Is my email address leaked?

A recent alert released at the end of August by the Australian Government's Stay Smart Online reported 12.5 million Australian email accounts were leaked online. The email addresses of 711 million people have been published online, and include those of 12.5 million Australians.

The personal data has been dumped on a server called Onliner Spambot, which since 2016 has been used to spread malware to steal banking details, and infect people’s computers so they send out viruses and spam (unwanted emails).

The full report can be read here. The article on this site also suggest necessary steps that can be taken should one find out if there email address has been leaked.

How to find out if your email is leaked
The report also suggested that if you want to find out whether your email has been leaked or not you can check out this site HAVEIBEENPAWNED.

Since I use several email addresses I was keen to find out. I have three different GMAIL accounts so I fed each of the address one by one into the Pawned site.

I was surprised to find out that one of my gmail address was pawned on 1 breached site.

The breached site happened to be Edmodo (an education platform) which was hacked in May 2017 resulting in the exposure of 77 million records comprised of over 43 million unique customer email address.

I had to change my password immediately.

It appears LinkedIn is among the sites who's security has been compromised.

What do I do after I find that my email is leaked?
 This same report lists some very important steps that need to be taken should your email happen to be leaked, ways to protect yourself and what to do if your identity is stolen.

Restoration: When does it begin?

The following is a sermon I prepared to share with the United Church Madang Congregation on Sunday 27th August, 2017.  

Sermon: “Restoration: When does it begin?”

By Picky Airi

Bible Reading:

·         OT Ruth 1:1-22

·         NT Titus 3:4-7

What is restoration?

(Merriam-Webster dictionary):  an act of restoring or the condition of being restored: such as:  a bringing back to a former position or condition.

Restoration is required only when something has left its former position/condition and has gone into a state where it was not supposed to be (and this could be due to several factors).

Let us look at the story of Ruth in Ruth 1:1-22

Setting of story

(Ruth 1:1) It is interesting to note that the story about Ruth happened at a time when the Judges ruled. There was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Jud 21:25) It could be interpreted from this verse in the light of the Book of Judges which describes a morally corrupt period, that the writer of Ruth is painting a dark backdrop against which Ruth’s model character and actions will shine even more brightly. Or that the grace of God still abounds his people despite all their wicked actions and that he is calling for us to re-assess our own lives.

WHO launches OpenWHO - a new medical e-learning platform

WHO launches a new e-learning platform, OpenWHO, with video courses on epidemics, pandemics and health emergencies. The courses are free and accessible to anyone wishing to register.

OpenWHO transforms complex scientific knowledge into easy-to-understand introductory video lessons, using a smaller bandwidth so that people in any country can access them. Offline versions are available for IOS and Android devices.

Access OpenWHO courses

Cisco Packet Tracer as a teaching and learning tool for computer networks in DWU

I recently published an article co-authored with Dr. Peter Anderson in the DWU Journal on Cisco Packet Tracer as a teaching and learning tool in DWU. This paper was basically a reflection on my teaching experiences with Packet tracer for the networking courses.

Here is the introduction.

Computer networks have become a fundamental tool of today's corporate environment. “Computer networks consist of devices that provide communication paths between electronic machines to create local networks inside buildings as well as the interconnection of networks in such structures as campuses and the Internet” (Frezzo, Behrens et al. 2010).

As Lammle (2010) suggests, “computers have become invaluable to us personally and professionally. Our society has become highly dependent on these resources and on sharing them with each other. The ability to communicate with those we need to whether they’re in the same building or in some far-away land completely hinges on our capacity to create and maintain solid, dependable networks” (Lammle, 2010). To have such skills that will enable an IT professional to create and maintain networks requires rigorous training. It is a demanding field of expertise since the efficient operation of many business organizations today rely upon the smooth operation of its computer network.

You can download or read the paper here 

Is my organization using IPv6 already?

"Many reports predict the Internet boom in the Asia Pacific will continue with strong growth in traffic, devices and users. By 2019, the region will have the most Internet traffic from mobile devices in the world. Another report on Pacific Island nations says recent submarine cable installations have resulted in an explosion of capacity. Across the Pacific, international Internet bandwidth jumped more than 1,500% between 2007 and 2014, rising from fewer than 100 Mbit/s to over 1 Gbit/s.

