Classic Tech Tips Archive

I'm greatly delayed in writing about this, but Google underwent a huge search engine change. I want to say the switch over occured around February 1st or second. I had been seeing 1000 or so visits a…

There have been a couple of interesting articles lately about the evolution of Google Base. When it came out, I remember thinking I would have to spend some time thinking about how to use it. It has …

This isn't necessarily tech related, but modern life related I guess. I can't count how many credit card offers we receive in the mail each month. I have visions of a few acres of forest land somewhe…

For some time I've wanted a good pair of noise reducing headphones for "mowing season". Ideally they'd have am/fm stereo so I could listen to the radio (or something broadcast from my little FM trans…

I feel like I've done this article so many times in the past.... there are so many things I'm hoping to post and time seems to evaporate before my very eyes. This afternoon I hope to be posting a few…

I noticed something yesterday when I had logged into the adsense page at Google. They've now added "adwords" referrals. For those that don't know - Adwords is the name for the program where you can a…

Some time back, I was teetering on the brink.... I've used Evolution as my linux mail client for ages (since I switched), because it had the calender integrated etc... However, Kontact has REALLY loo…

While we wait for Microsoft to release a patch for the MOST recent Internet Explorer vulnerability..... it looks as though MS is "planning" to release a patch on their routine patch day of April 11th…

I thought this was a great idea.... rsync.net Okay for 2$ per GB of storage per month (or $24 per year for 1GB of storage) you can have your very own secure online storage drive. For you windows user…

If you use Internet Explorer to browse the web, I'd suggest finding the instructions to disable active scripting, or drop it and use something else in light of the recent exploit floating around. It …

Well, it's annoying to me when my own computer has issues that I can't seem to track down and off and on for the last year I've had annoying seemingly random shut downs (I mean it's as if someone pul…

It seems I posted the 1000th article yesterday with the note on the recent IE vulnerability. (I wonder how many articles out of the 1000 were about IE vulnerabilities???) Anyway, nice round numbers l…

It's interesting to see the rumor mill around Vista - I saw articles this morning claiming that 60% of the Vista code would have to be rewritten and the Xbox team was pulled to work on Vista - from w…

I should mention a fairly big Windows vulnerability (which involves active scripting). Apparently there are proof-of-concept exploits circulating that do innocent things like open up the calculator. …

I've had a flood of spammy pings on one specific post. I've disabled ping backs on that post and will continue to disable pingbacks when I see spammish "abuse" of the concept. I'd certainly rather no…

I can't believe it's been so long without a post - last post was the last MS update cycle. I've been trying to avoid spending almost every waking hour at a computer for a while. Anyway, advance notic…

Microsoft has given advance notice that next Tuesday they will be releasing 7 updates for Windows, as many as 5 of these will be tagged as critical. The Security Fix has a bit on the advance notice a…

I think it's time to pass along a long story of what's gone on over the last week or so here and some of the reasons there hasn't been anything posted. Generally, I would say that work has been busy,…

In the last several days there have been a couple vulnerabilities disclosed that I should cover. The first up is related to Winamp. Version 5.12 is vulnerable to a problem with the way it handles .pl…

Not long ago a customer offered me a slightly used Linksys BEFW11S4 ver. 4 wireless router for free. He had replaced it with an 802.11g router (this is only a b) shortly after purchase and said if I …

I think I've wrapped up the series on arp spoofing and it's implications for network security. I know there's nothing earth shattering here, most network security types are well aware of the problems…

So, let's say we want to have an open wireless access point for some reason. (Maybe offering it to guests if you're a business?) There are certainly a lot of BAD ways to give open wireless access. As…

So, if you haven't already had enough cause to tighten your wireless security.... we've been talking about arp poisoning (spoofing) and the basic conclusion is that IF an attacking machine is on the …

So, we've spent a couple articles talking about arp spoofing. It sounds really bad, it's a frighteningly easy way to do a "mitm" or man in the middle attack and anyone using arp spoofing could captur…

When a machine has been arp spoofed, ALL network traffic from it is likely passing through a "hostile" machine. So, NO, https and ssh traffic is not immune, it is travelling through a hostile machine…