What do you think this is?

If you're developing for the web (or something else) and you need to connect to an Oracle database, such as an Oracle Autonomous Database that comes for free with oracle cloud free tier, you may run to the typical problem of storing db connection credentials in configuration files and scripts. Nevertheless, Oracle has, since ages, a functionality called Oracle Wallet that can help you manage these connections more securely. Keep in mind that Oracle migrates away from Wallets, but my understanding is that this is a response to usability concerns, as the security standard is not maintained in the new set-up.

During the last 3 months I got more times than expected in discussions about patch and vulnerability management. I need to say, there is much misunderstanding going around about these two processes; so much that I could argue that several organizations are exposing themselves significantly, just because the touch points and (lack of) dependencies in these two processes are not clear.

Some months ago I bought a desktop system. I hadn't had one for years, but a very strange and unexpected need came up; I wanted to play games with my son who lives in Greece, in an attempt to spend a bit more time with him, even virtually. I bought and built a desktop system based on AMD's excellent Ryzen line, but that's for another time. On that computer, and as it would be used predominantly for games, I installed MS Windows. That is another thing that hadn't happened in my household for decades!

As you may have heard, Let's Encrypt revoked several certificates today that were issued through a faulty process. Read on for the details, and on how to identify the revoked certificates themselves.