Hello all. Well, it has been a busy week for myself as I have been busy doing a cybersecurity mini-course through the Prince’s Trust with the course itself being done by Skills City. I must say that after the first two days of the course I was unsure if I was going to stick with the course – I was strongly considering dropping out.
It was mostly due to the first part of the course having a heavy numbers-focus and when it comes to numbers, I am often not very good with them – I am pretty sure I have Dyscalculia. So, that put me into a bad mood. And then we were tasked with downloading a zip file and installing the programme. I have done that before but for whatever reason I could not get it to work in the actual lesson. At that point I was fuming.
But luckily after the lesson I calmed myself down and tried again and managed to do it fairly easily. Maybe I am just better when I do some things myself without other distractions going on, and perhaps already being worked up with the number tasks did not help either.
So, I decided to see the rest of the course out and I am happy that I did because the topics that we went over for the rest of the week were more interesting and included more things I was also already familiar with as well. Going over different attack methods, also talked about OSINT as well and how that works into cybersecurity (or how OSINT can be used to plan a cyberattack).
OSINT for those who do not know is open-source intelligence – stuff that is available to find out there. So, it is stuff you can collect from actual news websites, blogs, social media, books, applications that provide such information, anything really it is a really wide area. My focus has always been on OSINT accounts that use such to get news out fast (usually before the mainstream) as well as more in-depth insights and analysis into specialised areas such accounts may focus on.
But yeah, OSINT is also a powerful tool that anyone can use to conduct a cyber-attack by harvesting information about people, companies etc that is freely available out there, and then using such information to connect with trails on the web that may lead to other less-known information that can help aid an attack.
It is all very interesting stuff. There are so many OSINT tools out there that can be used in so many different areas – just look at osintframework.com – I need say no more. It’s quite scary actually. But also, really cool how many niche little websites and applications for collecting and looking at information there are. And it is also quite overwhelming as well.
One website that uses OSINT to write up in-depth articles is BellingCat, so if you want some examples of what can be done using information collected from OSINT then check it out, I guess. It has a geopolitical focus, such as on Russia.
The cool thing about OSINT is almost anyone can get into it as it’s right at everyone’s fingertips basically. It also allows you to open up your mind and not have to rely on or be drawn in by potential bias. OSINT promotes evidence-based research and analysis, and is one of the things that can be used to fight growing disinformation on the web.
In fact, one of the core focuses of many OSINT accounts and websites is to use OSINT to fact check potential misinformation that spreads across social media and elsewhere.
My First Ever Presentation
I also reached another new milestone today actually – the last day of the mini-course. I did my first ever presentation to a small audience (others on the course plus the staff) and it went well. Basically, what everyone had to do is create a presentation on someone famous in the world of computing. We were given a list of people to choose from.
The one I chose was Tim Berners-Lee – without whom you would not be reading this very blog today. This is because he is credited with being the ‘inventor’ of the World Wide Web. I will likely turn my presentation into a blogpost for The Weekly Rambler in the near future so I do not need to say too much more on him, plus you can easily search him up and find loads of information if you want to.
It is the first ever presentation I have actually presented. I have made many before on Microsoft Powerpoint at school and college but I have never had the guts to actually present them. This was largely down to Selective Mutism, the severe anxiety disorder I have.
Even only a couple years ago I would never have even dreamed or considered of doing a presentation to anyone ever. But through all the social groups and courses I have been through recently both locally and through the Prince’s Trust I have grown a lot in confidence with my social skills and overcoming my Selective Mutism, as well as the parts of my Autism that have served to hold me back as well on the social front. I have not suppressed my autism traits but embraced and accepted them – helping to also build my confidence in being more social and ultimately leading to this moment of doing an actual presentation.
Sure, I was obviously still very nervous, my voice was shaky at points in the presentation, I sometimes stammered a bit to get words out. But it went well and I did it. Overall, the presentation was around 10 or so minutes long. The research skills I have also developed while doing this very blog also helped in the collecting and compounding as well as structuring of information.
So, it is a big step forward for me in what is hopefully a hopeful future as I go into the Service Now 10-week Programming Course which shall be much more demanding of my time. But as I said I will find any time I can to do this blog, with a greater focus to doing my larger blogging projects during my free time and continuing to do at least one Weekly Update post each Friday.
Next week on Thursday I will post a movie review I did some weeks ago for my Film Programmer group. Then the Thursday after that I will probably post the blog-friendly-version of my Tim Berners-Lee presentation.
I am also very tempted to do some blogposts on the US primaries/caucuses that are going on now in anticipation for the November midterm elections for Congress later this year. We shall see if I have time for that, it would be a squeeze.
The Montenegro Government System post is also almost finished and so should come out at some point, perhaps the 3rd week down the line.
Have a good weekend and stay positive.
Thank you for reading this post, if you have any queries please Email me, you can find my Email in the Contacts & Community section. Please also follow The Weekly Rambler on Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest and Facebook which you can access through the buttons at the bottom of this website. You can also use the social media buttons under each blogpost to share with your family, friends and associates.
You can also subscribe to Email notifications at the right-side of this website to know whenever a new post goes up (you can easily unsubscribe from this at any time through a button in each Email notification), or alternatively you can use an RSS Feed Reader.