I have been around the block a time or two. Technical IT SME, husband, father, and a no-nonsense conservative.
Joined May 2017
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William Clark retweeted
Nepal celebrates Kukur Tihar, a festival honoring dogs, on November 8
Just two weeks away, dogs will be adorned with flower garlands, given red tika and offered special food to celebrate their loyalty and companionship
William Clark retweeted
🚨DO THIS RIGHT NOW:
If you only do one thing after reading this, go turn on a passkey for your email before you close the app. Everything else in your digital life unlocks through that inbox.
I want to walk through exactly what I did to my own accounts, because the generic "use strong passwords" advice stopped being useful around the time attackers stopped being human.
I reordered my whole approach once I accepted a simple truth:
“I can't outrun the swarm, but I can make myself expensive enough that the automated systems move on to someone easier.”
That's the entire strategy, and it works.
I started with email, and I'd beg you to do the same. Your inbox is the master key.
Every "forgot password" link on earth ends up there, so if someone owns your email, they own everything downstream of it. I moved mine to a passkey…the kind that lives in your phone or a hardware key and can't be phished, can't be guessed, and can't be tested by an agent running through a leaked password list.
If passkeys feel like too much, at minimum move off SMS codes and onto an authenticator app, because SIM-swapping is still one of the cheapest attacks going.
Then I did the boring, powerful thing I'd put off for years…
I let a password manager generate a unique random password for every account and stopped reusing anything.
This single move defeats the most common attack happening right now.
Credential stuffing works because people recycle one password across forty sites, so one leak opens all forty.
When every password is different and random, a breach at one service stays contained to that service.
I turned on the breach-alert feature too, so I get told the moment any of my credentials show up in a dump.
After that I froze my credit at all three US bureaus. It's free, it takes about ten minutes total, and it blocks the single most profitable thing a stolen identity enables….someone opening accounts in your name.
I keep it frozen and just thaw it for the few hours I actually need it.
I also went through my old accounts and deleted the ones I don't use, because every dormant login is a door I'm not watching.
The last thing I changed was the hardest, and it's a mindset.
I stopped assuming anything urgent is real.
The scary text about a locked account, the email about a failed delivery, the call that sounds like my bank….I treat all of it as hostile by default now and go to the source myself instead of clicking.
AI made these fakes flawless this year.
The typos that used to give scams away are gone.
I can't promise any of this keeps me safe.
I can promise it moved me out of the easy-target pile, and in a month like this one, that's what I'm genuinely aiming for.
And what I'd want for you too.
William Clark retweeted
“If a bank itself fails, deposits at FDIC-insured banks are protected up to $250,000 per person, per bank.
⚠️ That insurance doesn't cover
money stolen
from a hacked account. ⚠️
But federal rules generally limit what you lose from unauthorized transfers if you report them quickly, so check your accounts often and call your bank right away if anything looks off.”
😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬
“What to do today:
First, stay off sites you don't know until this blows over. Stick to the big, well-known ones: your bank, Amazon, Google. Small sites are the least likely to have patched, and you can't tell from the outside. For the next few weeks, don't type a password or card number into anything unfamiliar.
Second, update everything: your phone, your computer, your tablet and your web browser. When your phone or computer's own Settings says an update is available, install it. That's your lock. Do the same for your router, and if it's so old it doesn't get updates anymore, replace it. But never install an "update" from a pop-up on a website or a link in a text or email. That's a common scam. Not sure how to do any of this? Here's a simple step-by-step guide.
Third, close the doors you aren't using. Unplug smart gadgets you don't need and delete apps you don't use. Every connected thing is another way in.
Fourth, protect your bank account. If anyone calls, texts or emails you and asks for your password or a code that was just sent to your phone, it's a scam. Every time. Those codes are only for you to type into your bank's own app or website. Treat every call, text or email about your bank as suspicious until you've checked it yourself: don't click their links, and don't call back the number they give you. Hang up and call the number on the back of your card. If it was really your bank, they'll be able to help.
Only type your bank username and password into your bank's own app or website. Don't give them to anyone else, including an AI assistant or another app, no matter how helpful it seems. Chase says not to give them to anyone. Turn on two-step login for your email and your bank (here's how), and stop reusing passwords. A password manager makes that easy, and your iPhone or Android phone already has one built in.
If you want to be extra careful, keep a little cash at home, enough for groceries for a few days, plus some food and water. That's a normal emergency kit, and it's worth having anyway.
What I wouldn't do is pull your money out of the bank. Panic is exactly what scammers count on. If a bank itself fails, deposits at FDIC-insured banks are protected up to $250,000 per person, per bank. That insurance doesn't cover money stolen from a hacked account. But federal rules generally limit what you lose from unauthorized transfers if you report them quickly, so check your accounts often and call your bank right away if anything looks off. Money you're tricked into sending yourself is much harder to get back, which is why the scam calls are the bigger danger.
The next few days are going to be weird. More announcements are coming. My hope is that most things will keep working. Just do the boring stuff today.”
-Matt Shumer
William Clark retweeted
I spent last night watching my honeypot server get hit 14,000 times in six hours.
And almost none of the traffic was human.
I've been in security for over a decade, and I can tell you with full honesty that what's happening right now doesn't resemble anything I've worked through before.
The shape of the threat has changed.
When I started, we tracked attackers like weather systems like individual storms with a direction, a motive, and a human operator you could eventually name.
These days I'm watching autonomous agents swarm login pages with the patience and discipline of machines, because that's what they are.
The numbers coming out of October are the ones keeping me up.
Cloudflare just absorbed a 4.2 terabit per second DDoS attack, the largest in recorded history.
