Rob the Geek

Category: Internet

  • Logging your connectivity

    I had a message this morning from a friend who was having intermittent disconnection issues on their internet. The network itself was fine and, when using another provider, that too was working so it came down to evidence gathering to support the case to the ISP to investigate. As a quick throw together, we came […]

  • Grabbing Video (back) from YouTube

    Usual Disclaimers Apply: This guide should not be used to subvert copyright restrictions. Responsibility falls to the user to ensure they are not breaking the laws of the country in which they reside or breaching any restrictions placed on content published in, or on infrastructure where other jurisdictions and/or terms of service may apply. Ignorance is […]

  • “Factory” resetting an OpenWRT router

    There are many reasons to re-flash your  home router with a different OS than the one the manufacturer has cobbled together, the Misfortune Cookie attack (US-CERT) is just one of them, Having been involved in the testing of a number of domestic xDSL routers, I have a rather low opinion on the amount of care […]

  • PASSWORD MANAGERS, CRYPTOGRAPHY, AND TRUST

    So, a friend* of mine asked me yesterday, (following my posting of an article), what I thought of a particular password manager – I obviously wanted to answer her question. I then decided that since I was in for a penny, I might as well be in for a pound and here we are, (hopefully) […]

  • UPnP – Why I don’t allow it on my Home Network

    The UPnP protocol has a long standing history of security problems, not the least of which being that it allows unauthenticated devices to connect to and through your home network. TLDR; UPnP is a flawed protocol which has been leveraged numerous times to conduct widespread attacks via large numbers of insecure devices. Do not enable […]

  • Managing Behaviour & Technology – A Night with NEAL

    I’ve just arrived back from an evening session on “Managing Technology and Behaviour @ Home” run by Andrew Cowie, Heather Eccles and Alan Curtis from NEAL (Northern Education Access Loop). I surprised myself by enjoying the session, it wasn’t that I personally learned anything technical, it was all about the presentation of the material which was simply […]

  • Credential Security …again

    So, with another major collection of user credentials being uncovered (and reported in the mainstream media), there is a slight increase in interest in people, their data, and the credentials they use. For those who may not yet have caught up with the news (or those reading this in the future and wondering which massive credential theft I’m referring to), this is the uncovering of the work done by ‘Cyber Vor’ who managed to snare around 1.2 billion (yes, with a B) unique user credentials.

  • Tweaking the Home Network – pfSense Firewall [Part 2: Initial Configuration]

    Initial Configuration (via Web Browser) In the previous article, we set up (at least) two network interfaces. The first, facing the Internet (the WAN) and the second facing the internal network (the LAN). In our instance, our WAN interface will simply pass traffic onto our existing internal network, where it is subject to existing rules and management, […]

  • Standing on the Wall

    Today I was discussing the recent work by the New Zealand Police in bring a number of people up on charges for their part in an international pedophile ring. While I’ll save you from the details (you can do your own reading using this article as a starting point), some of the alleged offenses are […]

  • Path of Exile – Crowdsourcing Funds

    The very excellent MMO “Path of Exile” by Kiwi game developer Grinding Gear Games has managed to raise US$2.5 million (yes that’s million, little finger to the corner of your mouth Dr Evil styles…) through crowd-sourcing future development funds from the online gaming community. This is not the first success they’ve had with funding via […]