Category Archives: General

A default category for posts that don’t seem to fit into a more specific area.

Locating Java Installs

Posted on 2022-09-14 by mike

In some cases vulnerability scanners will tell you that there is a vulnerable version of Java installed but not tell you where it is. This is a short post on solving that problem – for Linux machines. Run the following … Continue reading →

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The “Secret” BCC Email Header

Posted on 2021-09-28 by mike

You want to send an email to a long list of people; perhaps that list should remain private, or perhaps you just want to avoid the inconvenience of people seeing a huge “To” field with tons of other addresses in. … Continue reading →

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What Are “Homoglyph” Attacks?

Posted on 2020-08-07 by mike

As the phrase has started becoming more widely used, it seems worthwhile to explain just what exactly “homoglyph attacks” are. It is perhaps a bit extreme to call them “attacks” as they are effectively used to deceive … especially in … Continue reading →

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Twitter: The Trustworthiness of The Blue Tick

Posted on 2020-07-17 by mike

If you have not heard, Twitter suffered some sort of incident recently (yesterday at the time of writing) where a number of high profile accounts were used to send out “tweets” suggesting that if you pay them some money (in … Continue reading →

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VPN or GlobalProtect Performance Issues

Posted on 2020-06-15 by mike

On occasions over the last few months, IS has been contacted with regard to network performance issues in relation to the VPN (the GlobalProtect VPN). As a result we have built up some recommendations that may be helpful to others … Continue reading →

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Working From Home

Posted on 2020-03-13 by mike

For some reason there seems to be a bit of an increase in interest in working from home and so it seems rather timely to produce some advice. Not so much the technical side of things, but general advice from … Continue reading →

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Let’s Encrypt Certificates – Are They Broken?

Posted on 2020-03-04 by mike

Short answer: No. There is a news story going around about an issue with certificates issued by Let’s Encrypt. The certificates themselves are in fact perfectly fine, but they were issued when they should not have been. If the owners … Continue reading →

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German University Forced To Reset All Passwords

Posted on 2019-12-20 by mike

According to this story in The Register (the source material is reasonably enough in German), one of our German competitors has recently been forced to reset every single account password causing significant queues for service. Plus a significant amount of … Continue reading →

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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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‘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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