Choose Your Password (Language) With Care

When you want to use words / sentences in a password, it pays to use a non-English dictionary. Just check the Kaspersky blog on strong passwords., and try it for yourself.

The English word combination 'horse' and 'toad' are considered weaker than the Dutch equivalent ('paard' and 'pad'). 

Posted on August 5, 2013 and filed under Security, Tips'n Tricks.

Mail Addressed to 'Unknown IP Address'

The last couple of weeks, I got several mails addressed to 'Onbekend IP Adres' (which is Dutch for 'Unknown IP Address') .

The e-mail 'To:' field contains my mail address with the 'Onbekend IP Adres' as an alias.

How are we supposed to take these spammers seriously? First, get my name right. Then, I'll might think about clicking on these links in the e-mail (NOT).

Posted on July 30, 2013 and filed under Annoying, Personal.

Create a Juniper SRX ca-profile For Unified Access Control

When you have a registered Juniper UAC / IC appliance, you have to option to download a VMWare version of the system. This is called a DTE appliance (Development and Test Environment). With this you have a full-blown UAC at your disposal for testing and development. Only downside is that it's limited to 5 connected users. Apart from that, it's just like the real-deal.

 

 

 

Posted on July 30, 2013 and filed under Security, Tips'n Tricks, Junos.

Kobo Glo Illuminated Screen

The Kobo and Sony e-reader both have excellent e-ink displays. No difference on that front. The biggest difference is the fact that the Kobo Glo has a build in light.  This makes it possible to read in the dark. The following images show the difference of the screen compared to the Sony PRS-T2 with the following Kobo Glo lights settings;

  • No Light
  • Minimal Light (1%) 
  • 50% Light
  • 100% Light

The photos were shot with an iPhone under poor light circumstances. 

I have no problem with reading in the dark (pitch black) with the minimal light setting (1%). Just throw in more light if you need/want more contrast when reading in the dark.

Posted on July 26, 2013 and filed under Tips'n Tricks, Review, Gear.

International Interest in My 'Brand'

This week, I found the following mail in my mailbox. Not really sure what the scam is, but I'm sure it's gonna cost me money....

(Letter to the President or Brand Owner, thanks)

Dear President,

We are a domain name registration and protection agency in Asia. I have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on July 16,2013 that a company which self-styled"Togh International Co.,Ltd"were applying to register"redelijkheid"as their Brand Name and some domain names through our firm.

Now we are handling this registration, and after our initial checking, we found the name were similar to your company's, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we will finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we will handle this issue better. Out of the time limit we will unconditionally finish the registration for"Togh International Co.,Ltd".Looking forward to your prompt reply.

Best Regards,

David Zhao
Tel:+86(0551)63434624
Fax:+86(0551)63434924
Address:HuiZhou Ave 999, Hefei, Anhui, China

Posted on July 19, 2013 and filed under Annoying, Personal, Tips'n Tricks.

Apple Sued For Porn Addiction

Chris Sevier, a 36-year-old man from Tennessee, got so addicted to porn videos that his wife took his children and left him. Now he has sued Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), saying the Cupertino, Calif.-based company failed to install any filter in its devices to prevent his affliction.
— http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-sued-porn-addiction-man-says-macbook-cost-his-marriage-kids-1345831

Why stop at Apple? There's also something as your Internet Service Provider. Those are the 'bastards' that transport the stuff from the Interwebs to your home. Or the actual sites for allowing people to see these appalling (for some) images / videos without a dozen age/religion/whatever security checks?

One of the best parts is the following: 

Sevier claims that his addiction started when he “accidentally” replaced the “a-c-e” in Facebook with a “u-c-k.” Sevier said this F***book site “appealed to his biological sensibilities as a male,” and he started to prefer the images on the screen to his own wife.

The 'a' is nowhere near the 'u', and the 'k' is nowhere near the 'e' (on my keyboard), so how the hell is it possible to 'accidentally' type f-u-c-k instead of f-a-c-e

At least I learned something; I learned about the existence of a website that wasn't in my bookmarks already :-)

Posted on July 15, 2013 and filed under Apple, Fun, News.

Juniper SRX Apply-groups

A while back I wrote a blog post about enabling global logging on security rules.  This week I applied the same technique to enable ping on all zones for testing / troubleshooting purposes.

Instead of adding ping as a host-inbound-traffic system-service to all zones, and if you have a couple this means some configuring, you can solve this by adding just 3 (three) lines of config to the firewall.

Posted on July 15, 2013 and filed under Security, Tips'n Tricks, Junos.