Tag: firewall

  • Wishlist of spyware slime….

    The sunbeltblog has uncovered a fairly interesting document. (Dated May 16 and originally in Russian) which appears to be the wishlist of a spyware criminal. (Slime was my own definition…)

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  • Computer security software nets $2.6 Billion over last two years.

    SecurityFix is talking about the computer security industry. Further, computer users spend $9 billion a year on computers repairs from spyware and antivirus. This reminds me of a recent story of a man that threw out a perfectly good machine because it was infested with spyware. For starters, I do computer repair. I charge $40/ hour and even at that rate I’ve had people balk at 3-4 hours of heavy cleaning versus the Dell ads. How many people take this route instead of repairs? It’s hard to say overall. In his blog, Brian Krebs lays part of the blame at Microsoft’s door and I think rightly so.

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  • Testing your firewall for open ports

    For several years now I’ve used a neat tool at Gibson Research to test a clients firewall quick and easy from the web browser. They have a tool called Shields Up that does a limited port scan to determine of network ports are open, closed or “stealth”.

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  • Sunbeltblog has more info on the identity theft keylogger and will offer removal tool

    There another two fascinating posts in the saga of the massive identity theft that was reported in the Sunbelt blog. For starters they detail the beast here. It sounds truly devious, MAY still be related to coolwebsearch after all. It turns off Windows firewall and runs through Internet Explorer (thereby bypassing any other software firewall.)
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  • Easy linux firewall

    So, you need a firewall for your growing home network (or small business), don’t want to lay out a couple hundred dollars (or even 1 hundred dollars), what do you do? Give up and let the world in? No. There are a few good options, one I’ll mention today is Coyote linux. This is a popular floppy sized firewall boot disk. One of the real charms of this is that it’s minimum hardware requirement is a 486DX/25 or better processor and 12MB of memory.
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  • TCP/IP networking strange problem

    This is a weird one and I’m posting this mostly for my own reference so I can recall this when I run across it again. About 6-10 months ago a client of mine was having problems accessing web login pages like yahoo and ebay. I tested from various Windows machines on their network and verified and pulled my hair out for a bit before coming across a tip to check into the MTU setting for the firewall. (more…)

  • How do I find my IP address

    This is one that can be handy from time to time, trying to find your ip address. If you’re on a lan there aren’t too many ways to find your public ip within the operating systems software. However, under Windows if you go to, Start, Run and then type cmd and press enter you’ll get a command prompt from which you can type ipconfig and see the ip address for each network interface. One (more…)

  • Windows RDP Denial of service vulnerability

    I just saw this article at zdnet news a few minutes ago. Basically a new security bulletin is out with regards to Windows Remote Desktop Server being vulnerable to a denial of service (DoS) attack. Essentially it affects Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003. It appears that under an overwhelming flood of requests the system could blue screen. This vulnerability though, I think points out a flaw in the software firewall of XP (more…)

  • The basics

    Well to start out, this might should be crosslinked in the computer security section, but I’m putting it in commentary primarily to catch those who might not typically look at computer security.

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  • The connection between Spam and Viruses

    After comparing MANY of these delivery failures (a fraction of what has gone out with my domain name forged I’m afraid…) They are all advertising essentially the same site (sometimes different gateways to it, but I’ve traced it all back to a close group of domains that have been unresponsive to abuse reports online…. (more…)