Category: Computers

  • Wireless ethernet security

    Flexbeta has an article giving a good primer on the different approaches to wireless security that are currently available and what seems to be on track for the next generation of wireless networking. One thing that is worth noting, if it’s transmitted through the air it can be intercepted. Breaking the code is just a matter of time and computing power.
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  • Planning for disaster recovery

    This covers all operating systems really. What would happen if your hard drive crashed right now? What data would you lose? What about if the server room flooded? What if your mission critical system went down. What data would you lose and how long would it take to be back up and running?
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  • Suspicious Emails inderectly leading to virus infection

    According to The August 4th entry of the isc.sans.org handlers diary, there are some peculiar emails going around. They claim to be for an article claiming an explosion kills 140 in Iraq. It contains a link to a news article that has been altered from it’s original (140 instead of 14 for instance.) It also contains some nasty surprises for the visitor. There is an exploit that requires no user intervention, A cross-site scripting vulnerability (MS05-001) is exploited which runs ppp.hta from your hard drive, which creates a file called netlog.exe, which is launched by Media Player (??), which then retrieves a copy of win32sba.exe, which is the robobot backdoor.
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  • Windows 2000 Worm vulnerability

    Apparently, there is an unpatched vulnerability in Windows 2000 that could open the door for a network worm. The details have not been released to give Microsoft time to deal with a patch. (Microsoft is drawing down support commitments to 2000, releasing a batch of updates just before their timeline to start phasing out support.)
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  • Microsoft to release 6 updates Tuesday August 9th

    According to this release, expect to see 6 updates coming out from Microsoft Tuesday. One will be tagged critical from what I read. It seems like this is a bit large number this time around, but still it could be worse, prepare for patching.

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  • Windows Vista virus

    I know I saw this yesterday somewhere (The Register?), but….. According to this article, proof of concept viruses have already been written for Monad, which is Microsoft’s next revision of the command shell. Now, there is some hesitance to call these viruses the first that would affect Windows Vista because it’s not known when Monad will ship (it may first ship as part of Exchange 12 server).
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  • Collection of Open Source software for Windows

    This is a quick link to a downloadable cd of open source software for windows. There is a sizable list of programs. It appears as though some are not open source, but are free. If you have a fast enough connection to download it, you might find it very useful. If not, you might (more…)

  • Google Hack honeypot

    I’ve found The Google Hack honeypot thanks to an entry at sans.org in the handlers diary. I’ve looked at it and it’s an interesting idea. The honeypot installs on your website and is invisibly linked to from another page. This way it gets spidered as if it was a real site. Then, it logs hack attempts against itself by monitoring and logging search referrers and ip addresses of those trying to use it.
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  • Bad week for Cisco, security headaches

    For starters, there was this advisory last week in response to a planned talk at a hacker convention on the possibility of a cisco router ipv6 exploit. The advisory detailed a LOCAL exploit and not the remote exploit that the talk was centered around. There was legal action against the speaker and materials detailing it were destroyed (literally ripped out of notebooks) at the convention by Cisco. Apparently this is the kind of vulnerability that could “shut down the internet”. Of course, much of the internet’s backbone runs on Cisco equipment. Next….

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  • Broadband users watch less tv

    According to this report, broadband users watch less tv. Two hours less a week in fact, compared to their non-broadband counterparts (dial up users watch 1.5 hours less than the non connected). It’s understandable, instead of couch potatoes many of us are computer-potatoes. I do have a tendency to “multi-task” though at times and have news tv or radio on while I work.
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