You might notice that we’ve now got a lock in the address bar when you visit. Our site is now protected by LetsEncrypt.org. LetsEncrypt offers free, 3-month SSL certificates, provided that your DNS host supports CAA records. I’ll do a full write-up on how to install and use certbot to automate your SSL certificate requests and installation soon.

Good read: Mark Russinovich lays it out

On this day in 1989, British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee presented to CERN management a proposal for a “universal linked information system” called Mesh, meant to help staff at the Swiss research center coordinate their work. Today, what we now know as the World Wide Web turns 25. Berners-Lee gave several interviews for the occasion. Looking back on his creation, he told CNet he’s glad the Web has developed as a “non-national” entity but deplores that most people on the Web still stick to their own cultures and their own ways, using the technology to reinforce their biases rather than open their world:

“I’d like it if developers on the Web could tackle the question of how to make Web sites that actually make us more friendly to people we don’t know so well,” he said.

I’m almost *giggling* while I post this..
FREE ATARI!!!
THANK YOU, Archive!!

The general gist of the message is that this attack will be in retaliation for war crimes committed by the USA against Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
The attack is supposedly to “wipe the US government off the cyber map” and is being organized from a nation (according to Wikipedia) known for lots of not-so-good stuff:

## From Wikipedia ##
The government of Mauritania was overthrown on 6 August 2008, in a military coup d’etat led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. On 16 April 2009, General Aziz resigned from the military to run for president in the 19 July elections, which he won. In Mauritania about 20% of the population live on less than US$1.25 per day. Slavery in Mauritania has been called a major human rights issue as well as female genital mutilation, child labor, and human trafficking.
##

According to the FBI, Open Source reporting claims that their previous attempt to “wipe Israel off the cyber map” was a total failure, with little to no impact.

A new, wild Nancy beat her husband hard.
ADDRESS – Get IP address 172.32.45.36 = 10101100.00100000.00101101.00100100
NETMASK – Get subnet mask 255.255.248.0 = 11111111.11111111.11111000.00000000 = /21
WILDCARD – Find wildcard mask/bits = 00000000.00000000.00000111.11111111 = 0.0.7.255 (11 bits)
NETWORK – Drop wildcard mask from IP address = 10101100.00100000.00101000.00000000 = 172.32.40.0
BROADCST – Add wildcard to the IP address = 10101100.00100000.00101111.11111111 = 172.32.47.255
HOSTMIN – Drop the wildcard mask, and add 1 = 10101100.00100000.00101000.00000001 = 172.32.40.1
HOSTMAX – Add the wildcard mask, minus 1 = 10101100.00100000.00101111.11111110 = 172.32.47.254
HOSTS/NET – 2*(WILDCARD_BITS)-2 = 2(11)-2 = 2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2 = 2048-2 = 2046
Find hosts per net using the formula 2 to the power of the bits in the wildcard mask, minus 2.

32-bit IPv4 Network Address
Octet1 Octet2 Octet3 Octet4
128|64|32|16|8|4|2|1.128|64|32|16|8|4|2|1.128|64|32|16|8|4|2|1.128|64|32|16|8|4|2|1
11111111 . 11111111 . 11111000 . 00000000 = 255.255.248.0
10101100 . 00100000 . 00101101 . 00100100 = 172.32.45.36

And I’m sorry, but no. I can’t make it ANY simpler than that. ;)

Have you ever deleted the old administrative group, before moving your public folders?
(me too) To recreate the Folder Hierarchies, and get your Offline Address Book publishing again, fire up ADSIedit.msc, and keep reading.

Create the “Folder Hierarchies” object under the Exchange Administrative Group
1. Right click on Exchange Administrative Group
2. Select New Object
3. Select msExchPublicFolderTreeContainer for the class and click Next
4. Enter the following for the value: Folder Hierarchies, click Next
5. Click Finish

Create the Public Folder Tree Object
1. Right click CN=Folder Hierarchies -> New Object
2. Selected msExchPFTree for the class
3. For the value we entered, “Public Folders” and clicked next
4. Click on the “More Attributes” button, selected msExchPFTreeType and set the
value to 1. Note: This is very important that this value is set to a value of 1 as
this tells Exchange that this is a MAPI Tree
5. Click Ok and then finish

Assign the pwner of the public folders:
1. Get the properties of the newly created “Public Folders” Tree object in ADSIEdit.
2. Copy the distinguishedname value to the clipboard.
3. Navigate to the Storage group that contains the Public Folder Store for this
server and get properties of the server.
4. Locate the msExchOwningPFTree attribute and paste in the value that was copied
to the clipboard in step 2. Click OK.
5. Restart the Information Store Service.

Recently, Cryptednets.org suffered a catastrophic failure of a drive array during an electrical storm.
This is normally not a big deal, (I *do* rip backups every now and again) but it died badly, and slowly.
And, during the throes of its demise, corrupted something like 30gb of MySQL databases.
Logs have been manually replayed, and the entire server is now running virtually. Seemingly much faster now, too.
At least this way, the lightning can’t kill hardware that doesn’t actually exist, right?

;)

## Snip from Wikipedia
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, expressed opposition to the bill stating, [It] is threatening the rights of people in America, and effectively rights everywhere, because what happens in America tends to affect people all over the world. Even though the Sopa and Pipa acts were stopped by huge public outcry, it’s staggering how quickly the US government has come back with a new, different, threat to the rights of its citizens.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Intelligence_Sharing_and_Protection_Act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Take_action

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead