Technology

The week before last, tragic events unfolded in London. It seems that a man drove a car at nearly 70 mph into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before stabbing a policeman on duty at the entry to the Parliamentary Estate. 5 people died, including the attacker.

Not long after the event, Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary said this:

It is completely unacceptable, there should be no place for terrorists to hide.

OK - I'll hold my hands up. The title of this post is misleading. I'm not going to give you an ABC on how to secure a Drupal site (maybe another day). I'm responding to a post on the Reseller Club blog entitled How to Secure Your Client's Drupal Website.

There is some good advice in that article, but it's mixed in with some bad advice, and in other parts it's just plain confused. In the hope that it helps people, I'm going to try and untangle things.

Apple no longer supports its QuickTime player. Both the player and the browser plugins were found to have security flaws which meant a malicious website could trick you to playing a doctored file in the player / plugin, which would then allow those vulnerabilities to be exploited.

The answer is simple: Install another player. Like VideoLan's VLC Player.

Here's a simple tech tip for you.

You're signed up to some mailing list. It could be for special offers from a business you shop at. It could be a newsletter for a charity. It could be just about anything. In comes something that you think is particularly helpful. You think "I'll forward this to my friends".

Just pause before you do so.

All (well, almost all - I'm sure there are exceptions) mailing list software will rewrite any hyperlinks within the email.