Certificate Transparency and unauthorized certificates

Posted on 2017-03-06 by Gerhard

I own a domain which was bought a few months back which is managed by CloudFlare’s service in DNS-only mode. As I intended to only use CloudFlare’s DNS service, I disabled every option except the DNS related features. You can imagin the surprise to see certificates issued for my domain without my knowledge. Continue reading →

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How to get scrollbar arrows in Linux Mint 17

Posted on 2017-02-13 by Gerhard

Linux Mint is missing the scrollbar arrow buttons at the end of the scrollbars. There are situations in which those buttons can be very useful. This how-to will explain how to get them back. Sadly I could not find any … Continue reading →

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Verifying SSH configuration with a scan

Posted on 2017-01-23 by Gerhard

Managing a number of Linux servers and keeping them secure can be a challenge. Certain tools can make the life of an admin a lot easier. To ensure an ssh daemon complies with a desired security configuration the admin can use a scanner … Continue reading →

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Debug SSH Connection issue in key exchange

Posted on 2017-01-02 by Gerhard

Securing a server means hardening the SSH server settings, but doing so can also cause issues with ssh clients. Finding the cipher or algorithm causing a failled connection can be tricky. Depending on the client used, the error message might be very … Continue reading →

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Automount a luks encrypted volume on system start

Posted on 2016-12-12 by Gerhard

Linux supports encrypted volumes with luks. When a luks encrypted volume is set up during installation to be booted from, the volume is already configured and set up. When an encrypted volume is set up afterwards, the volume remains locked until … Continue reading →

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Review: The perfect duo – powerbank and solar charger

Posted on 2016-11-21 by Gerhard

Do you live in a sunny country? Want to use the sun’s energy to charge your mobile devices? This duo of a solar charger and a USB powerbank will let you harvest the sun and charge your devices whenever you … Continue reading →

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Harden SSH server settings

Posted on 2016-10-31 by Gerhard

Many Linux Administrators use ssh on a daily basis. Many of the ssh servers are in their default configuration. Not changing the default configuration puts the security of the server at risk. That is why it is important to follow a few … Continue reading →

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Manage photo EXIF data via terminal

Posted on 2016-10-10 by Gerhard

Additional to the GUI tools that are available to manage EXIF information in photos, there are also command line tools that can do this as well. Command line utilities allow you to script the processing of photos. The following shows … Continue reading →

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Get vim to paste content without modification

Posted on 2016-09-19 by Gerhard

When content is pasted into vim, it tries to automatically detect and re-indent the content. This works most of the time but sometimes it does not, and that can be annoying, but vim would not be so popular if there wasn’t … Continue reading →

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Change Date and Time format for LinuxMint panel applet

Posted on 2016-08-29 by Gerhard

Modern Linux distributions like LinuxMint provide a nice GUI which is highly configurable. There are so many options and possibilities that most users new to it cannot find where things are configured. Finding the right options means taking some time to … Continue reading →

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