Cambridge Computer Support

20/05/2026

I was asked for a precis of the security work we do today. I thought I'd post my answer here:
1. Bring in support staff for some situations
2. Educate and support existing staff on procedure in the moment and good practice going forward
3. Work in highly sensitive most secure environments
4. Design systems for highly sensitive most secure environments
5. Prioritise the most effective investment in cyber security. I wrote this a few years ago. It’s still bang on the money https://cambridge-computer.com/cyber-security/ Scroll down or click the red “Find out more” button
6. Lots of simple stuff like disinfecting networks, securing devices and building resilience
7. I’ve read the actual ISO27001 /2 documents instead of joining to a webinar or reading a book about them
8. Prepare security policy or guideline documents and advise on computer use related clauses in employment contracts et al
9. Correct other cyber security experts when they get it wrong …

Mitigating the Cyber Security Threat

04/05/2026

CVE-2026-31431 Kernel vulnerability
Update your devices. NAS, routers, WiFi APs, anything IoT and your Linux machines of course

01/04/2026

Imunify360 replaces PHP based scan engine with new Rust based engine in a standard update. Wildcard paths no longer supported in case you we're wondering while your weekly scan just failed! This has brought Rust closer to the mission critical aspects of our systems helping to improve performance and reliability but a message to all "big stack" suppliers - give us a heads up before you deprecate something massive like a wildcard!

30/03/2026

In his cyber security podcast https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/171/ Jack Rhysider and guest tell the story of how fake artists and music streams are being manipulated to launder money and deliver it to any location in the world. That's right. Spotify is a money laundering agent. This was happening 15 years ago when the industry insider estimated only 15% of streamed music was genuine and not stolen and/or submitted by a bot. 15% genuine - NOT 15% dodgy. Today, The deep view https://thedeepview.co says Reddit claims they are removing 100K bots daily. We say good luck to them. Nuff internet crime already!

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21/01/2026

Generally we like Google. But their anti-spam policies have become intolerable. Anyone who needs an email service for two or more mailboxes that actually receives their customer's, family or friend's messages please contact us here [email protected]

04/11/2025

Hello Google. Perhaps you can explain why sending an identical email from the AWS infrastructure is received in a Gmail box but not when sent from the Microsoft cloud. MS emails are bouncing and even adding a MS mail user address as a trusted sender to a Gmail account doesn't stop it. Are we fishing for some of Microsoft's mail business pie?

15/09/2025

You are not a target. Your broadband connection and your computer behind it are targets. Criminals do not know if you have money or not. They will still attack to ransom your computer and to use your broadband connection to attack someone else. In the time it has taken me to type this there have been millions of cyber attacks in the UK. Fortunately the massive majority have failed. Windows 10 stops receiving security updates in two months yesterday. Please don't make it easy for the bad guys. Do not turn on a Windows 10 computer that can connect to the internet after 14th October 2025

20/07/2025

Recent research testing 14 large language models found that complex questions produced up to six times more carbon dioxide emissions than simple ones, while "smarter" models with more reasoning abilities produced up to 50 times more emissions than simpler systems to answer the same question.
Your tenth prompt in a long conversation thread may carry 10 to 100 times the computational cost of your first one. Researchers estimate that a ChatGPT query consumes about five times more electricity than a simple web search, while one query uses approximately as much electricity as could light one light bulb for about 20 minutes.

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/12/g-s1-9545/ai-brings-soaring-emissions-for-google-and-microsoft-a-major-contributor-to-climate-change

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16/07/2025

Once in a while someone with a gift explains. Cisco have done a grand job here. Everyone should read this.

Social engineering attack isn't a cyber attack. It is when bad actors gain the trust of their targets, so they lower their guard and give up sensitive information.

03/07/2025

Windows 11 upgrades still keeping us busy. We've enjoyed navigating changes to BIOS like enabling TPM & UEFI boot and command line tools to change old MBR partitions to GPT while noticing that the Windows 11 setup exe can make some of these changes automatically while Windows 11 upgrade using Microsoft Update absolutely won't. I expect this is to reduce the number of upgrades that leave the machine unbootable!