Classic Tech Tips Archive

I hope that you all enjoy a very Happy New Year. I probably should have had this post go out at 00:00 GMT, but... I thought I'd post it using the server local time....

So after installing the php-pcre package, I restart httpd and reload the mythweb page and find another error message. Very similar to the first, but slightly different. "Fatal error: Call to undefine…

After the Mandriva 2006 upgrade I've still been looking to find if there is anything 'not quite right'.... anyway, I've run into an issue with mythweb. Mythweb is a web-based interface for the mythtv…

Sans is talking about the unofficial patch for the WMF vulnerability. One of their handlers has helped with it to extend it to work on XP SP 1 and Windows 2000. They've also looked at the patch thoro…

Just when you thought we had a good understanding of the recent zero-day WMF (Windows metafile exploit) it's worse. Sans is reporting on a new variation on the exploit released today. They have gone …

When you're not at your home network is probably one of those times you should be more on your guard. Wireless access points are very common and a greatly useful thing, but there are some steps you s…

One of the vectors that has been mentioned early on is the infection of a system through the WMF exploit even when the exploited file was downloaded through a dos command shell. At first this seemed …

There is news this morning of a new twist in the WMF vulnerability (it was only a matter of time.) There are reports of an instant messenger worm using the vulnerability to spread. Currently incident…

The F-secure blog is reporting on a third party patch for the WMF exploit. I have not tested it, it seems to come from a knowledgable source though. As I'm writing this though, the thought strikes me…

After the Hamachi article I wanted to do a series on OpenVPN. I've used it before, but not since the 1.x days.... it's now at version 2.0.5 and has quite a bit more flexibility. When I first used it,…

So, I've spent a bit of time talking about flightgear. Here are a couple extra resources that I want to "bookmark" here. There is a Good unofficial how-to here. (Mostly linux flightgear oriented. Als…

Along the lines of "knowing your network" with the network security guide. Here are some of the most commonly used network ports. There are 65535 ports that can listen for a connection, so this is no…

I don't know if kcron deserves a seperate entry for scheduling tasks under linux. Cron is what I typed on last time and it's the daemon that controls scheduled tasks. The method for scheduling tasks …

So, when I did the laptop upgrade I formated the root partition which means that working mythtv frontend was erased and it had to be set up from scratch. I had been running version 0.16 of mythtv on …

This should probably go in the Windows tech support category too... but, as I've talked about before I've spent a good amount of time using different linux livecd's. I've even made a few livecd's of …

So, most everything so far has been targetted to high speed internet users or business networks. That means if I use dialup I'm safe. Wrong. For starters, in many ways dialup internet is LESS of a ri…

The headline probably says most all... 5198 vulnerabilities tracked by US-Cert in 2005. This comes from The SecurityFix. It's probably not every vulernability that was out in 2005, just those that US…

There's a bit of controversy over the suggestion that Hardware DEP seemed to protect against the WMF zero day exploit. Sunbeltblog has responded to the controversy. George Ou in the first link above …

This is really the same zero-day wmf vulnerability, but there is a twist. It's been found that Lotus Notes v. 6.x and up are vulnerable to the Windows Meta File (WMF) exploit that's making the rounds…

Windows has scheduled tasks which most people are only halfway aware of. Linux has very powerful scheduling capabilities coming from it's unix heritage. cron is the daemon that deals with scheduled t…

I support a few linux systems outside my own group. Those systems are not as quick to get upgraded to the latest and greatest version of Mandrake - now Mandriva as my home systems. But, I occasionall…

A few days back I was at grc to run a "shields up" scan on a clients machine and found reference to their Security Now podcast (Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson.) The cast was about a VPN tool called Ham…

This may be one of the most important entries in this series. An important defence against those that would try to access your network is to constantly have the "security mindset". Ask yourself "do I…

I notice that the Sunbelt Blog has some instructions up for blocking the zero-day Windows Meta File (WMF) exploit with their newly acquired kerio firewall. (Free or full version.) Either version can …

You had to know we couldn't make it to the end of the year without another story about the Sony DRM rootkit.... I noticed last night that the sunbelt blog had mention of a proposed settlement in thei…