Mark Gibbs
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Mark Gibbs
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7 ways to make your IoT-connected Raspberry Pi smarter
Raspberry Pi becomes more powerfulWith the explosion of interest in building Internet of Things (IoT) devices based on boards like the Raspberry Pi comes an explosion of tools that make creating RPi-based IoT systems not only easier, but also more powerful. I’ve hand-picked some of the latest, greatest and coolest tools that will make your Raspberry Pi IoT project killer. (And if you’re contemplating your operating systems choices, make sure you check out my Ultimate Guide to Raspberry Pi Operating Systems, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 -- 58 choices in total!)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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7 ways to make your IoT-connected Raspberry Pi smarter
Raspberry Pi becomes more powerfulWith the explosion of interest in building Internet of Things (IoT) devices based on boards like the Raspberry Pi comes an explosion of tools that make creating RPi-based IoT systems not only easier, but also more powerful. I’ve hand-picked some of the latest, greatest and coolest tools that will make your Raspberry Pi IoT project killer. (And if you’re contemplating your operating systems choices, make sure you check out my Ultimate Guide to Raspberry Pi Operating Systems, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 -- 58 choices in total!)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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TeamViewer Hacked or Breached or Something
If you’re a user of TeamViewer, the very popular “remote support, remote access, and online meeting software” for Windows, OS X, Linux, Chrome OS, iOS and Android, you might want to take a second to change all of your passwords. In fact, before you finish this article, before you learn why you should change your TeamViewer passwords, go change them right now to be really strong passwords and take down any copies you usually leave running that aren’t absolutely necessary … it’s that big a deal. Okay? Done? Good. The reason for my urging you to take immediate action is that through as yet undetermined means, someone or ones have managed to acquire an unknown but apparently huge number of TeamViewer account credentials and as a consequence, a number of TeamViewer users claim to have suffered huge financial losses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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The shocking truth of how you’ll be tracked online and why
A recent study, Online tracking: A 1-million-site measurement and analysis, conducted by researchers at Princeton University discovered that Google is tracking users on nearly 80 percent of all of the Top 1 Million Domains. How are they doing this? Not surprisingly, they’re using a variety of tracking and identification techniques and they’re doing it for the obvious reason: To manipulate you. In the beginning tracking you was just about getting you to buy stuff; now, it’s evolving, and in the future, it will be all about subtle, insidious manipulation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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The shocking truth of how you’ll be tracked online and why
A recent study, Online tracking: A 1-million-site measurement and analysis, conducted by researchers at Princeton University discovered that Google is tracking users on nearly 80 percent of all of the Top 1 Million Domains. How are they doing this? Not surprisingly, they’re using a variety of tracking and identification techniques and they’re doing it for the obvious reason: To manipulate you. In the beginning tracking you was just about getting you to buy stuff; now, it’s evolving, and in the future, it will be all about subtle, insidious manipulation.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Node-RED, wiring the Raspberry Pi to the IoT
One of the many things that Raspberry Pi-based systems are excellent for is for building Internet of Things platforms. The price is right ($35), the performance is great for the price, the input/output options are great, there’s an enormous ecosystem of add-on and compatible sensors and other hardware, and an equally enormous supporting community. As a result of this vibrant market, a slew of operating system choices for the Raspberry Pi have appeared (see my Ultimate Guide to Raspberry Pi Operating Systems parts 1, 2, and 3) along with some really creative software development tools such as Node-RED, a free, open source, visual wiring tool built by IBM Emerging Technologies. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Stressed? Low energy? The answer is Thync
Stressed? Of course you are. Do you find it hard to chill without a drink or three in the evening? Yep, that’s pretty common when you’re dealing with the kind of pressures IT professionals are often under. And then what about when you get up in the morning? Are you low on energy? How about when it’s 2pm and you’re flagging and there’s the prospect of having to pull an all-nighter to roll out the new whatever-it-is you’re wrestling with? Do you turn to endless cups of coffee or, the gods forfend, do you down endless energy drinks until you have a caffeine high that makes you vibrate like a tuning fork? To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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QNAP NAS also does DAS via Thunderbolt
