Networking for the Lazy
I have unilaterally decided that everyone who is serious about gaming on the PC needs a screen this big right in front of their dam faces right now! Bask in the glory that is my new Samsung 50in 4K UHD LED monitor. Now I am off to fly my space ships!!! CIAO
So yes, it has been a very long time since I have written on here but from my last post I had just started my new job in Brussels Belgium. What can I say it has kept me busy and now has led to a promotion (cheers for me J). However as with all good things I have to take the bad also, which leads me to the process of getting ready to move so I can take the promotion. (Moving Sucks ASS!!!) So where am I going? Well it is a terrible place but I have to take one for the team ;). So soon I will be calling Vicenza Italy my new home as you can all guess it toke all of 2 seconds to say yes, I will take it to the HR rep.
Just got my new internet connection installed in the new house today. I know it is not google fiber but it is the fastest internet connection I have ever had in the house. I have used faster at work but they generally don’t let me mess with them.
I recently had to set this up on a friend’s router and I was not aware that there had been API changes to the DDNS protocol so many of the configurations I found on the internet no longer worked. So below I am posting a working configuration for the DDNS configuration supporting dyndns.com dynamic DNS update service using the current APIs along with an explanation of how each command works.
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I hate cheap uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). I live in a small village in Germany where at times the power can be a bit unreliable. So to counter this I have a number of UPSs in the house from Trust and APC. I must admit that I only bought the Trust UPS because they are cheap, however you get what you pay for. Do the UPS from Trust work? Yes they do however they have some issues that I find problematic.
I have two power strips on my server rack with each power strip attached to its own UPS. This is done to distribute the load and maximize system uptime in case of a power outage. However, as you can see in the photo I only have a switch and two Atom servers. The switch and the servers are on separate power strips additionally my desktop is on the power strip with the switch. Now with this in mind, before I had the APC UPS I had two Trust UPSs. This leads to the main issue I had with the Trust UPSs.
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The first layer of defense in your network is often the most misunderstood. In the movies and TV the hacker always seems to find a way around or through the firewall with crazy matrix like skills that defies common sense. However, if you ever encounter a true hacker they will tell you that a properly configured firewall is the most effective way to stop their attacks. Therefore, what is a firewall and what types of firewalls are out there, and what are the types that I have used at work and at home.
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Computer forensics has helped solve a number of criminal cases although a disproportional number of these cases have been for child porn, there are a few which were not. Of those non-child porn cases, one stands out, murder most foul. One murderer that would drive police and the FBI crazy for years until that fateful day that he made one mistake.
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Every time you connect to a website on the internet and need to send something securely you look for the little padlock in your browser to show that you have connected to a secure website. To do this we use a system called Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer (HTTPS). However, there are a number of crypto technologies that secure the connection between you and the website that you are connecting to. Below we will look at four websites and the crypto algorithms that they use in securing your connection to them.
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Throughout time man has had secrets that needed to be sheared without others knowing what was talked about. This led to the development of cryptography to help man meet this requirement. Cryptography is the practice of the enciphering and deciphering of messages in secret code in order to render them unintelligible to all but the intended receiver (Merriam-Webster, 2014). However, in the modern day cryptography has taken on new importance as we have the need to pass more and more data securely. Below we will look at the strengths, weaknesses of symmetric, asymmetric, and hybrid cryptography along with the systems and algorithms they use.
Continue reading Post ID 220
I am not what you would call a normal computer user; in fact, I would even put myself above the so-called power users. I have worked in the IT field for the last 19 years of my life and during that time, I have seen a large swath of issues facing IT managers regarding security threats. These threats range from the benign to outright dangerous data destroying type. Therefore, what is the most dangerous types of security threats faced by IT managers today, let’s take a look.
