Writing
Tagged “security”
21 articles
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Mitigating Ransomware Attacks on Linux
Ransomware gangs stopped ignoring Linux once they realized that encrypting one hypervisor takes out every virtual machine on it. How attacks on Linux actually happen, and the defenses that matter, starting with backups…
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The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Reflections on its Relevance in 2024
Eric Raymond's 1997 essay argued that open, chaotic development beats careful central planning, and that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." This spring a backdoor sat in plain sight in xz for weeks. What the…
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The Importance of “The Hacker’s Manifesto” and Its Impact on Early Internet Culture
A teenager wrote it in a few hundred words just after his arrest, and Phrack published it in January 1986. "The Conscience of a Hacker" gave a scattered subculture an identity. Why it landed, what it got right about…
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Understanding Zero Trust: What It Is and Why It Matters
Zero trust isn't a product, whatever the booth at the conference says. It's the idea that being on the network shouldn't get you anything. Where it came from, why this year's string of VPN breaches makes the case, and…
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Least Privilege Principle
Every big breach this year turned on an account that could do more than it needed to. The least privilege principle is fifty years old and still the cheapest security control there is. What it means in practice on…
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Leveraging AI Tools to Increase Efficiency: Pros and Cons
AI assistants are genuinely useful for technical work and genuinely dangerous when trusted blindly. Where they save time for engineers and sysadmins, where they've already embarrassed people who believed them, and the…
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The Importance of Encryption Everywhere
Eleven years after Snowden, the web is mostly encrypted and most networks behind it still aren't. Where encryption protects you, where it only looks like it does, the key problem nobody talks about, and why post-quantum…
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Understanding Data Lakes
A data lake is a cheap place to keep everything and decide what it means later. That's its strength and the way it turns into a swamp. What one is, how it differs from a warehouse, why this month's Iceberg fight…
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Understanding DNSSEC and Its Importance
DNS was built on trust in 1983 and still answers anyone who asks. DNSSEC lets a resolver prove an answer is genuine. What it does, what it doesn't, why so few domains bother, and why mail servers should.