About
The maintainer of this website worked in law enforcement for 15 years where he thoroughly enjoyed investigations, providing security surveys, and helping others learn more about their rights. He was a bit of an odd ball in some respects as he preferred to help folks solve problems rather than go out and simply arrest people. The philosophy of prevention seems to be missing today generally speaking in North American law enforcement agencies.
He purchased his first computer in 1995. It came with Windows 3.1 and no manual. He quickly got over his fear of computers, crashed his system so often that the repair shop was ready for him every morning with, “Ok, what did you do this weekend, Ian?”
His fascination grew to the point where he decided he wanted his own mail server for whatever reason. He installed Redhat Linux 6.2 (with some help) and with the favour of a friend, connected it to the Internet on a fibre backbone. Without even knowing what “telnet” was, he decided to buy the O’Reilly book on Sendmail.
That was his introduction to Linux. The result was predictable. Although he did figure out telnet and even figured out some stuff about Sendmail, he was the owner of a cracked Linux box 6 months later. At that point, computer security and privacy became one of his major interests along with his other job and now he is responsible for hardening Linux systems and maintaining them.
While learning more about Linux, Unix, building source code, RPM’s, manpages, mounting and unmounting, fsck’ing, grepping, gasp, fingering, blackholes and a myriad of other fun things, I often discovered that there were those that took a strong interest in helping “newbies” while others assumed that simply reading a manual would make everything clear.
In many instances, I found reading the fine manual to be even more confusing and was always very appreciative of those that would take a “newbie” by the hand and help him or her out until that final “Eureka” moment would come along.
So in the spirit of that, a special thanks to some fine folk:
Wendy, my business partner. All of my four sons, Alex, James, Colin, and David who loves me “all the way to the moon and back again.”
To all those people that never responded, “RTFM!” to me, and in that regard, especially to Ken Porter.
Ken, although I’ve never met him, nor have I even corresponded with him in years, is an awesome guy. Back when I was first starting to play with Linux, he must have felt sorry for me or something - but whatever, he did spend time on personal emails to me, answering questions that surely would seem dumb to most folks, and helped me out enormously. He taught me about RPMs, and even how to put my own RPMs together, even though I was still not sure what I was doing. Heck, I didn’t even really know what an RPM was! He answered every stupid question that I could come up with, gently pointed me to other resources, and never failed to reply to emails when I didn’t understand something.
For whatever reasons, Ken and I are no longer in touch, but I truly owe him a great debt. And I hope this site will in some ways honour Ken’s patience.
This site is not meant to be a simply “basic” site directed at “newbies.” However, it is hoped that much of the content here will help others like me who really wanted to learn, often were very frustrated, but sometimes needed a gentle hand at times. My goal for this site is that it will grow into a comprehensive resource for all general issues on security and privacy. That’s an enormous subject, but that’s my goal.
Disclaimer
Nothing will ever guarantee you privacy or security. Although politicians and some businesses will try to promise you that, I won’t. None of these articles, tips, or suggestions will guarantee you anything. And in fact, you should really do your own research in addition to what is provided on this site. The content on this site is provided for your information and much of it is opinion. My opinion, or the opinion of anyone else who may contribute to this site as to your best practices is simply that: opinion. You need to develop and create your own policies, figure out your own levels of risk, and never ever forget that no single act or product can gaurantee you anything. Guarantees are nice.. but they don’t get you much when the promise of the guarantee does not come true, and you’re left with less than what you had hoped or desired for. It’s up to you to keep learning. Both security and privacy are processes. They are not products, nor are they a single action that you will take.
Happy learning! And please let me know what I can do to improve the site.