Open Source - Island in the Net

FreshRSS

Posted on 29th October 201929th October 2019 by Khürt Williams

It took longer than I expected, but I have a self-hosted installation of FreshRSS which I can access via Reeder on macOS, iPad, iOS and the web. This install has been on my to-do for a while. If FreshRSS performs well on my server, I may cancel my Feedbin subscription.

Large companies aren’t good homes for beloved services

Posted on 14th February 201914th February 2019 by Khürt Williams

Large companies aren’t good homes for beloved services by an author (Colin Devroe)

Over the last year I’ve moved my use of platforms, services, or products to things I can control long term or are open source. Examples include my photo management process no longer being reliant on the cloud, my content all being on my own domain, and my site being on my own infrastructure. I still have more work to do but I want to future proof as much of the stuff I care about as I can.

Good for you, Colin. Several years ago, I started the process of disengaging and migrating from a dependence on large online service because I valued my privacy and freedom. Glad to see that some people are finally catching on.

CipherScan

Posted on 9th January 201910th January 2019 by Khürt Williams

Using cipherscan to test the TLS certificate configuration of my web server. Cipherscan tests the ordering of the SSL/TLS cyphers on a given target, for all major versions of SSL and TLS. It also extracts some certificates information, TLS options, OCSP stapling and more. Cipherscan is a wrapper above the OpenSSL s_client command line. Cipherscan…

Setting Up an Open Source Security Lab with Ubuntu

Posted on 7th April 20157th March 2018 by Khürt Williams

[exif id="36254"] Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash It's been a while since I had dedicated Linux server in my home. In the early days of my career, I maintained a small "data centre" in my basement. It included BSD based network storage via FreeNAS, a LAMP installation, a Linux-based firewall and directory server, and…

Starting a Security Tools Lab at Home

Posted on 13th March 201513th June 2017 by Khürt Williams

[exif id="17435"] I recently realised that although I have worked in the information security space for almost 13 years, the last few years I have done less “hands on” work. When my last full-time employer made the switch to a full outsourced IT stack there was less of a need for the security analyst to…