Concerns about online security are widespread. No-one wants their logins and finances compromised. How to act on those concerns can be confusing. How security pros and general users go about securing their devices is quite different. Users often rely on software such as AntiVirus. Security pros likely also use AV, but it’s not their first …
Category Archives: Tech
Convert Windows boot from BIOS to UEFI without decrypting Bitlocker
I wanted to convert an MBR/BIOS boot drive to GPT/UEFI, but without needing to decrypt and then re-encrypt Bitlocker. Mainly because I am lazy. This worked, but I’ll warn that the advice to decrypt completely first is without any doubt the safest way to go. Follow the instructions for converting from BIOS to UEFI boot. …
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Change admin user password expiry on JunOS SPACE
The admin user on JunOS SPACE, which is used for ssh / root access, has a default password expiry of 70 days. This may not be desired. NB: An upgrade of the JunOS SPACE platform will set the admin password expiry to the default of 70 days again. To avoid the admin user password being …
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Reset admin password on JunOS SPACE VM
Picture this: Bob, your JunOS SPACE administrator, left the company. IT diligently wiped his laptop. Bob was the only one who had the admin password (for ssh / CLI access) to your JunOS SPACE installation. After vowing to do better in future and storing all infrastructure passwords in some form of centralized, encrypted, backed-up password …
Better WebEx / Lync / Skype meeting locations for mobile users
[Edit 2016-12-01 … changed the VBA code to format the phone number with dashes] [Edit 2016-11-07 … changed the VBA code to handle WebEx invites, too][Edit 2015-10-27 … changed the VBA code to be able to extract the phone number] By default, the “Location” for a Skype for Business (ne Lync) Meeting in an Outlook …
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Installing VMWare Tools on JunOS SPACE 15.2 or older
[Edit 2017-05-04] The below is still valid for JunOS SPACE 15.2 or older. From JunOS SPACE 16.1 on, you can use “Open VM Tools” instead. JunOS SPACE, Juniper’s management platform for JunOS devices (switches, routers, firewalls) does not come with gcc or kernel-headers. Installing VMWare Tools from a mounted ISO via vmware-install.pl is not all …
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Restoring a bitlocker system volume with Acronis 2014
I had reason to restore my Windows 8 system volume, which is encrypted using Bitlocker. Getting access to my data drive back after that wasn’t quite as straightforward as I had hoped. For reference, and in case others get into this situation, here is what I encountered. My setup One system drive, SSD, encrypted using …
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Recover Juniper SRX from failed boot
[Edit 2018-05-14] This article describes how to boot into the backup partition from u-boot. If your primary still boots, try “request system reboot media internal” (Branch SRX) or “request system reboot media disk” (High-End SRX) instead. Thanks to batdosi for this. They also mention sysctl from shell, that may be another way to set the …
Final IPv4 allocations; IPv6 readiness test; IPv6 world day
Final IPv4 allocations have been made today. Will this galvanize businesses to start moving to IPv6? We’ll see 🙂 If you’ve been following my “IPv6 at home” series, here’s a neat link to test your IPv6 readiness: http://test-ipv6.com/ Finally, “World IPv6 day” will be on June 8th 2011. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Akamai and …
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Compiling pycrypto on Win7-64
Having had occasion to compile pycrypto 2.3.1 for Win7-64 and Python 2.7.1-64, I’ll share the process, and the result. Note 2016-02-03: This post is seriously old at this point, and pycrypto is not being actively maintained. Use pycryptodome, a fork of pycrypto, instead. It installs easily on Windows, pre-compiled or compiled from source, with good …
Thorsten on (mostly) Tech 