The Australian Prime Minister, and the NSA, recommend turning off and then turning on your smartphone regularly. There is even talk of turning it off for 5 minutes every day before turning it back on. And all this, to avoid being hacked.
Want to reduce the chances of your smartphone being hacked by hackers? A tip: turn it off once a day, for at least five minutes. This is what Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said to the press. The remarks were relayed by the media The Guardianwhich gives some additional details.
Simple things, turn off your phone every night for five minutes. For people watching this, do it every 24 hours, do it while you brush your teeth or whatever you’re doing.
What’s the point of the reboot?
This statement was made following the announcement of the establishment of a national coordinator for cybersecurity in Australia. And if one can think that this sentence comes from a boomer, in reality, it is not so, and security experts approve the Australian Prime Minister.
So, Priyadarsi Nandaa cybersecurity expert, points out that restarting your mobile phone once a day drastically reduces the risk of being hacked by a hacker.
In practice, rebooting the smartphone will allow close all applications, but above all, all processes running in the background. And quite often, it is one of these processes that is used by hackers to break into a smartphone, whether it is Android or iOS.
A practice recommended by the NSA
The NSA (National Security Agency in the United States) also recommends that you regularly turn off your smartphone to reduce the risk of cyberattack, as the media specifies. Numerama. The NSA indicates that it is appropriate to restart your phone at least twice a week. This is to reduce the chances of two different attacks.
First, spear phishing, which requires the installation of a malicious application. And then zero-click exploits that don’t need user interaction to activate.
The limits of restarting
But be careful, because restarting is not the holy grail of cybersecurity defense. Many attacks will not be countered by turning your smartphone off and on.
Also, one can ask the question of the interest of this measure for ordinary citizens. On the other hand, if you have a sensitive job, then reading the NSA’s best practices guide could be useful for you.
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