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While not strictly computer security awareness I couldn't go past mentioning these excellent Bicycle Africa projects. Unsure of the licensing on some of these like the Bamboo bicycle lets hope its creative commons or open source. A number of excellent projects are worth a look at in Africa. These projects aim to provide low cost bicycles for transport of people and cargo. Bamboo Bicycle Project Rawanda.org Kona Bike Town

The excellent TrueCrypt open source encryption utility has just been released in a version 5.0. The new version allows amoung other things full disk encryption. So that you must enter a secure password on boot of the system to access the fully encrypted partition. This adds an excellent layer of security to all systems but particularily laptops. When governments and corporations seem to lose so many laptops that ...

An excellent resource and video of the Blogging freedom advocacy campaign that is being undertaken by GlobalVoicesOnline. During the last six months, since the launch of Global Voices Advocacy, we have been trying to cover the increasingly serious threats to online speech occurring around the globe and the efforts to combat them. We've documented the arrest and detention of scores of bloggers and online authors and highlighted several ...

A quick guide to sending SMTP email with Google. This is a handy little trick. You can even use a non gmail.com account. The GMail SMTP server. Luckily, I could setup my Evolution Client on my Linux box within no time, to use and send mail via the GMail SMTP server. Using TLS means your emails to google are encrypted too, after they go from google ...

To kick off I must say I love this quote from New Internationalist. When you turn on your computer, you're making a political statement. If, like most people, your computer boots Microsoft Windows, the statement you're making is that transnational corporations should control access to the most powerful public media that ever existed. New Internationalist Magazine Nov. 2006The Free Software foundation has gotten together with some ...

It is good to see that the UN has seen this as a prank rather than an act of "cyber terrorism". To often these simple attacks are suddenly blown up by the media into some kind of terrorist act and suddenly teenagers are spending 20 years in jail for defacing a website. Not that I condone website defacements, I just think these things should be kept in perspective. A simple ...

It has happened to us all. The boss is unconvinced and wants an antivirus (or other solution) that comes in a shiny box with all that "quality" technical support and a well laid out manual. Here is another tool in your arsenal to convince the boss that a shiny box is not always a better product. For the second year running ClamAV is up there at number 1. Yes ...

Attacks Prompt Update for Tor Anonymity Network One of the best-known and free services for helping Internet users maintain their anonymity online - a network known simply as "Tor" -- suffered an attack this past week that may have exposed the identities of thousands of users. The good news, however, is that the vulnerability in Tor that permitted the attack is now plugged with a software patch. Security Fix - ...

Once again we have governments feeling threatened by their own citizens. Bloggers beware I am afraid there is much more of this to come. Know what you are doing and where threats may come from - there are ways to blog safely using a pseudonym. Get educated and stay safe. The Malaysian government has warned it could use tough anti-terrorism laws against bloggers who insult Islam or the countrys ...

This video is a great introduction to the need for security in the NGO sector and also covers the "NGO in a box - Security Edition tool". While I have not used the tool, I have been very impressed with the work being done by FrontLineDefenders.org and would like to learn more about the specifics of this tool. There is also some great introductory content on the FrontLineDefenders page. ...