specifically, NYUSH tech tips for GNU/Linux users

NYU Tech Tips.md

General

Set custom first/last name

Set personal email address

Find NYU people

Tips & Tricks

Albert Beta

Albert sucks.

Brightspace announcements RSS feed

Course specific. On the "Announcements" tab of a course, click the "RSS" button and copy the URL.

DUO Security MFA with passkey

During login MFA, if a password manager e.g. Bitwarden is the default credential manager for the browser (or OS), Windows Hello (MS Windows) or Touch ID (MacOS/iPadOS/iOS) will invoke the password manager to authenticate with a passkey.

If the OS is neither MS Windows or (MacOS/iPadOS/iOS), one can change the user agent for duosecurity.com to these OS to enable passkey authentication with browser extensions e.g. "User-Agent Switcher and Manager" for Firefox.

DNS Encryption

NYU WIFI network hijacks all DNS queries to its internal DNS server. To avoid this, use a encrypted DNS protocol e.g. DoT or DoH to secure DNS queries.

GNU/Linux

NYU provides VPN service with Cisco AnyConnect. OpenConnect is a free and open-source multi-protocol VPN client, which supports Cisco AnyConnect. OpenConnect has GUI application for Windows and Android. On Linux, one can moreover install networkmanager-openconnect to integrate the VPN connection into NetworkManager.

One annoyance of NYU VPN is that you need to input "push" before entering the password. In my experience, GUI VPN applications seem unable to remember multiple entries of password. However, the command line binary openconnect supports --passwd-on-stdin. Create a bash script printf "$passwd\npush" | openconnet <vpn-domain> to skip entering the password. Alternatively, create a systemd service for user to automate the connection. Note: confirmation on DUO Mobile is still necessary.