Rescue-Ops before Christmas Eve What is the worst-case scenario right before Christmas during a Corona Lockdown? Let’s leave zombie apocalypses, too little toilet paper or slow internet connections aside for a moment. Right! A broken laptop. Exactly such a call for help came to me this afternoon from my own circle of friends. I was asked if I had a spare notebook available shortly. …Read more

Within just a few days, the German EU Representation warns people about phishing emails. This is the 4th warning regarding data theft since July 2020 by Reinhard Hönighaus, press spokesman and head of the press and media office. Obviously there is an urgent need for action. In his current warning dated 26.11.2020, only two days after the previous one, he identifies T-Online users as targeted by …Read more

Battery Today I will report a brief description of the battery and power management of Mobian on a Pinephone. Reading the battery parameters from the console was already quite special. The usual way with upower was not successful and provided only zero values. Without ACPI the readout only worked with: # cat /sys/class/power_supply/axp20x-battery/uevent My first measurements: At idle with active …Read more

What comes after a privacy violation? Of course further violations. I’ve update my list of violations and infringements because of this Heise Article “Anwenderüberwachung durch Microsofts Office-Software”: Here is the full list (free to copy/use): The collection of user data in a Windows 10 based corporate network cannot be prevented by proportional resources. With 23,000 to …Read more

Screenshots What was missing in the first part the day before yesterday, I will catch up today: Screenshots! This led to the question of how to do this? A hotkey like in iOS (home + on/off switch) is unknown to me on the Pinephone. The classic desktop Linux tools like Gnome Screenshots or Peek are installable but do not work properly. It’s quite banal, they fail due to the fact that I cannot …Read more

Holy Unboxing Welcome to my new blog series and travel report. After more than 12 years with Apple iOS, and before that already 7 years with Microsoft PocketPC devices and before that - we are already in the 90s - with Palm (my PalmV is still alive!) I finally think it’s time to move on and start a new journey. Away from proprietary, closed systems with their wiretapping assistants, the …Read more

The Microsoft cashcow gets scratches. This is not what I write but what the FAZ writes in its today’s article: “The quasi-monopoly of Office gets scratches”. Some might say the FAZ has no expertise in IT. Well aactually this could be correct, because their undisputed circle of competence is the economy. But this should make you even more concerned. According to a representative …Read more

Winter is coming! Winter time has already arrived, and soon the Corona Lockdown aswell. Sitting at home in the warmth with a cup of tea, having a complete overview of the IT is a good feeling. The catchword here is “complete”. I don’t rely on traditional blackbox monitoring solutions but rather on the whitebox solution called Prometheus. Behind Prometheus there is no single …Read more

The third and last part of my little blog series is all about planning and implementation. Inevitably, we come into contact with project management and other underlying factors. I keep my promise from part one and finally show a blueprint for risk assessment. I hope you enjoy the read! As always, the following disclaimer applies: Everything without any claim to completeness and universal …Read more

In the previous webinar on IT risk assessment and information security, participants questioned me during the 15-minute live hacking session: Is this not illegal? We took a closer peek at the servers of an ambulant care unit and two other businesses. I found them by chance from a total of 28 million hosts across Germany using specific search terms. The search lasted just a few seconds and after …Read more