Obtuse Networking

editorial

Password sensibilities...

Finally some password sense! NIST has released some updates for password verifiers (SP 800-63B). While this isn't everyones cup of tea, it is nice when things like this come out to with discussions around security best practices.

cwm

Notes on DPI...

Some quick notes on setting DPI for High Density Displays and X11.

openbsd

HA @ Home

At work I had build a global, highly redundant, scalable network that always provided best experience no matter what was thrown at it. At home... well, you've heard of the cobblers children?

OpenBGPD + RTBH = dynamic PF rules

What if you could dynamically update PF tables across all your hosts? Here is one way you can...

"IT Security Is Broken?"

Great interview between Ethan Banks and Mick Douglas discussion some of the failures in approach to security in business protection.

trust

Thoughts about Trust on the Internet

Trust me... trust you... how... why?

password

Picking a "good enough" password

As humans we are not good at memorizing lots of random letters, number, digits and symbols. We can remember a very select few.

openbsd

BYOES: Part 2 - Reading Mail

Setting up an IMAP server using Dovecot on OpenBSD

openbsd

BYOES: Build Your Own Email Server on OpenBSD

One of the big lie's of the Internet is that "email is hard and you shouldn't do it yourself".

openbsd

Giving packets a label

One of the things I like about OpenBSD is that it has so many ways to communicate with other systems. Today I explore building an MPLS network using OpenBSD.

enterprise

Enterprise Network Security... are we doing it right?

Are we approaching Enterprise Network Security correctly?

openbsd

OpenBSD + VMD + autoinstall

OpenBSD comes with a very simple, very nice hypervisor called vmd(8).  This hypervisor is not  a full featured as others, but it does a reasonable job of running VMs and makes it really convenient to  spin-up a virtual environment for testing configurations.  There are other articles on setting up

LDAP

OpenBSD + LDAP

You have a bunch of user accounts that you want to keep synchronized across multiple systems and services. How would you do that?

privacy

The thing to understand is that there are no passwords...

Woot! No more passwords... that's gotta be a good thing... right! Maybe, maybe not.

privacy

Is privacy making you less secure?

"If a user has chosen to manually enable DoH, the signal from the network will be ignored and the user’s preference will be honored." Crap!

openbsd

DNS64 + NAT64 on OpenBSD

What do you do when your machines only communicate on IPv6 and you need to connect to an IPv4 only service? Translate.

ransomware

Three steps to stop ransomware in the business

Can ransomware be stopped? Probably not. But there are some things that can be done to make a business (your business) less of a target.

openbsd

OpenBSD + Wireguard

Is Wireguard just another way to secure communications? Maybe... but let's take a look.

From hand crafting to mass production

In the beginning we created configs by hand. Lovingly tuned and refined them until they were doing exactly "the right thing"...

openbsd

OpenBSD + GRE + IPSec

Setting up GRE+IPSec is easy... right?!

network

Tools of the trade... expanding your toolbox

Beginning any activity we need to take stock of what tools we have at our disposal and what ones we are missing...

network

Network Automation... a brave new world?

Network as code. Intent based networking. Network automation. Other than filling our your Buzzword Bingo card, what does this really mean? How can I use this? Is this another fad?

openbsd

Quest for a Window Manager

To be frank, I was never really in love with the mainstream window managers.

enterprise

Enterprise LAN segmentation that works...

If you've been around the enterprise security environment for any length of time, or even if you've just accidentally brushed up against someone who knows someone in the security world, you heard that you must segment everything! Flat networks are bad! Segment, segment, segment!

home

Securing Home Network

Securing Home Network while maintaining the Spouse Approval Factor