ETC Blog, The Tech Resource
VPN’s and how They Actually Work
A VPN is not enough to secure your computer. All a VPN does is create an encrypted connection between your computer and a remote network...that's it. Two of the biggest breaches in the past decade were facilitated by the presence of an active VPN connection. The...
Networking Group Presentation Video
My younger daughter decided to make a video of this. At a recent mixer event I received a couple of requests for a video link if there was one. I uploaded it and have the link below. If you have any questions or you wish to have ETC Maryland evaluate your...
Windows ipv6 default configuration allows network takeover
Now this is an interesting one. Windows ipv6 has a default configuration that allows for network takeover. An excerpt is below: A dormant IPv6 feature is a backdoor for Windows attackers, security researchers warn. Enabled by default, if unused and left unchecked,...
Be careful about doing a mass rollout of any ai before you do your research
While this story is about Microsoft copilot, many AI implementations have security issues that could be serious, especially given the fact that these issues go unreported to the clients of said AI products. This example from Microsoft is just the highest profile I...
Dell Laptop security vulnerability can lead to system takeover
From the Bleeping Computer Article: ControlVault3 firmware vulnerabilities impacting over 100 Dell laptop models can allow attackers to bypass Windows login and install malware that persists across system reinstalls. Dell ControlVault is a hardware-based security...
When automation fails..backup, backup, backup it will save your business as it did mine
I got a notification from my primary web server that it was having some issues. When i logged in and looked at the logs and the system behavior...I knew something was amiss. I decided to restore the system from my first level, backups which are provided by the...
Edge, Chrome, and Firefox are out. Brave is where I am and recommend
I have been seeing an increase in sites no longer working with Chrome for some reason. Sites simply refuse to load, sometimes they simply time out, sometimes the browser just freezes and that's it. At one point i had standardized on Firefox. At the time of that...
Windows recall on windows 11 “AI” pc’s was and continues to be a security and privacy nightmare
In 2024 Microsoft rolled out a feature it called Recall. This feature takes a screenshot every couple of seconds and storing it in a database on your pc. The issues at first release were glaring, no encryption, no protection from other users accessing the data, no...
When your cloud goes poof.
Dropbox has lost client data permanently, Google drive has as well, now it's Amazon's turn. Amazon deleted a person's 10 year old account...and there was no backup. What most folks do not understand is that most times your service is best effort. The provider makes...
Some Basics To Keep Yourself From Scams
I had the pleasure of being a guest speaker on the Be The Hummingbird podcast. Laura is a certified financial planner out of Walkersville, MD. We talked about some real basic steps you can take to protect yourself...and not simply trusting in technology to protect...
ETC Maryland Aid Gaming Forums With New Virtual Server
Christian Gamers Alliance I have been affiliated with this group for a long time over the years. It's run by one man on his own and survives by the grace of the community. I got called back in after a hiatus as the previous hoster went offline in terms of...
Firefox is not about protecting your privacy any longer
I have been looking deeper into Mozilla lately and not liking what i am finding. For the past few months I have been using Brave since Brave has privacy as it's primary focus. It's not perfect and there are some tweaks to be made to make it even better, however it...
One of Many Reasons I Often go Against Microsoft Recommendations
With a recent security update Microsoft a folder called Inetpub. This folder is normally for the Microsoft Internet Information Services web server. I immediately thought this was a bad idea and i went about removing said folder on all of my office systems. ...
Maryland Waves Goodbye to Businesses
Maryland has passed the sales tax on IT services. Of course, they are not thinking that IT is easily moved out of state. Every facet of my business is impacted by this. It is not "only" a 3 percent tax. There are additional compliance costs as well. I am going to...
Make Sure Your Camras Are segmented Away From Your Data Shares
Many cameras require open ports for remote access.and also run outdated operating systems that are ripe for takeover. This article points out this attack leveraged Linux...Linux itself isn't the issue, the lack of security updates AND the fact the cameras required...
Two BSD projects start
PFSense is becoming closed source as announced by Netgate. IXSystems has take TrueNAS to Linux with Scale away from its BSD roots. While OPNSense is a BSD based firewall and often completes with PFSense they are based in Europe and do nto have 24 hour tech support. ...
JerryRigEverything Shows the Main Reasons I do not Recommend the S25 Ultra for Most Users
Earlier I made this post about my initial thoughts on t he s25 series of phones but most pointedly the S25 Ultra. After seeing JerryRigEverything's video about the even greater downgrades given to the S25 if you have a S Series that's the s23 or the S24 I can see no...
My Linux Journey
For the first 10 years of my hosting service I have used Ubuntu Server LTS. Ubuntu has become quite bloated and the amount of time I spent turning off cruft in the background has gotten to be on par with Windows. With RedHat now being totally a paid for product that...
ETC Maryland Enhances Web Hosting Offerings
ETC Maryland would like to announce a further expansion of our hosting products. With our new datacenter partners, new opportunities have presented themselves and we would like to pass these opportunities to the general public. We would like to announce the...
My Thoughts on the S25 Series.
In summary..if you have a Pixel 8 Pro or Samsung S24 Ultra, The S25 series and Pixel 9 are not compelling upgrades. If you have a phone that's more than two years old then upgrading might be a good idea. However, the Pixel 8 Pro and the Samsung S24 series will be a...
ETC Maryland Announces New Hosting Services and Pricing
With our new datacenter partners ETC Maryland can now announce new hosting services for sites that either have high traffic needs or hosting without the limitations of shared hosting. The two new Services are virtual Private Servers. Two types of VPS servers are...
If you want reduced ads and increased security, the game is over for Google Chrome
https://mashable.com/article/google-chrome-killing-ad-blocker-ublock-origin Google I said they're going to in support and they're specifically targeting you block origin. That's mainly because you block origin is excellent at blocking ads including ones embedded in...
Netgate’s panicked response to it’s attempt to be nice leads to chaos..finally a reasonable resolution.
First Netgate announced their move away from PSense free(known as CE). This resulted in outcry but at least they announced their intentions. Recently, Netgate announced the termination of the free homelab PFSense plus license with no option to keep it running. ...
Important Service Priding Announcement
Avast has informed me a significant price increase starting January 1, 2024. As of this date ETC Maryland's managed anti-malware by Avast will increase to $50/machine per year. If you know someone who wants or needs managed anti-malware have them contact me before...
The Latest on the LastPass Breech. it’s Much Worse Than Many Realize
There's tons of stories about the LastPass breech and most of them downlplay things saying your data is encrypted so the vaults getting stolen is not a big deal. Well that's not true at all. I do not know if folks are purposefully downlplaying or they really do not...