If you look through the scores of online forums where Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems are discussed, one of the most common user “wants” is for a NAS to simultaneously be a DAS (Direct Attached Storage). It’s a functionality that, at first blush, you might think easy to achieve but it turns out that it really isn’t because it’s not been an available option from any major NAS vendor. I first discovered the market’s desire for a combined NAS and DAS when I was editing video and wondered if I could use the eSATA interface on the QNAP NAS I had in the Gibbs Universal Secret Underground Bunker. It turned out that, in common with other vendors’ implementations, the QNAP’s eSATA ports were host-only interfaces which meant they could only connect to a slave drive.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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The Micro M3D, affordable 3D printing for the masses
Back in 2013 I read a paper titled Life-Cycle Economic Analysis of Distributed Manufacturing with Open-Source 3-D Printers. The study, which focused on the legendary RepRap 3D printer, was conducted by Joshua Pearce at Michigan Technological University and concluded: The results show that even making the extremely conservative assumption that [a] household would only use the printer to make the selected twenty products a year the avoided purchase cost savings would range from about $300 to $2000/year. Assuming the 25 hours of necessary printing for the selected products is evenly distributed throughout the year these savings provide a simple payback time for the RepRap in 4 months to 2 years and provide an ROI between>200% and >40%.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Are the Panama Papers a problem for you?
On May 9th, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists will release a searchable database that will detail over 200,000 entities that are part of the Panama Papers investigation. While this will be intriguing for most of us, if you’re in a financial organization of any kind and there’s the remotest chance that you might have dealings with any of these entities, or with parties who might be fronting for or involved with them, May 9th will be (or depending on when you read this, is or has been), shall we say, “a bad day” for you.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Ultimate guide to Raspberry Pi operating systems, Part 3
RPi pleasureImage by WikimediaA few months ago we published the Ultimate guide to Raspberry Pi operating systems, Part 1, followed by the Ultimate guide to Raspberry Pi operating systems, Part 2, and today, for your continuing RPi pleasure, we have Part 3, with nine more operating systems to choose from!To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cybereason gains Lockheed Martin’s Threat Intelligence to thwart cyberattacks
Given the recent sharp increase in cyberattacks of all kinds, IT operations driving enterprise scale networks need something that will effectively reduce their intelligence gathering problems and help to automate their response to be as fast as possible. What’s needed is the ability to identify and deal with attacks as they happen but there are some really significant challenges in doing this including the sheer scale of network event data, the problem of filtering out the event "noise" and false positives, and the ability to detect zero day threats. With what must be one of the headiest combinations of hot technologies I’ve seen for a while, the security company Cybereason uses behavioral analytics, big data, and machine learning along with major league threat intelligence resources to thwart cyberattacks in, they claim, real time. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Cybereason gains Lockheed Martin’s Threat Intelligence to thwart cyberattacks
Given the recent sharp increase in cyberattacks of all kinds, IT operations driving enterprise scale networks need something that will effectively reduce their intelligence gathering problems and help to automate their response to be as fast as possible. What’s needed is the ability to identify and deal with attacks as they happen but there are some really significant challenges in doing this including the sheer scale of network event data, the problem of filtering out the event "noise" and false positives, and the ability to detect zero day threats. With what must be one of the headiest combinations of hot technologies I’ve seen for a while, the security company Cybereason uses behavioral analytics, big data, and machine learning along with major league threat intelligence resources to thwart cyberattacks in, they claim, real time. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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How to Get Better Browsing
