Getting Ready for iOS 8.1

Apple will release iOS 8.1 on Monday, October 20, 2014 along with the deployment of Apple Pay.

iOS 8.1 on iPhone 6

There will be a lot of people holding off from updating to iOS 8.1 for many different reasons. Some would be worried if iOS 8.1 update would be a repeat of the botched iOS 8.0.1 Over The Air (OTA) update. A lot of people are holding off from updating to iOS 8 because the do not have enough free space on their iOS devices, which are mostly 16 GB model or less.

I have the habit of updating my iOS devices using iTunes instead of over the air; which what I did to update to iOS 8.0.1.

Wait a few hours after the release of iOS 8.1 before proceeding with the update if you’re worried about some show-stopping bugs. Update your iOS devices using iTunes too. Make sure you have the latest version of iTunes.

Synology Vulnerability and Ransomware

In the early Sunday morning of August 3, 2014, a tweet by Mike Evangelist was linked on Hacker News.

Lovely. My @Synology NAS has been hacked by ransomware calling itself Synolocker. Not what I wanted to do today. pic.twitter.com/YJ1VLeKqfY

Mike Evangelist Tweet Synology Synolocker

I was somewhat scared by this news as some users at Synology forums reported that they were also victims of  SynoLocker which is a CryptoLocker malware which specifically targets Synology NAS. I am managing numbers of Synology NAS for a few small offices and homes. Granted that none of them are directly connected to the Internet, but I have to make sure none of them would be hacked and crypto-locked.

Make sure your Synology NAS is running the latest DSM Operating System.

Synology Software Update

For now, disable the QuickConnect service.

Synology Disable QuickConnect

Disable all port-forwarding if your Synology DiskStation is behind a NAT Firewall. This is a definite inconvenience; better to be safe than sorry.

More importantly, back-up the content of your Synology NAS. Should anything happen, you still have your data. My colleague has a great advice on backing up:

As always, if you have data on your Synology that you consider irreplaceable, make sure that you have it backed up to. I’d recommend using the built in Amazon S3 client. It’s cheap and fairly easy to set up, and should help you in case of a disaster.

I personally also run a backup to another hard drive locally for rapid recovery.