WOW Weekly – TalkTalk Trouble, Ubuntu Turns 11

Welcome to WOW Weekly.TalkTalk made big news last week when a massive cyber attack compromised the details of all it’s customers. TalkTalk have since announced the attack wasn’t as bad as first feared but will this be enough for the customers that want out! From Warty Warthog to Wily Werewolf Ubuntu is 11 years old! First released in 2004 the open source Linux distribution has gracefully transformed into the modern operating system we see today.

TalkTalk Hack

On Wednesday 21st TalkTalk one of the UK’s major telecommunication companies suffered a cyber attack which compromised the details of its 4 million users. TalkTalk immediately took down their website to stop the attack it was uncertain just how much data had been stolen. TalkTalk have insisted that it’s not as bad as first feared, with the attack only affecting the website, stating that users passwords have not been accessed.

Quite a few people have reported of having phone calls claiming to be from TalkTalk and as a result have had money stolen from their accounts. The likelihood of these phone calls coming direct from the hack are quite remote and it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s just crime organisations hearing about the hack and jumping on the band-wagon to exploit the vulnerable.

Needless to say TalkTalk will probably lose a lot of customers over this and it may take time to gain its reputation back. If you are a customer follow their advice and sign up to the 1 year of paid Noddle alerts that they have provided, ignore any phone calls you receive pretending to be TalkTalk and stay vigilant. From a security point of view I do feel in this day and age sensitive information should be encrypted and it should be a legal requirement.

Keep up to date with the incident

Happy 11th Birthday Ubuntu

11 years ago on the 20th October a little unknown Linux distribution was released. It’s name was Ubuntu. Fast forward 11 years and 22 versions Ubuntu is now transformed into a modern operating system with a huge ever-growing fan base. When I first experimented with Ubuntu back in 2007 it was the name, Feisty Fawn, that made me interested but unfortunately I struggled to get the wi-fi drivers to work and gave in.

After adopting Linux Mint full-time in 2009, I opted to install 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) on my old Asus laptop and even my children warmed to the Linux life. Of course Ubuntu has made some revolutionary changes to its desktop over the time. I for one wasn’t a big fan of unity and preferred the traditional Gnome 2 desktop but now appreciate that Ubuntu want to be different and whether you are a lover or hater Ubuntu shaped the Linux world. Without it would we have ever seen steam have ever arrive on the Linux desktop?

Celebrate with OMG Ubuntu

Tool of the Week

If you are a big social media user it’s pretty tedious getting the right size image to use along with your posts. Pablo is a handy online tool from the makers of Buffer that will allow you to upload, create, edit photos and captions to make them suitable for all of your Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram posts.

New Releases in Brief

iOS 9.1 was released last week, fixing many bugs this major update launches Apple News in the UK, you can now train Siri to recognise your voice. El Capitan also had an update fixing compatibility bugs with MS Office, JPEG issues in preview, messages not displaying properly and missing outgoing server info in Mail. Both iOS 9.1 and El Capitan have introduced over 150 new emoji characters including levitating.