Is this something for our VPN offering? Initially we just need file access....
SSL-Explorer: The World's First Open Source SSL VPN Solution
Monday, March 14, 2005
Saturday, March 05, 2005
eBay scrambles to fix phishing bug | CNET News.com
And more phishing problems. This time it's eBay whose website actually apparently contains a bug that aids 'phishers' in their attacks: eBay scrambles to fix phishing bug | CNET News.com
Phishing: Lots of small fish can make you rich
Last Thursday (after our night of having fun with The Presidents (see previous blog post)), I gave a brief introduction to a small group of women of the International Women's Club of Breda. Although it was a small crowd and there were painters painting the room, while I was presenting, I think I managed to give the ladies a pretty good idea of what is out there on the Internet and what one should look out for.
I promised I would post interesting things in my blog, so the audience would be able to get ideas from that and be informed about new stuff. So, you might read stuff here that is obvious to the experienced computer user (or geek), but might not be that obvious to others. Get used to it ;-)
This morning I read an article about phishing @ The Washington Post (registration required*), something I had explained about too. It's one of the most dangerous things going on on the Net right now and people need to be informed about this. The article explains how banks in the US are trying to fight phishing attacks and how a totally new industry is starting to arise around it.
To read more about phishing you can read this article in Wikipedia. It gives you a good idea what to look for if you think you're being fooled...
*) Some news sites require you to register for an account. A lot of times, it's just to get an idea of who is reading there online news. No real harm in it; just limit your registration to the required information. A good rule of thumb anyway.
I promised I would post interesting things in my blog, so the audience would be able to get ideas from that and be informed about new stuff. So, you might read stuff here that is obvious to the experienced computer user (or geek), but might not be that obvious to others. Get used to it ;-)
This morning I read an article about phishing @ The Washington Post (registration required*), something I had explained about too. It's one of the most dangerous things going on on the Net right now and people need to be informed about this. The article explains how banks in the US are trying to fight phishing attacks and how a totally new industry is starting to arise around it.
To read more about phishing you can read this article in Wikipedia. It gives you a good idea what to look for if you think you're being fooled...
*) Some news sites require you to register for an account. A lot of times, it's just to get an idea of who is reading there online news. No real harm in it; just limit your registration to the required information. A good rule of thumb anyway.
Snowballs and dead presidents
Although this blog has a pretty technical focus, I just have to sneak in a little non-technical entry today. Yeah, some of us nerds have other interests than just computers ;-)
Last Wednesday night we were experiencing some (for our standards) serious snow (mayb 3 or 4 inches - woohoo!). It was also the night me and my S.O. had a chance to go see The Presidents of the U.S.A. in the Mezz here in Breda. We saw an awesome concert of three guys enjoying playing just plain fun music! They plyed for a small crowd, which made it feel even better. After the concert we hung around for a drink or two , when some co-worker of B (she volunteers at Mezz) came to get us, because Jason and Andrew (drums and gitar) were drinking beers in the hall where they had played. We hitted off and went (snowball fighting) on to the pub with some other 'groupies' ;-). Because of my American accent one of them even thought I was their tour manager. LOL! I couldn't keep a straight face and confessed I was just a groupy like they were ;-)
There was only one bummer of the night: We didn't bring a camera, so there will never be proof, other than our signed dead presidents...
Last Wednesday night we were experiencing some (for our standards) serious snow (mayb 3 or 4 inches - woohoo!). It was also the night me and my S.O. had a chance to go see The Presidents of the U.S.A. in the Mezz here in Breda. We saw an awesome concert of three guys enjoying playing just plain fun music! They plyed for a small crowd, which made it feel even better. After the concert we hung around for a drink or two , when some co-worker of B (she volunteers at Mezz) came to get us, because Jason and Andrew (drums and gitar) were drinking beers in the hall where they had played. We hitted off and went (snowball fighting) on to the pub with some other 'groupies' ;-). Because of my American accent one of them even thought I was their tour manager. LOL! I couldn't keep a straight face and confessed I was just a groupy like they were ;-)
There was only one bummer of the night: We didn't bring a camera, so there will never be proof, other than our signed dead presidents...
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Virtual Worlds
Developers, software engineers, network engineers and common folk: Unite! Use VMWare workstation! (No, I don't hold any share in this company, am not related to any of it's employees, nor am I working there myself).
VMWare must be one of the best inventions ever. It's right up there with Subversion. Together with Zend Studio these are the tools that will make a PHP programmer happy. And a Linux specialist (Guru for some ;-)).
We have managed to get everyone enthousiastic about VMWare Workstation. We've found ways to utilize it as a development platform, a testing platform, as well as a demo platform. Because of it's ease of snapshotting and reverting back to those, we are able to test server and application upgrades in no-time. We can now do between 10 and 20 testing iterations per day per testing engineer, where in the old environment we were maybe able to go through one to two iterations.
Because our application will be rolled out to around 40 schools within the next two weeks, we want to be able to do this with the least amount of effort and after sales service. All servers are the same at the application level and can be upgraded through our update service. We're using RPMs to distribute the changes in server configuration and setup, as well as for the server based application updates. This way we can guarentee that all servers will be similar. And that will make future updates easier again. Lately I have been starting to view our servers as hardware firewall/router type of boxes that can be upgraded to a newer 'firmware' version.
Our VMWare setup helps us with that tremendously! We start out with a standard server that has been installed and configured through the same process as our regular servers are. We snapshot it at that point and use a debug Yum channel to upgrade the Virtual Machine. Basic functionality is checked and if all is fine, more extensive testing occurs.
The same happens with our new server installation process. That can now be tested in a similar way. From what we've seen at VMWare's website, Workstation 5 is gonna be even more kewl! Teams Console and Snapshot Manager. Wow! I can't wait :-)
VMWare must be one of the best inventions ever. It's right up there with Subversion. Together with Zend Studio these are the tools that will make a PHP programmer happy. And a Linux specialist (Guru for some ;-)).
We have managed to get everyone enthousiastic about VMWare Workstation. We've found ways to utilize it as a development platform, a testing platform, as well as a demo platform. Because of it's ease of snapshotting and reverting back to those, we are able to test server and application upgrades in no-time. We can now do between 10 and 20 testing iterations per day per testing engineer, where in the old environment we were maybe able to go through one to two iterations.
Because our application will be rolled out to around 40 schools within the next two weeks, we want to be able to do this with the least amount of effort and after sales service. All servers are the same at the application level and can be upgraded through our update service. We're using RPMs to distribute the changes in server configuration and setup, as well as for the server based application updates. This way we can guarentee that all servers will be similar. And that will make future updates easier again. Lately I have been starting to view our servers as hardware firewall/router type of boxes that can be upgraded to a newer 'firmware' version.
Our VMWare setup helps us with that tremendously! We start out with a standard server that has been installed and configured through the same process as our regular servers are. We snapshot it at that point and use a debug Yum channel to upgrade the Virtual Machine. Basic functionality is checked and if all is fine, more extensive testing occurs.
The same happens with our new server installation process. That can now be tested in a similar way. From what we've seen at VMWare's website, Workstation 5 is gonna be even more kewl! Teams Console and Snapshot Manager. Wow! I can't wait :-)
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