Posts by PRL

London councils probe cyber incident as shared IT systems knocked offline

Shared IT Services should not mean merging the data of multiple Councils

A shared IT Service for multiple Councils should mean combined teams for the service desk functions (incidents and service requests) and for specific service areas (network, security, server, desktop, mobile device management, development and test, project management, change management …),

This should not imply that the data / storage is also all mushed together such that an intrusion in one Council affects all of them.

Presume things should be setup as multi-tenant with horizontal isolation, and that data is only exchanged between Councils where legal, appropriate and authorised.

But perhaps the { service desk | database | communications } system within the IT service is what's affected.

Vietnam plans to convert all its networks to IPv6

Re: Linux Users Might Be Interested.......

btw the fix was released as an update to linux-firmware package on 8th March 2024.

Mentioning old fixed bugs as if current issue is old hat of tropes, and irrelevant to the article anyway that was not about IP multicast.

IPv6 may already be irrelevant – but so is moving off IPv4, argues APNIC's chief scientist

Re: phone numbers are easy

Taking file (NAS) and printing as examples, if you want to number your server or printer with a stable shorter address you already can.

fdff::a

would be a perfectly valid ULA if you want to have a LAN-only network prefix that does not need to change if you change ISPs.

(before anyone asks, yes in a large organisation your network operations team should remind you they follow guidance to generate a more unique /48 for the ULA to avoid conflicts if multiple organisations merge but I am talking about the self-contained and SOHO scenario).

And yes you can have your DHCPv6 service reserve fixed IPs for known systems whether or not you wanted to try to enter such an IP into a printer's control panel.

Your router may already provide ULAs alongside the globally routable addresses derived from a delegation from your ISP.

(Mine does and it is even a 3-way option of ULA never, always or enable only if ISP is down).

The link-local (fe80:whatever) addresses shown earlier are examples that you'd not normally use to reach operational systems and their closest equivalent IPv4 is 169.254.*

You'll see them auto-generated for each interface but never actually have to type those into a printer for example.

In addition to DNS, many LAN systems already use mDNS for discovery on the same network and you can replace the discovered IP with the friendly-name-of-device.local if supported to abstract from relying on a fixed IP.

UK.gov is launching an anti-Facebook encryption push. Don't think of the children: Think of the nuances and edge cases instead

End-to-End

The way the terminology is used is a bit rubbish - I mean all encryption in transit has 2 ends and all VPN tunnels or transports have 2+ endpoints.

The only distinction is whether both ends are on users own devices or one end is controlled by a [social media] company.

Whenever governments or TLAs talk about this it always comes across as wanting all the benefits of VPNs for themselves just not in the hands of civilians.

It's silly as the you can demonstrate methods purely on paper so they ultimately arrive at defending a position where you say a particular branch or application of maths is not allowed, or at least "when you do this type of maths on a computer you have to let us see all your working on demand or else it's unlawful".

Besides I thought the various authorities has already decided they would have legally backed rights to gain access to data on a device after it's already decrypted and collect it in the cleartext there rather than trying to access it en-route.

NASA moon-bomb probe strikes rich seam of fruitcake

Re: What's the square root of -100?

±10i (where i² is defined as -1)

IBM UK facing 'backlash' over pension snuffing

Employee contributions?

If the employees have been paying contributions and IBM unilaterally revoke the final salary pension - I think IBM should be obliged to offer (as a minimum) a full refund of all contributions to date (less tax, but with compound interest added).

An employee's contributions are part of pay so if the scheme was wound up I'd want them back, or the benefits accrued to date (whichever is greater).

If as is usual, the IBM-provided schemes (past and future) are optional, the employees should be free to move their contributions [past and future] to a pension / savings / investment of their choice.