The 3rd minor update to ScientificLinux 6 (which is based on RHEL6) is now ready for deployment to the Informatics SL6 DICE office machines. A minor update like this provides us with the opportunity to update important software and fix any bugs which are not security issues (we apply security updates as soon as they […]

Some users have been noting errors “Another device on the network is using your computer’s IP address” and our network monitoring has detected a number of flip-flops involving Apple kit trying to use the same IP address. The culprit seems to be Apple’s ‘Internet Sharing’ software which causes a machine to use addresses which have […]

The blogs currently available on blog.inf – which has been not-a-service since its inception in 2009 – have moved to a new host, running the latest version of WordPress. This is now a supported service. The upgrade and transfer process has obviously preserved all blog posts, comments, and uploaded files. However, there are probably a […]

New versions of network switch firmware often bring additional facilities along with bug-fixes.  We have recently been evaluating some security and robustness enhancements, with a view to rolling them out across the Informatics network.  In particular: DHCP protection, which will prevent rogue machines purporting to be DHCP servers on the self-managed subnets.  We occasionally see […]

In order to improve the security of the DICE computing infrastructure we have decided to disable support for the SSH version 1 protocol. This is a very old protocol which is now considered to be obsolete. Due to a number of design flaws it is known to be insecure and is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks. […]

This article describes Prometheus, the account management system developed within Informatics (note that the choice of name comes from this Prometheus, and predates the recent film). More accurately, Prometheus could be described as an entity management system, as it manages machine details (and other things), as well as people. This article will only discuss the […]

As many users will have noticed, the Informatics SSH server ‘dunlin’ was unavailable from the morning of Thursday 26th July until the afternoon of Tuesday 31st July. This was because the root account on the system was compromised and an attempt was made to insert a rootkit into the kernel. The configuration of this system […]

The question has been raised recently of how best to back Mac computers in use within the School. Macs running a reasonably modern version of MacOS come with Time Machine which allows the Mac owner to easily back up and restore from an external disk and we would suggest that this should be the first […]

Keen observers of University affairs will already be aware that the University has recently changed its supplier of MFDs (a MFD (Multi Function Device) is what used to be called, in simpler times, a photocopier with a number of additional functions such as printing, scanning and faxing). As a result, Canon and OCE photocopiers in […]

The Mac is not immune to viruses, Trojans, backdoors, adware, spyware and other unwanted applications. In reality, the Mac OS, its included applications, and third-party applications have and will continue to have security issues that can allow some form of attack. Anti-virus programs don’t just provide protection against known viruses; they also include anti-phishing, anti-adware, […]