I have two topics that will make your browsing more pleasurable. The first is a solution for the few remaining sites that block pasting into form fields and or copying text and graphics. While some sites do this to prevent having their content used in any way that the owner might not approve of, others, such as H&R Block, do it because they think blocking the ability to paste clipboard content into form fields is a security issue (it isn’t). This blocking is particularly annoying when it interferes with a password manager. The whole point of employing a password manager is to make it easy to use strong passwords so making users retype long, complex strings is beyond annoying. My favorite password manager, LastPass, isn’t affected by this but others may have problems with sites that attempt to block pasting. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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BetterBack: How to fix your bad back
There’s one activity that dominates the athletic activities of pretty much everyone in IT and that activity is inactivity. Whether it’s in a car seat, a train, a bus, or in front of a computer, most of us are locked into a chair for 6 or more hours every day and what does this cost us? Along with all of the other health consequences (heart disease, muscle degeneration, strained necks, limp glutes (yewww), tight hips, … I could go on but it's pretty gruesome), sitting for long periods of time ruins our backs. We sit there every day squinting at our screens, slumped into postures that nature never intended us to hold for hours at a time then we wonder why we ache.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Analyzing real WordPress hacking attempts
In my last few posts I’ve pondered the issue of how insecure WordPress installations have become. Here’s an interesting thing to try if you run a Wordpress site; install the 404 to 301 plugin and in its settings check the “Email notifications” option and enter an email address in the “Email address” field. Now, whenever a nonexistent URL is requested, you’ll get notified and, at least for me, it’s been pretty interesting to see how hackers attempt to enter my WordPress installations. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Analyzing real WordPress hacking attempts
In my last few posts I’ve pondered the issue of how insecure WordPress installations have become. Here’s an interesting thing to try if you run a Wordpress site; install the 404 to 301 plugin and in its settings check the “Email notifications” option and enter an email address in the “Email address” field. Now, whenever a nonexistent URL is requested, you’ll get notified and, at least for me, it’s been pretty interesting to see how hackers attempt to enter my WordPress installations. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Question: How did hackers steal $81 million? Answer: Pretty easily.
One of the peculiar things about computer security is how much the topic is written about and discussed (a huge amount) compared to how much is actually done (always less than you think). But what’s really peculiar is that enterprises, which you’d think would have better security than organizations in, say, the SMB space, often have serious security deficiencies. Case in point: The Bangladesh Central Bank.In February this year, hackers managed to get into the Bangladesh Central Bank’s network and acquired the bank’s SWIFT credentials, codes that authorize interbank transfers. The hackers then used the credentials four times to transfer some $81 million to various accounts in the Philippines and Sri Lanka via the New York Federal Reserve but on the fifth attempt, the hackers misspelled the receiving account’s name (they spelled “Shalika Foundation” as Shalika “Fandation”)(du’oh). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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Question: How did hackers steal $81 million? Answer: Pretty easily.
One of the peculiar things about computer security is how much the topic is written about and discussed (a huge amount) compared to how much is actually done (always less than you think). But what’s really peculiar is that enterprises, which you’d think would have better security than organizations in, say, the SMB space, often have serious security deficiencies. Case in point: The Bangladesh Central Bank.In February this year, hackers managed to get into the Bangladesh Central Bank’s network and acquired the bank’s SWIFT credentials, codes that authorize interbank transfers. The hackers then used the credentials four times to transfer some $81 million to various accounts in the Philippines and Sri Lanka via the New York Federal Reserve but on the fifth attempt, the hackers misspelled the receiving account’s name (they spelled “Shalika Foundation” as Shalika “Fandation”)(du’oh). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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On getting your WordPress site hacked; pay now or pay more later
In my last post I posed the question of whether it’s time to look for alternatives to the leading publishing platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc., but, truth be told, finding an alternative that can do everything these products do is practically impossible … that is, unless you’re willing to spend money building a customized solution.And that may be the reality of the future; if you don’t build your own solution paying upfront at perhaps 100x the cost (thanks, Keith) of, say, a simple WordPress installation, you’ll windup paying far more than that when you get hacked. According to IBM’s tenth annual Cost of Data Breach Study:To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here