In November the UK government released the “UK Cyber Security Strategy” which can be downloaded here. There are four main objectives which will be funded by £650million over 4 years under the “National Cyber Security Programme” (NCSP). The objectives are: To tackle cybercrime and be of the most secure places to do e-businessTo be more resilient … Continue reading Thoughts on the UK Cyber Security Strategy
Christmas Gift Wrapping
I usually make my Christmas present wrapping paper themed, and this year's is very homemade and red. They look really nice and are very simple to do (and quite cheap if you have lots of arts & crafts material lying around). My Christmas presents so far (I'm far too organised..) A close-up of one of … Continue reading Christmas Gift Wrapping
Kilimanjaro: Day 7
Day 7: Another 5 hour walk down to the Mweke gate. The path turned hideously muddy and steep downhill, so the pace was very slow so we wouldn’t fall over and get absolutely covered in mud. Going downhill was more painful than uphill; your knees, toes, thighs ache with every steep, slippery step. We saw … Continue reading Kilimanjaro: Day 7
Unicode making malware easier
I recently discovered a wonderful unicode character that makes the following text reverse called right-to-left-override. For example: print "Hello[U+202E]World", produces the output: Hello dlroW. I'm not sure of what legitimate reason you would use the unicode character, but several blogs have warned that it can be used by malware writers to get people to click on files. Most people … Continue reading Unicode making malware easier
Kilimanjaro: Day 6
Day 6: Down to Mweke Gate. Since there was no longer a rush to get to the camps at a certain time, day 6 was much more relaxed. Taryn and Lorena slept on a bit, so we set off before them to Mweke camp. My altitude sickness went away very quickly, I felt completely different … Continue reading Kilimanjaro: Day 6
Kilimanjaro: Day 5
Day 5: summit day. In the morning my nausea was worse, and managed just tea for breakfast. At this point I knew I wouldn’t be able to make the peak, so made it my challenge to reach the base camp, Barafu, 4633m. Although the walk here was only 4 hours – again to reach the … Continue reading Kilimanjaro: Day 5
Windows cookies
Windows released a security update on the 9th August which means that cookies are no longer stored in the usual <username>@<service>.txt, but are now a random set of 8 alphanumeric characters, e.g. A1B2C3D4.txt. It seems this has broken a lot of software, especially those than delete cookies as they probably rely on the fact that cookies had a very conventional … Continue reading Windows cookies
Kilimanjaro: Day 4
Having opted for the 7 day route, we used 2 days to get the base camp instead of 1. Normally today would be the day to reach Barafu camp at 4600m, however we went half way and stopped at Karanga camp at 3963m. Whilst again not being much higher than the previous camp, the walk … Continue reading Kilimanjaro: Day 4
Kilimanjaro: Day 3
Day 3 and when we opened up the tent, we found a scary vulture-raptor staring at us. Despite being told they were only big white-necked ravens, these were quite intimidating with their massive beaks. Later on in the day, when we had a snack break, Taryn managed to coo one of the ravens over, and had … Continue reading Kilimanjaro: Day 3
Kilimanjaro: Day 2
Our first morning on the mountain. Breakfast consisted of porridge, toast, fruits, eggs and sausages - but the porridge was no ordinary oat porridge. This was ragi porridge: purple-grey, lumpy and formed a thick skin if you didn’t eat it quickly enough. However, it was deliciously sweet and filling. It you ignored the colour and texture, … Continue reading Kilimanjaro: Day 2
Lowmanio 