Ransomware incidents jumped 41% in a single month.
In September, OpenAI-powered agents got caught attacking RubyGems, a package registry that quietly underpins a huge chunk of software I use every day.
In July, roughly 700 AI agents coordinated an attack on Hugging Face's infrastructure as part of a single automated task.
A Chinese threat actor was publicly caught running full attack chains through DeepSeek with no human at the keyboard.
I keep rereading these reports because each one by itself would've been the biggest story of the year five years ago. Together, in one month, they're the new baseline.
What I want people outside the industry to understand is why this specific moment feels like a hinge.
For thirty years, the thing protecting most of us was simple economics. Attackers had to choose who to target because their time was finite. That ceiling is gone.
An agent I can rent for pennies will try every leaked password you've ever used against every service you've ever signed up for, in parallel, overnight, and never get tired.
The same math that made ChatGPT useful made opportunistic hacking infinite. The old assumption that you were "too boring to be a target" relied on scarcity that no longer exists.
I'm not writing this to spiral anyone out.
Most of this fight genuinely isn't yours to win.
But the small things still matter more than people think.
Tonight I'd switch your most important accounts like email, bank, primary cloud, etc. to passkeys or a hardware key.
I'd kill SMS 2FA wherever an authenticator app is offered.
I'd turn on breach alerts in whatever password manager you use.
If you're in the US, I'd freeze my credit at all three bureaus, which is free and takes about ten minutes.
None of that stops the swarm.
It makes you a slightly worse target than the person next to you. In a month like this one, that's the whole game I'm playing too.
@mattshumer_ has summed it beautifully.
Drop everything and go give it a read. Nothing is more important than this article right now.
William Clark retweeted
For more than 20 years, Norwegian neuroscientist Audrey van der Meer has investigated how handwriting shapes the human brain.
In a landmark 2024 study published in Frontiers in Psychology, her team used high-density EEG caps to monitor brain activity in students while they either wrote by hand with a digital pen or typed on a keyboard.
The difference was dramatic. Handwriting produced a powerful, synchronized burst of neural activity across widespread regions of the brain, linking areas involved in memory formation, sensory processing, and deep learning. In contrast, typing the exact same content caused this rich cognitive network to largely shut down. Because typing uses repetitive, uniform keystrokes, it demands little spatial or cognitive effort, leaving key learning centers quiet and disengaged.
These neurological differences have a direct effect on how we process and remember information. Earlier research by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer at Princeton University reached similar conclusions. Students who took notes by hand consistently outperformed those using laptops on conceptual understanding tests. Handwriting forces active listening, critical thinking, and real-time summarization, while typing often leads to verbatim transcription with minimal processing.
Our brains function as part of an embodied biological system. Replacing rich physical actions with effortless digital keystrokes may deliver short-term convenience, but it comes at the expense of deeper cognitive engagement.
The solution is simple and timeless: pick up a pen.
[Van der Meer, A. L. H., et al. (2024). Handwriting versus typing: A neurophysiological comparison of brain activity during learning. Frontiers in Psychology, 15. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1234567]
William Clark retweeted
Respect !!! 🔥 Superbe témoignage 🥰
À 96 ans, Clint Eastwood fait voler en éclats certaines illusions rassurantes sur le vieillissement.
Lors d’une récente interview, il explique comment le corps se transforme avec le temps.
Il brosse un tableau brut et sans concession de ce qui se passe à l’approche des 100 ans. « La lumière vous fait mal aux yeux, et même respirer peut sembler être une corvée », a admis Eastwood, décrivant la lutte incessante contre un corps qui faiblit.
Mais, le véritable fardeau du grand âge est d’ordre émotionnel et psychologique. Une fois passé le cap des quatre-vingt-dix ans, le paysage des relations sociales subit une transformation profonde.
On regarde autour de soi et l’on réalise que la plupart des gens qui nous ont connus dans notre jeunesse
— ceux qui partageaient notre histoire, nos complicités et les épreuves de la vie
— ont disparu. Le cercle des visages familiers se réduit comme peau de chagrin, le téléphone cesse de sonner et le rythme des jours s’étire péniblement.
L’épreuve la plus amère n’est pas la douleur physique, mais l’absence soudaine de quelqu’un qui a vraiment envie de vous écouter !
Eastwood explique que revisiter ses souvenirs n’est pas le signe d’une fragilité mentale, mais une tentative vitale de trouver une continuité dans sa propre existence.
Nous vivons dans une culture qui érige la longévité en trophée, tout en ignorant totalement la solitude écrasante qui accompagne cette survie.
Nous célébrons ce qui brille, ce qui va vite et ce qui est hyperconnecté, ne laissant aucune place au rythme lent et répétitif de la vie des personnes très âgées.
En fin de compte, les rides sur le visage des presque centenaires ne sont pas de simples signes de vieillesse ; elles dessinent la magnifique carte d’une vie pleinement vécue.
C’est un privilège de s’asseoir pour écouter le récit de leur parcours de vie !
William Clark retweeted
Security is maintained through the combination of
- people
- technology
- procedures
Fixation on bugs as the sole element of security (offensive and defensive) is a category error. A profound misunderstanding of how systems work, and how they fail.
William Clark retweeted
The terrifying speed at which an ADHDer can go from knowing literally zero about a niche topic to understanding it at a senior-consultant level because they went down a 14-hour rabbit hole at 2:00 AM, only to completely lose interest the moment they master the concept.
William Clark retweeted
Here is something from my childhood I refuse to let disappear. When someone gives you a birthday or Christmas gift, you act grateful. Even if you already have it. Even if you hate it. Somebody thought enough about you to give you something.
