AT&T: This is why we can’t have nice things
A legitimate email from AT&T does its level best to masquerade as a phishing email.
Category Archives: Computer Security
Thoughts about the Equifax data breach
The Equifax breach is a big deal. There are things you need to do right now to protect yourself.
Backing up from Unix to Backblaze B2 using Rclone
This blog posting is obsolete. I’ve moved everything over to Github. There are a lot of new goodies there that aren’t here, so mosey on over and check it out. I’ve been using CrashPlan for Home for about five years. Alas, their Home product is being discontinued, and people who want to keep using CrashPlan… Read More »
PenguinDome: new, open-source Linux mobile device management (MDM) solution
Where I work, we have employees who use (in decreasing order of popularity) Mac OS, Windows, and Linux as their desktop computers. We’ve deployed a large, complex remote administration / MDM application for managing the Mac OS and Windows desktops. It’s big and complicated and difficult to maintain. It does much more than we will… Read More »
HOWTO: Converting an unencrypted Ubuntu root disk to encrypted
The best way to configure Ubuntu for an encrypted root filesystem is to tell the installer to do it when you’re installing the operating system. It’s complicated, and smart people have put a lot of effort into making the installer know how to do it properly. Having said that, if you’re an experienced Linux sysadmin… Read More »
GameStop data breach: why am I not surprised?
I was victimized by GameStop’s security breach back in October, and again now. I hope it puts them out of business.
Two-factor auth’s Achilles heel: switching smartphones
Migrating all of your 2fa codes to a new smartphone is a huge pain. Here’s one way you can make it easier.
How to delete your LiveJournal account
LiveJournal recently changed their Terms of Service. Many people are unwilling to accept the new Terms of Service. Some people even find them so unacceptable that they want to delete their LiveJournal accounts. The only way to delete one’s LiveJournal account is via the Account Status page. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to access that page without… Read More »
Adding malicious IPs in DNSBLs to hosts.deny automatically
[See Adding malicious IPs in DNSBLs to iptables automatically for a new and improved version of this that uses iptables instead of hosts.deny, which is necessary since tcpwrappers is mostly deprecated at this point.] I run my own mail server, which means that there are hackers trying 24×7 to break into the server by connecting to… Read More »
Let’s Encrypt with Synology NAS when you can’t open port 80
UPDATE [2022-02-06]: I’m fairly certain nothing in this blog posting is needed anymore with the current version of Synology’s NAS software (DSM). My NAS’s SSL certificate has been renewing automatically for quite a while now without my ever needing to use this script. I don’t know what mechanism DSM is now using to renew Let’s… Read More »