IT jobs shortage? Slide over to security

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , , , ,

IT jobs are getting scarce again, and I believe it. I don’t have a cure but I have a suggestion: Specialize. Specifically, specialize in security.

Why? Turnover. Turnover in my department is rampant, because other companies offer my coworkers more money, a promotion, or something tangible to come work for them. I asked our CISO point blank if he’s worried. He said unemployment in security is 0.6 percent, so this is normal. What we have to do is develop security people, because there aren’t enough of them.

I made that transition, largely by accident, so I’ll offer some advice. Read more

What to do when you have more open slots than drive bays

Dave Farquhar Hardware

Every once in a while you find something you weren’t looking for, then you wonder why you never thought of it before. That’s what I thought when I saw the Kingwin 2-Bay PCI adapter. It’s a bracket that slides into a couple of empty slots and gives you space to mount a pair of 2.5″ hard drives or SSDs.

It’s brilliant because almost any computer these days has empty slots because all of the essential stuff that used to be on plug-in boards comes integrated onto the motherboard these days. And if you put a micro ATX motherboard into a full ATX case like I often do, you have at least two empty slots that you couldn’t use even if you wanted to.

This is a brilliant way to get a couple of additional drive bays in a desktop computer, so I highly recommend it.

I’m pretty sure my card’s been breached again, so here’s what I’m doing

Dave Farquhar security ,

So it’s starting to look like Home Depot got breached. Nobody knows yet how bad it is. I decided to be proactive and call my credit card company because I shop at Home Depot a lot, and they just read me a canned script. OK, they don’t want to know if I think my card was among those breached.

Here’s what I’m doing in the meantime. Read more

Upgrading an HP Mini 110 to Linux Mint 17

Dave Farquhar Linux , , , , , , , ,
Upgrading an HP Mini 110 to Linux Mint 17

Over the Labor Day weekend I decided to upgrade my HP Mini 110 netbook to Linux Mint 17. The Mini 110 can handle Windows 7, but Linux Mint doesn’t cost any money and I figure a Linux box is more useful to me than yet another Windows box. There are some things I do that are easier to accomplish in Linux than in Windows. Plus, I’m curious how my two young sons will react to Linux.

Linux Mint, if you’re not familiar with it, is a Ubuntu derivative that includes a lot of consumer-friendly features, like including drivers and codecs and other common software that aren’t completely open source. It’s not a Linux distribution for the Free Software purist, but having options is one of the nice things about Linux in 2014.

Linux Mint includes a lot of useful software, so once you get it installed, you’re up and running with a useful computer with minimal effort.

Read more

This week’s photo leak is a reminder of the need for good passwords

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , ,

This week, numerous celebrities, mostly female, had their Apple accounts hacked and intimate photos stolen and leaked. There are several things we all need to learn from this.

We don’t know yet exactly what happened, though I’ve heard several theories. One possibility is that the celebrities’ accounts were hacked recently. Another is that someone who’s been collecting these photos through various means was hacked.

The incident probably was inevitable, but it’s also entirely preventable. I can think of three things that led to it. While this discussion may seem purely academic, there are misconceptions many people, famous and not, have and need to get rid of.

Read more

Netstat scam and netstat scammers

Dave Farquhar scams , , ,
Netstat scam and netstat scammers

A longtime friend’s aunt almost got taken by a fake tech support scammer. He told me about it, and in the process, this was also the first I’d heard of the netstat scam, or netstat scammers.

She saved herself by saying she’d have to check things out with her nephew first. That’s a good trick. Fortunately for her, the scammer didn’t try to delete anything, though he did immediately change from being very pleasant to being very rude. That matches my recent experience with these low-life crooks precisely.

She was vulnerable because the flawed MS14-045 gave her trouble and she had a case open with HP. So when this crook called, she thought at first that HP or Microsoft were following up with her about that.

The scammer’s best trick was to get her to open a command prompt and type netstat. Read more

Tech Central in South Africa trolls the tech support scammers

Dave Farquhar scams

Apparently the fake Microsoft tech support scammers call South Africa too. Tech Central’s experience is close to mine, but since they actually let these jokers into one of their machines, they found out something about their game that I’ve never seen.

Apparently, once you get further into their sales pitch, they get into your machine, ask for payment, and if you hesitate to pay or refuse, they start deleting files out of revenge.

I’ve never actually let these guys get into a system I care about, though I have actually let one in to a system that really did have a couple of viruses on it. I wanted to see if they would find any real problems. They didn’t.

So, knowing that they maliciously delete would-be customers’ data if they show second thoughts, I think it’s a good idea to string these guys along for as long as we can when they call those of us who know better. Two of us doing that each night is enough to save one person from being victimized.