I build things.

Static Site Security Posture

Using Lambda@Edge to Implement OWASP Secure Headers for S3 Hosted Websites

The combination of S3 and CloudFront offers a low cost and easy way to deliver static and client side websites. In this blog post I’ll explore how to use Lambda@Edge to improve the security posture of your S3 hosted site through the addition of the OWASP recommended browser security headers. There are some aspects of control that you don’t have, when using S3 and CloudFront, compared to serving your content from a more typical server environment.

Posted by Mike Apted Tuesday, August 15, 2017

YouTube Playback Speed on iOS

Access the playback speed controls (and other settings) on iOS in Safari

I watch a lot of video content on my iPad/iPhone. Mainly in the form of presentations from conferences, or courses from online sources like PluralSight. I try and extract more value from my time by integrating these with other less mentally demanding tasks, like long low-intensity workouts, travel, and household busy work. One of my recent frustrations has been the inability to play content at a faster speed on YouTube vs other sources.

Posted by Mike Apted Wednesday, April 12, 2017

OpenVPN on AWS in 4 clicks

Run a personal VPN server in AWS using CloudFormation and OpenVPN

There’s been a sudden general interest in VPNs again with the recent policy developments in the US. There are many important steps users can take to bolster their privacy and you can get a good run down of them in this EFF article. It is worth re-stating that VPNs are not a magic bullet. They typically just shift the threat downstream. A substantial number of VPN providers are not trustworthy and likely more dangerous than your ISP.

Posted by Mike Apted Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Basic CD With CodeBuild

Automated deployment from CodeCommit to S3 through CodeBuild/Lambda

I’ve been meaning to start experimenting with CodeBuild since it’s announcement and decided to put something basic but flexible together as a proof of concept. The TL;DR was to create an environment with a CodeCommit repo and a push trigger. That trigger fires a Lambda, which invokes a CodeBuild project, depositing a set of the repo files into an S3 bucket. It is possible to include these in a CodePipeline, rather than trigger a Lambda from CodeCommit, but there are a couple reasons I decided to go the Lambda route.

Posted by Mike Apted Sunday, February 5, 2017

Dropbox WTF

Is Dropbox behaving badly on your Mac?

This is a somewhat complex issue but the TL;DR here seems to be: Dropbox is using deceptive and ethically questionable means of obtaining broad permissions on your Mac without being clear to you why they need them and what they are doing with them. That is certainly worthy of a closer look and some consideration of how that makes you feel re: using their products. I first saw this referenced today by @bitfield and the main issues here are that:

Posted by Mike Apted Friday, September 9, 2016

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ABOUT ME

Principal Solutions Architect @AWSCloud. Technologist. Founder. Helping startups live their best cloud life. 🐶🏊🏼‍♂️🚴🏽‍♂️🏃🏽‍♂️⛷🏒 Opinions mine.