Cuil, the Internet’s newest Search Engine appears to be taking a bit of a battering as everyone and his dog takes a shufty at what has been described as ‘new technology that can change the competitive dynamics of the Web search market’. More…
Friday 25th July, London to Henley
56 miles
Thursday’s ride from Wellingborough to London was the longest days ride in terms of hours since Jane started doing bike rides five years ago. We barely covered an average speed that Jane would have done in the States. Really rather pathetic. To say we were slow would be to credit the riders. More…
It’s been quite warm outside in Sheffield, but yet again, the Air Conditioning seems to be the cause of many complaints – it feels positively arctic at my desk just now. Thankfully, it’s the end of the week, so we can relax for two days.
Thursday 24th July, Wellingborough to London
about 80 miles
7pm and still on the bikes, somewhere near Borehamwood. I think that says it all.
Mike.
Evenin’ all. PJ here reporting live(ish) from the CSC. I’ve been here for a couple of days, sticking my nose in and generally making a nuisance of myself. In fact, now that I’ve got myself all settled, I think I’ll sit here in the call centre tomorrow as well. (Although with the number of questions I’ve been asked in the last 30 mins I might just change my mind). More…
Wednesday 23rd July, Retford To Wellingborough
90 Miles
It was a slow day today. We started at 9am and finished at about 7.30pm. Unbelievable therefore that we only managed 90 miles. What would Jane have said? I can’t explain why it took so long – perhaps a touch of the mid-ride blues. I managed to fall off for the second day out of three. It was again in a rather pathetic way, by getting my right foot caught in the pedal. It was completely undignified and really rather pointless because we had taken a detour to visit Jane’s Gran’s old farm. More…
After a royal ’sphericals skyward’ by Matasano the other day, Metasploit have finally released an auxiliary module to their framework which exploits the flaw in the DNS protocol*. This is the same flaw that we rolled a fix for (ok, really a workaround, but fixing an entire protocol isn’t something which can be done in a matter of months, let alone weeks or days) recently, but as you already know we’re not like other companies. We have a very quick turnaround on things of this nature, and for other projects in general. No sooner had the flaw been disclosed (without PoC), NetOps were all over it like a swarm of bees around a honeypot.
That’s great for us, of course, but what about larger companies? Having had experience of big corporate, red-tape is often a hindrance to security rather than a help. Sure, the guys on the ground would have been chomping at the bit to roll out the fix, but there’s every chance it’s been held in testing/approval. That being said, considering the nature and severity of the flaw and the potential impact to customers – not to mention any possibility of liability should any of their customers fall victim to a live exploit – their Ops might very well have dodged the red-tape and gone straight in with a fix. If there’s one thing red-tape can’t stop, it’s a boulder hurtling toward you at a hundred miles an hour – and this really was a potentially huge boulder.
So, are you safer here than anywhere else? Potentially, yes. Because we’re a transparent ISP, we let you know what we’re doing to fix the problems we have – often before you even realise we have a problem. Because of our fast turnaround on rollouts, fixes and security updates especially we’re in a somewhat unique position in the ISP market to ensure our customers are as protected as they can be. Sure, we’ve had our problems in the past, but we’ve learned our lessons well, put measures in place to prevent recurrence of past woes, and generally put our house back in order – and then some. We’re in a better place now than we’ve ever been. All in all PlusNet is a really good place to be, and the recent release of the exploit code into the Metasploit framework, for me, reinforces that opinion.
* The exploit is available as an auxiliary module to the Metasploit Framework in the form of a ruby script. Interesting to note, too, that in one of the change reports they used ‘doxpara.com’ (Dan Kaminsky’s domain, the guy who released the information on the flaw) as a default target, but changed it to ‘example.com’. The change was logged with the comment ‘Be nice to Dan’s server 
‘. See, even hackers have a sense of humour 
Crikey. When the weather report was talking about a really hot Wednesday, I was expecting blue skies and sunshine, not a nasty grey, humid and sweltering day. Oh well, at least we have air con!
Our EOD updates follow…. More…
Tuesday 22nd July, Leeds to Retford
51 Miles
It was strange to be at home last night, although the reality was that of washing and sorting out suitcases. There was little time to spend with Steven.
I had decided that as it was Steven’s last day at primary school I wouldn’t set off until he had finished, giving me the opportunity to attend his leaving mass and to collect him from school for one last time. More…
Another find day at PlusNet Towers, and I’ve been busy all day stuck into my work, and suddenly Colin reminds me I agreed to do the end-of-day again today…. Arrrggghhhh!
More…
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