Bonum Certa Men Certa

Security First

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Feb 05, 2024

Golden padlock

This week PCLinuxOS Magazine recalls a ransomware attack it suffered, noting that it took its toll on the site and its contributors. They refused to pay ransom (rightly so!) and rebuilt/restored whatever they could. Power to them!

But a lot of this can - or could - be prevented proactively.

As readers of this site ought to be aware, we're very robust to censorship and we never remove articles. I recall unpublishing only one article (several years ago) due to mistaking one patent troll for an actual firm sharing the exact same name, which meant the article conflated two separate entities. I was not forced or pressured to unpublish it, just gently asked, for I was referring to one entity as a patent troll which had the exact same name. So I preemptively and voluntarily removed that.

In terms of security, after 17+ years here and almost 20 years in the sister site we're glad to report we never suffered a breach (about 37 years combined) and as far as we're aware our sources never got burned/caught. We are nowadays meticulous about security patching, we make backups in at least 3 geographical sites, and - unlike Sirius - we don't need to lie about this.

Constantly there are attempts to crack the sites, to engages in various cyberattacks (mostly DDoS) and there are even unsuccessful attacks on my wife's accounts. Misogynists subject her to sexual harassment and go further than this.

For decades already, computer/network security was underrated if not ignored. I myself was never the victim of malware or viruses (didn't lose control of any of my computers, except maybe in the 80s when floppy disks were passed around with malicious software) and the plan is to keep it that way. The sad thing is that the biggest culprit, Microsoft, is hailed by the Linux Foundation. Instead of blasting the culprit it is idolising it and sometimes putting it in charge.

Today we dealt with some backups of local machines and tomorrow, with these much-needed (maybe overdue) tasks out of the way, we'll hopefully be able to produce more articles.

Robot security

"Our products just aren't engineered for security."

--Brian Valentine, Microsoft executive

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