be found on YouTube’s
‘SR electric’ channel, including https://
youtu.be/QCbe8eMbcW4. It will be ideal
for inspiring younger constructors, and
no printed circuit board is required!
Last, this month, an overdue update
about PE’s online presence: our all-new
website is at an advanced stage of development, with a lot of work going
on behind the scenes. Among other
things, it will soon be possible to buy
pre-programmed PIC chips for projects
via the new shopping cart, where free
downloads of monthly files can also be
accessed. We have been juggling with
two websites and are sorry that the
planned update has taken us longer than
expected, but it will be ready soon and
I’ll be bringing more news about PE’s
website in next month’s Net Work. In the
meantime, we’re always happy to handle
readers’ email queries sent to the usual
address: pe<at>electronpublishing.com
The author can be reached at:
alan<at>epemag.net
Practical Electronics | June | 2020
