Author Archives: mike

Keeping Secret Google Meetings Secret

Posted on 2019-10-02 by mike

It is possible that some people are unaware (certainly I wasn’t; at least not this week) that it is possible that information about meetings can be seen not by looking at someone’s shared diary but looking at the room booked. … Continue reading →

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Careful With That Link Eugene

Posted on 2019-09-24 by mike

Over the last few weeks, I have noticed an increasing number of very suspicious looking links blocked by our “DNS firewall” – links like “xwhdg.read-this-hot-stuff.today”. The suspicion is that people are being sent emails with links within and they are … Continue reading →

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‘Shoulder Surfing’ or Is Your Screen Showing Others Information It Shouldn’t?

Posted on 2019-09-11 by mike

Every time I travel by train during working hours, I get reminded of the old “shoulder surfing” attack; a surprising number of people are working away on their laptops seeming unaware that anyone peaking over their shoulders has a good … Continue reading →

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Imaging PCs for Offline Analysis

Posted on 2019-09-11 by mike

This is going to be a technical post with requirements for access rights that most people do not have, so it can be ignored. The intention is to file this information in a place that can be widely seen for … Continue reading →

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Zoom Desktop Vulnerability for macOS

Posted on 2019-07-09 by mike

Update: Apple is now silently pushing out an update to remove the Zoom “hidden feature” so you will be please to know that the geeky removal is no longer necessary. Just make sure you have opted in to all recent … Continue reading →

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DNS Firewalls: What They Are, and What They’re Not

Posted on 2019-06-27 by mike

This posting is really a description of so-called “DNS Firewalls” intended for those who have to deal with security vendors regularly. Having said that, there are DNS firewalls for home users (I cannot make any specific recommendations), so it may … Continue reading →

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The Future of Windows 7

Posted on 2019-06-20 by mike

As you may be aware, Microsoft have expectations that everyone running Windows 7 will upgrade to Windows 10 (and some refuseniks are so upset that they are ditching Windows for Linux!). As part of that, Microsoft will no longer be … Continue reading →

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The Big RDP Vulnerability (CVE-2019-0708)

Posted on 2019-05-16 by mike

Microsoft have released a whole bunch of patches to fix security vulnerabilities this Tuesday (which is quite normal of course), but one unusual aspect was the release of a patch for older versions of Windows that do not normally get … Continue reading →

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University Passes Cybersecurity Re-assessment

Posted on 2019-04-12 by mike

After a great deal of work from a number of people, the University has successfully renewed our CyberEssentials Plus certification. This means :- We are assured that we have met a level of IT security. Not that it means we … Continue reading →

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Yes, We’re Now Encrypted

Posted on 2019-02-26 by mike

If you have been paying attention, you will have noticed that our “security blog” was up until now only available via plain text; we now have a TLS certificate so the traffic to this site is encrypted. With the exception … Continue reading →

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