Blog

Soccer ticketing 2010

The counter at the top of the page shows that there are 18 days (and 9 hours) to go before kick-off to the world cup. Have all the tickets sold out? Well, currently, there are signs that some matches are currently unavailable, but in the last 30 minutes, the selection screen has dropped down – from all matches, to just the first 14, to just the opening match in Johannesburg – which ha ...

Security Summit 2010 Wrap-Up

So the Security Summit 2010 has come to an end. Featuring speakers such as Moxie Marlinspike, Joe Grand and Jeremiah Grossman (again), it’s a pity to say that there wasn’t much new that was presented. With repeated concerns about input- and output-validation, as the OWASP Top 10 for 2010 highlight and were used as a repeated example, and a call for a holistic approach to a companyR ...

Security Summit 2010

So, it’s that time of the year again – Security Summit 2010 in Sandton, Johannesburg. Items on the agenda include: The business of security – Threat horizon 2010 and beyond, legislation (PPI), risk, compliance, standards (PCI), security metrics, social networking, web application security, web services, web 2.0 and more. Technical/operational security – Top 10 hacks, botnets, trojans, ...

SEACOM link was down again, stable now

“SEACOM’s backhaul service provider link is down from Mtunzini to Johannesburg due to an unusual failure on both primary and secondary routes due to circumstances beyond our control. SEACOM is in the process of reprovisioning customers onto a tertiary route.” is what SEACOM announced today. Some ISPs confirmed that SEACOM connectivity was restored at around 15:24 SAST, though li ...

Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (10.04) LTS is out

They’ve passed their RC status and have moved into full Long-Term Release for Ubuntu Lucid Lynx — local mirrors are still showing the RC version, but it’s out! What’s new? F-Spot replaces the GIMP PiTiVi video editor added GNOME 2.30 New themes: Ambiance and Radiance New wallpaper Linux kernel 2.6.32 New nVidia hardware driver Gwibber social media application Faster boot t ...

SEACOM cable issue resolved?

The latest notification received from SEA-ME-WE 4 indicates that the repair work on the SEA-ME-WE 4 cable is expected to be completed by 22.00 (UTC) on 28 April 2010. That’s the update from SEACOM. MTN Business gives similar information. An hour ago, the link was marked as back up – the stability of the link will be shown by how fast / how slow the access on the web via the SEACOM cab ...

Update on slow Internet – South Africa – due to SEACOM maintenance

An update from Afrihost which echos what’s happening to IS-resellers of DSL bandwidth in South Africa: IS have removed ADSL users from emergency SAT3 backup and thus you will not be able to access international websites via the normal channels. Proxying is touted here to be the solution. Full background to the story of Seacom’s emergency maintenance is here: SEACOM maintenance extende ...

SEACOM maintenance extended until 30 April – South African Internet slow

MTN Business (in their NOC notices) have confirmed what SEACOM had alluded to – the maintenance windows (and hence the high latency and traffic redirection via the SAT3 cable rather than the SEACOM link) has been extended until 30 April 2010. SEACOM in their notice on 26 April: The ongoing repair work is affecting several cable systems and has impacted negatively on the overall Internet con ...