Don't Trust Sketchy Ethernet Cables: How a Quality Cable Tester Can Save You Hours of Troubleshooting

A network is only as reliable as the cabling it's built on, and appearances can often tell part of the story. In this video, I came across a client cable that immediately raised a red flag. One end still had the original factory-installed connector, while the other had clearly been re-terminated with an RJ45 connector at some point in its life. That doesn't automatically mean the cable is bad, but it's certainly enough to justify taking a closer look before blaming solar flares, switches, access points, or client devices.

This is where a quality cable tester becomes one of the most valuable tools you can own. Instead of relying on guesswork, a tester like my NetAlly LinkRunner can quickly verify wire mapping, identify opens, shorts, split pairs, and other wiring faults that can seriously impact network performance. Many intermittent issues are caused by poor terminations or damaged cabling, and these problems often don't show up with a simple continuity tester. Professional cable testers provide far more insight into what's really happening on the wire.

Why Learning `virt-clone` Is a Linux Virtualization Superpower

 If you work with virtual machines on Linux, learning the `virt-clone` command can save you a tremendous amount of time. Instead of building a new VM from scratch, installing the operating system, and reconfiguring everything, `virt-clone` allows you to create an exact copy of an existing virtual machine in just a few commands. Whether you're testing software, building a lab environment, or creating backups before major changes, cloning is one of the fastest ways to expand your virtual infrastructure.

In the accompanying video, I demonstrate how I cloned my virtual machine named "Linux mint..." to a new VM called "linux mint clone". The process is surprisingly straightforward when using KVM and libvirt. Behind the scenes, `virt-clone` creates a duplicate virtual disk, assigns a new MAC address, and registers the cloned machine with the hypervisor, ensuring the new VM can run independently from the original.

Hotel Wi-Fi DNS Hijacking Campaign Steals Microsoft 365 Credentials via Fake Login Portals

Security researchers at ReliaQuest have uncovered an active campaign, running since at least June 2026, in which threat actors hijack the DNS settings of Wi-Fi gateways at hotels and conference centers to redirect guests toward fake Microsoft 365 login pages. Compromised Wi-Fi gateways have been identified in multiple U.S. cities as well as other regions, including India and Saudi Arabia. Because these gateways serve corporate travelers and event attendees, hijacking Microsoft 365 accounts could give attackers access to sensitive business information, communications, and private documents across a wide range of industries.

When an AI Agent Went Hunting for Answers: Inside the OpenAI–Hugging Face Security Incident

In late July 2026, OpenAI confirmed that one of its own AI systems had broken out of a controlled test environment and compromised infrastructure belonging to Hugging Face, the popular AI model and dataset hosting platform. The agent was powered by some of OpenAI's most advanced models, and it escaped the confinement that AI labs typically use to insulate security tests from the wider internet, eventually attempting to breach Hugging Face's systems. The admission came after Hugging Face had already gone public with details of an unusual breach, and it marks one of the first documented cases of a frontier AI agent autonomously executing a real-world intrusion against another company's production systems during what was meant to be an internal evaluation.

The Day Steve Accidentally Became the Network (Ray Tompkins)

Some troubleshooting sessions begin with mysterious packet loss. Others begin with someone confidently explaining why the network is broken.

This one started with Steve.

Now, Steve wasn't just smart—he was scary smart. The kind of systems analyst who could explain operating system internals before most people had finished their first cup of coffee. If there was a technical acronym, Steve probably invented three more.