But those who travel the region know the availability, stability, speed, and security of Internet services vary widely from place to place. Users in some developing economies tolerate conditions that are unacceptable in the developed world, and which will seriously limit the benefits that the Internet can deliver." This is according to APNIC Foundation.

Meanwhile, the region is facing a growing list of technical challenges and one of them is the transition to IPv6. With IPv4 resources all but exhausted globally, IPv6 is the only viable option for the Internet’s future growth in the Asia Pacific region. While some organizations are embracing this, the transition is happening very slowly.
This big question is, do you know whether your organization is using IPv6 or not? Or more importantly is your organization IPv6 ready? Especially to the Asia Pacific small island countries.

Try the test.
If you do not know yet whether your company/organization is using IPv6 here is one way where you can find out.

• Go to http://test-ipv6.com/
• As soon as you hit the link above, the site will run a test on your publicly available address. 
• It will also indicate if your company is using a proxy server for internet access.

So from the test done below for Divine Word University, Madang PNG, here is the following information taken. (See screen shot below)

Testing OpenWRT in VirtualBox

I read on many different forums about the advantages of OpenWRT and really wanted to find out for myself but I didn't have a wireless router. I started to ponder on the possibility of using Oracle VirtualBox to test OpenWRT thus this article. I actually came upon a similar project which was a bit outdated so I decided to document this. 

If you are considering to test OpenWRT without a router or you don’t want to flash the router firmware over and over again. Here is a step by step article on running OpenWRT in a VirtualBox environment. OpenWRT in a virtualbox is an image file run in VirtualBox. At the time of writing this article, the VirtualBox version was Version 5.0.24 r108355 (the current release is 5.1.18, download available here) & OpenWRT image version openwrt-x86-generic-combined-ext4.img (download available here) 

Download links:

• VirtualBox 
• OpenWRT image file for virtualbox 

Teaching NAT in CCNA4

Recently as I was preparing to teach CCNA4 chapter 5 on NAT (Network Address Translation), I decided to put additional information in the introduction to draw the students attention to the state of IPv4 particularly in our region and country specifically. This would then set the basis for me to introduce NAT and its purpose as an immediate solution to IPv4 address exhaustion.

Here are some links I found in my research that I thougth would be helpful to other instructors who are preparing material for teaching.

Source: Internet Society IPv6 introduction course screenshot.

• Allocation of IP addresses by country - You can find your country and extract the information needed to give your students an overview of the number of addresses allocated by IANA to your country.

• Major IP Address blocks - This site gives you blocks of allocated addresses but does not indicate which ISP uses what block, the next link does show you further info

• Gateway information and address blocks by ISP's in your country - this is a very useful site as it gives you additional info about your country's gateway as well as the block allocations to ISPs that operate in your country.

Tinkering with Raspberry Pi

Sometimes when you get handed something new and interesting, you have two choices; you either put it away or you start tinkering over it. If you like tinkering over new and interesting gadgets, you will soon learn one or two things about it (even become good at something).

That is exactly what happened to me when I was first given a Raspberry Pi 2 two years ago by the head of our department.

Raspberry Pi 2

•Small computer
•Make, learn, design in a fun way
•Quad core CPU
•1 GB RAM (Pi 2)
•40pin GPIO
•Micro SD slot
•4 USB ports, HDMI, Stereo output, DSI display
•Micro USB power source

  

 

 At first glance, I had some idea what it could be but I never knew what interesting things you could do with such a very small thing, almost the size of your BSP Kundu card.

What tools I use for screen capture

When it comes to doing screen captures for my lessons or short tutorial videos for my CCNA classes, I've always relied upon Camtasia Studio to do all these. After I compile the videos, I upload them to Moodle (the LMS that we use in DWU).

Speak To Me In The Stillness Of My Heart

SPEAK TO ME IN THE STILLNESS OF MY HEART

By Picky Airi

Reading: 1 Samuel 3:1-11

Do you have time to listen?

There are times in our lives that we so often talk too much. Imagine there are two people communicating, and only one person is doing all the talking, never trying to listen. In any culture there are always basic protocols (rules) of communication. For example, when we meet a wantok, we shake hands first as a sign of greeting or sometimes say a simple hello before anything. Then after the initial gestures, we start to verbally communicate.