CyberSecurity

So, to do most of this playing about, I need a virtualisation environment, and VMware is the easiest, simplest and, at the moment, cheapest. VMWare released their server virtualisation tool to “free"dom recently, and the newest version (2.0) is currently sitting in beta. I have tried it out before but it didnt feel as solid as the older versions so I’m sticking with the oldskool 1.0.3 The Setup itself is just a simple “next, next, finish” with a free registration key provided. I recommend also downloading and installing the client console package; this is handy both for administring and viewing the VM’s in situ, but also to administer remote installations. ...

After 20+ years with Ulster Bank (All hail Henry Hippo), and with countless computer, customer service, overdraft, and credit card problems, I’m jumping ship to Santander on the advice of my friends, colleagues and family. It hasn’t gone so well. Credit Background I’ve been a good boy, when it comes to finance. No loans other than Student No Car No Mortgage No Dependants Reasonable ‘Disposable income’ (even if that income is usually ‘disposed’ in either bars and restaurants or gadgets) Been employed in one form or another since I was 15 A few slip ups on the credit card but always paid back within the next month A few slips over the overdrafts an undergrad, but who didn’t? Currently well out of my overdraft So I called in last week, asked what paperwork I’d need to move my account, was given great assistance and told ‘We’ve got you an appointment next week and we can sort it all out’ ...

Update: I got asked to do a simplified version of this post for the University of Liverpool, it lives here (Backup) I’m technically in a third year of a PhD, and most of the time, when someone asks me what it is I’m actually doing, I fluff it and say something about “autonomous submarines” or “collaborative autonomy” or “Emergent properties of communities” or something similarly vague. In the spirit of setting the record straight in a less-academic way, I thought it’d be worth while to edit a presentation I recently made to the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence last month in Stanford and make it a little more digestible. ...

There’s several very valid tutorials and guides around about getting Ubuntu, Debian and Mint to automatically update and upgrade, but they don’t do much explaining/checking. This is a short post filling in the gaps I observed. Get the package sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades -y Enable the package scheduler File Being Messed With: /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades Log File Being Watched: /var/log/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrades.log I’ve got no idea why this isn’t automatic; possibly that in other environments, you only want security level upgrades to core system components rather than updating all regular applications. (Not doing this left me scratching my head for a while wondering why the logs kept saying No packages found that can be upgraded unattended when apt was telling me something completely different. Anyway, put the following into a new file named above. ...

This is an approximate transcript from my July 2018 talk at Digital DNA’s AI NI Community Panel on wether the use of AI in defence and surveillence was inherently evil Yes, It’s been sitting in my drafts folder for months because I completly forgot about it, sorrynotsorry Hello folks, I’m Andrew Bolster, most everyone calls me Bolster. And nobody calls me Doctor. I’m a Data Scientist at Alert Logic, a cyber security firm based Texas but with a research office in Weavers Court where we monitor, analyse and identify malicious and suspicious internet activity, protecting thousands of companies with advanced sequence and pattern matching sensors deployed across the world. ...