Computer Tips -Tech Info

Month: December 2005

  • Disinfecting a PC… part 3

    Picking up from last time… AVG was failing to install with a peculiar registry error. (Which I didn’t see much reference to online.) OK, so here is another fruit of the online search (so many bugs to identify…)

    jawa32.exe is listed as spyware.seekseek in sarc’s database.

    OK – let’s see if we can kill of some of these suspects… it’s time for a couple cycles of ctrl-alt-del to remove running processes that look suspect, followed by msconfig – disabling of processes running at boot, reboot, repeat.

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  • Artists revolting against DRM

    This is under the security tab because DRM software protection has proven to be a computer security issue… Spyware Confidential is reporting on artists revolting against the Sony DRM. According to the story…

    My Morning Jacket, the artists who recorded the copy protected CD “Z” I mentioned here, are doing more than protesting Sony BMG’s use of DRM spyware. They are revolting. Yesterday I read that My Morning Jacket was doing their own recall of the affected CDs. Now I see they are burning unrestricted copies of their CD and mailing them to users. Hmm… I wonder if they are breaking the law under the DMCA.

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  • The 2nd journey begins… Mandriva 2006 upgrade 2 – Part 2

    OK – copying of the most crucial files are done. It’s time to start the process. First I’ve gathered a list of URPMI sources that I can use from online. No local mirror this time, so it may take a while to pull all the files I need. Second, it’s time to say #urpmi.removemedia -a to clean out our list of software install sources.

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  • Adobe moving to monthly patch cycle

    I just saw a news article (sorry no link at the moment)… that mentioned that Adobe has announced they will move to a monthly patch cycle. This takes a cue from Microsoft which since October of 2003 has had a predictable monthly patch release. It’s nice to see security patches released in a routine, expected, predictable, orderly way. Now if only we can get the malware writers to stick to a single monthly malware release we’ll be in good shape.

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  • Google Music

    Beta news is reporting on Google Music. They say it will make it easier to find artists, album titles and lyrics. Not too long ago there was a report that the Recording industry was going to wage a war on lyric sites… Apparently Google will also provide links to music downloads if the music is available from paid download services.

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  • Another beagle virus variant

    Incidents.org is reporting this as well…

    A new Beagle variant is making the rounds. It comes in an almost empty email, as a ZIP attachment containing the worm as an EXE. The attachment name, email subject and sole text content of the email all seem to be male or female surnames. Keep your eyes peeled, especially if your users are reading their mail over webmail, as it seems to take another couple of hours until the AV vendors have their patterns lined up.

  • If the cumulitive IE patch fails to install

    This is related to MS05-054… According to Incidents.org it’s possible that this will not install (user submission of this). They also have a user submitted workaround…

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  • How festive – the dasher worm…

    The securityfix is reporting on a new worm that exploits an older Windows vulnerability. The worm is called dasher and is in at least it’s second iteration. Sans noticed an odd increase in port 1025 scans on the tenth of the month which was early activity of this worm. It looks like the first version of the worm didn’t work fully, but this second one does. It installs a keylogger.

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  • Network Security guide for the home or small business network – Part 3 – Antivirus

    Ok, the first two entries thus far, hardware firewalls and software firewalls have been fairly operating system independant. A hardware firewall is best, but if that’s not possible a software firewall will do until you get a hardware firewall setup. This next item is (currently) a must have for Windows users. However, Mac and Linux users may see the day soon when it is an essential part of security for those systems as well. These days I am stunned to see PC’s that don’t have an antivirus program installed.

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  • Disinfecting a PC… part 2

    Ok, the last post got a bit long with the hijackthis log, but I wanted to include the whole picture. I put a few comments in, but thought it might be useful to include the notes I took at the time. For starters I leave it unplugged from the network. (There is no network card in this machine.) It’s important when working on an infested PC to leave it isolated so that it can’t continue to spread viruses or spam or whatever it may be doing. Assume if it’s infested with something that it could be spewing out bad stuff. If you must, isolated it and prevent it from routing to the outside world… the safest is usually to leave the cable unplugged for the initial look over.

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