Category Archives: Tips and Announcements

Major vulnerability in wi-fi encryption announced

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Bax

There has been a major stir this week with the announcement of the “KRACK Attacks” — an exploit against the WPA2 standard which secures the connections to virtually all wireless networks worldwide.  As this affects everyone who uses Wi-Fi for … Continue reading →

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AT&T strike will complicate DSL repairs

Posted on March 22, 2017 by Bax

According to several media sources, 17,000 AT&T workers have walked off the job today to protest issues affecting technicians — including outsourcing, and being forced to do work outside their area of expertise. We have confirmed this with AT&T directly, as they … Continue reading →

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Winter weather

Posted on January 11, 2017 by Bax

The storms hitting California this month are predictably creating infrastructure challenges — though at a level we haven’t seen for many years.  High winds bring down trees (and power/telephone lines with them), heavy rains soak equipment (causing electrical shorts through poorly maintained … Continue reading →

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On the road to fiber

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Bax

After several long years, the California PUC has just voted to fund our grant application for Zone A of our Nevada County fiber optic project.  We cannot put into words how excited we are to be bringing next-generation speeds to … Continue reading →

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“Shellshock”: Major Internet-wide security hole

Posted on September 24, 2014 by Bax

A critical security vulnerability (now known as “Shellshock”) was announced today, affecting a system shell used by the vast majority of Internet servers.  The vulnerability allows remote hackers to run code on a system without authorization (somewhat like having a virus, but … Continue reading →

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DNS cloud transition

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Bax

As part of our goal to offer better Internet access and services, we are transitioning our DNS services to “the cloud” — virtual servers located on the Internet backbone.  DNS is the service that translates domain names (such as spiral.com) … Continue reading →

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Heartbleed

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Bax

An extremely serious vulnerability, the “Heartbleed” bug, has just been announced for the server software that runs the vast majority of secured Internet connections. The good news is that none of the servers hosting Spiral customer content are running a … Continue reading →

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