Classic Tech Tips Archive

Strange AIM worm going around. It apparently includes an interesting combination of rootkits, a rootkit detector, spyware/adware, and a specialized bittorrent client. The machines can then be control…

Google has announced Google Pack available for download It sounds as though there's a nice bundle of Google (and non-google software) included (Google Desktop, Earth, Picasa, Toolbar for IE, Google P…

More sites that claim to be windows security center or the like are popping up... a list: securitycaution(dot)com dnserror404(dot)com todaywarnings(dot)com updatesystempage(dot)com yoursecuritysystem…

You know you would think that www.google.most anything would be legit, but.. sunbelt has been given a heads up, that a site posing as Google Belarus (www.google.by) is not actually a google site. It …

Sometimes machines stop working, or you install a new piece of hardware and just can't boot again. That's when you have to get back to some basics to troubleshoot what the problem is. Yesterday I saw…

Our "good friend" spyaxe, which is one of the "wolves in sheeps clothing" that masquerade as security software, but in actuality are delivered WITH spyware, has a new clone. Apparently SpywareStrike …

I started using this program after frying a hard drive in 6 months. It was on the server and serving up Audio 24/7 and it was sandwiched between a cdrom drive and another hard drive. There was no air…

This is one that I run into from time to time. Most laptops the last year or two (actually maybe a bit longer), have built in wireless networking. This is great and makes for easy access to wireless …

For the last week, I've seen various headlines referring to a report from US-CERT that indicated 2005 had 5,198 security flaws reported. Out of those 2,328 were reported for Linux/Unix, 812 for Windo…

Sounds like this patch Tuesday will have a couple of updates in spite of the early release of the WMF vulnerability fix. Thanks to Microsoft for yielding that fix as soon as the testing was done. I w…

Microsoft has released the patch for the WMF vulnerability that's been all over the news early. It was released to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com ahead of the previously announced January 10th "p…

Since this is a simple tip I'm including it in the basics category. I ran across a pc with a Dell Multimedia Keyboard and they wanted to disable the hotkeys (sound mixer was always popping up because…

The security fix has some news today on some bogus security software makers (the wolves in sheeps clothing as I tend to think of them...) Anyway, they're settling deceptive trade practice chargers th…

Microsoft has updated their security bulletin on the WMF vulnerability to note a couple things. One, they acknowledge that embedded images within a document can trigger the exploit. Previously they s…

Well, antivirus vendors and IT security folks are waiting now for the expected activation of the sober.y worm searching for a new downloads and a new revision of the pest. kaspersky's log indicates t…

There are all sorts of rumors circulating about Google's product announcements tomorrow at CES. There are still stories floating around about a Google PC running linux and there are stories about pay…

Brian Krebs at the SecurityFix today has questions about Microsoft OneCare. In fact, with Microsoft saying that OneCare is "more than just antivirus" you wonder whether that's just marketing speak, o…

When I first checked this morning the site wasn't responding. According to the logs I got hammered last night from avantgo (2 requests a second?). (So a couple hundred requests over a couple minutes?…

I didn't see this reported anywhere, but since yesterday when there was an update to the metasploit module for the WMF vulnerability I think there's been yet another update. I read yesterday that it …

The word "ping" is used in computer networking. It's usually used to test and see if a machine is able to be "reached" or "talked to" over a network. The terminology reminds me of the concept of rada…

I've added a new Computers-Basics category that will be a catchall for all sorts of "what is a" articles and hopefully very simple how-to's (the kind of things that will have some viewers rushing for…

It's always a strange mix between comedy and frustration to see the main media outlets cover a tech news item. I usually wince and brace myself when I see any tv news outlet take on a computer issue …

I got a first look at Windows Desktop Search today (bundled with MSN Search Toolbar?) I was told that it was new on the system and had not been used. The systems owner didn't know when it was install…

This isn't an earth shattering issue, but as I was looking into some other problems on a Windows XP Pro system, I noticed a HUGE blank space in the Add/Remove programs area of the control panel. It w…

I've just been back at appointments what - 2 days? And already I've got a ton of issues to detail. I usually don't get into details of everything I run into because many times it's rather tedious iss…