Category: Computers

  • The 2nd journey begins… Mandriva 2006 upgrade 2 – Part 6

    OK – there may be those that read the last entry and had some obvious “oh, you ought to look in the ***** directory for menu information.” On the issue I ran into with missing menu items after the upgrade. (And even after moving my .kde folder to .kdeold and logging back in.) OK – it’s been a while since I’ve taken a long hard look at HOW menu’s are built in Mandrake (Mandriva)….

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  • Another example of how we’re vulnerable for identity theft

    The SecurityFix is reporting on a security breech at reevesnamepins.com a company that supplies (among others) law enforcement personnel. Apparently, CardCops (which monitors for possible stolen data), discovered names and addresses of several law enforcement officers from across the country. The common denominator seemed to be recent orders at reevesnamepins.com and the company has confirmed a recent security breech.

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  • More wolves in sheeps clothing – rogue or suspect antispyware

    (or for that matter, rogue or suspect antivirus.) What’s fascinating about this category is most of these products either use security vulnerabilities to get into a system, or merely convince a person browsing the web that they’re the right tool for the job. Kind of like virtual con-men in a sense…. Anyway… Spyware Confidential has a listing of the top 10 rogue/suspect antispyware programs. Some familiar names are mentioned…

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  • Malware scanning?

    The SANS institute is warning of an increase in reports of malware scanning for vulnerabilities. Currently these samples of malware are undetected by current antivirus signatures. They’re requesting samples of the malware for analysis. The last such surge in scanning was about a week ago when they noted a spike in scans to port 1026. It turned out that was advance recognition of the dasher worm trying to circulate.

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  • Network Security guide for the home or small business network – Part 7 – Wireless Networking

    OK – the last couple of entries got into some heavy lifting and some real learning on your part. Learning about what software needs to run, what services are running, updating them to keep current on security patches. We even talked about securing services listening for outside connections and limiting them to what is absolutely necessary. Now we’ll take a deep breath and get into another area… Wireless network security.

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  • Disinfecting a PC… part 6

    Ok, it’s BHOdemon time… installed from cd and on starting:

    BHOdemon bhotb-all.html not found, no web connection downloading on other machine.

    Finally get it to work copying from another machine. But I had to change the Windows ME to show full filenames to help troubleshoot why it couldn’t find the file (naming problem.) (There seems to be a strange display problem on setting “don’t hide file extensions” menu, (I can’t see the check boxes or the checkmarks…. I managed to toggle them “blind” to show file extensions)…

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  • Disinfecting a PC… part 5

    OK, we’re moving on to BHOdemon to take care of the browser helper objects. Unfortunately it looks like BHODemon is not being currently maintained, the developer has had a housefire.

    I am very sorry, but BHODemon is currently on hiatus, as I no longer have the time to devote to it (due to a house fire). You will not be able to download updates or upload reports, and I will no longer be answering emails. At some point, BHODemon may return. I would like to thank everyone for their support over the years.

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