Defensive Computing is aimed at people who depend on their computing devices for work rather than for play. Rather than focus on the latest news or devices, this blog aims to be educational. Heavy on facts, light on opinions.
A big part of Defensive Computing is knowing who to trust. Oftentimes, when reporting on technical computer issues, the media does not deserve that trust.
My personal information was potentially exposed while using a credit card online. A secondary website, invoked to provide extra identity validation, was triggered by using a VPN. Unlike the primary payment processor, this secondary...
Chrome can take a while to update its embedded copy of the Adobe Flash Player. On days like today, when Adobe released a new copy of Flash, this can leave you vulnerable. A simple procedure forces the update.
Pretending that Steve Bannon is really the President was funny when Saturday Night Live did it on their opening bit. Then today, Business Insider wrote about a Google Chrome extension that replaces every mention of "Trump" with "Steve...
In the recent Netgear router flaw, its easy to blame Netgear for ignoring the initial report of the vulnerability. They have since admitted that it fell through the cracks. But there appears to be plenty of blame to go around.
On December 9, 2016 we first learned of a command injection vulnerability in some Netgear routers. In the worst case, simply viewing a malicious web page could result in your router being hacked. What follows is a recap and expansion...
At least two Netgear routers, the R6400 and R7000 are vulnerable to a command injection flaw that is easy to exploit and could lead to the total takeover of the routers. This was disclosed yesterday, December 9th, and there has, as...
Some D-Link routers are vulnerable to a flaw in the HNAP protocol. D-Link has released updated firmware for some of them. Whether you own a D-Link router or not, it is good to test for HNAP to insure it is not installed on your...
Relief is finally at hand for Windows 7 users. Following the advice of InfoWorlds's Woody Leonhard, we can patch Windows Update and install bug fixes in a manner of minutes rather than hours.