Classic Tech Tips Archive

I'll likely be adding a few more categories to better be able to organize my posts. When I started out with this format, I thought nested categories were a good idea. After seeing them in practice, I…

Alright, so you're still reading this series and you're thinking. Look, I'm not protecting national security secrets. All I'm doing is (running a business|emailing my grandkids|using the web for rese…

Before I get things wrapped up, I like to scan rinse and repeat until the scans come up clean. So, this scan of AVG gives a chance to delete the archive entry I mentioned the first pass it took. And …

Brian Krebs at the securityfix has a good article for those that are getting a new pc for Christmas (or those that know someone who is.) He has a nice outline of setting up limited privilege user acc…

There are a couple of stories out about the Santa IM worm, otherwise known as IM.GiftCom.All. First up Sans has some interesting analysis of it. It appears that it's being hosted at 69.56.129.67, whe…

Details of a vulnerability in Apple's Quicktime and iTunes reported at betanews.com. Secunia also has an advisory. It is listed as moderately critical and affects the current version of both quicktim…

Still running the qemu image (and downloaded another image from the freeoszoo while I was waiting for the installer.) Anyway... I've turned my attention to mythtv and since it's the same version went…

In a small, trusted network you might be able to get away with weak passwords for file sharing for instance. What's a weak password? Anything you might find in a dictionary. Most people don't realize…

Ok - about 22 or 23 critical updates for Windows ME. I'm suspecting it's never visited the Windows update site. While it's going I make sure that the adware scanners and antivirus scanner get to pull…

This may be the first in a series of several profiles looking at different ways to get published online. The internet has been a disruptive technology for so many industries. Book publishing is one o…

There are lots of ways to get a remote desktop under linux, remote X, nxserver, vnc. One of the problems though is the most common configuration doesn't let you connect to a running desktop session. …

We know that for Windows systems especially antivirus is a must. Up to date antivirus is the MOST important though. So how do the different vendors do in responsiveness and quick antivirus definition…

There are so many "wolves in sheeps clothing" or maybe I should say wolves in sheepdogs clothing... Anyway, so many nasty malware's that pose as protective utilities. Spyaxe, spytrooper, spy sherriff…

A flaw in vmware could allow malicious code to be run on the host machine according to Sunbeltblog and citing VMWare's knowledge base. This is pretty big since this is something that's not considered…

More coverage is being given to the instant messaging worm that poses as a come on for a Santa Claus related site today. The only thing I think that I left out in last nights post was the name of the…

Once more into the breech... Ok you've taken account of the software and services on your pc. The next thing we need to talk about is knowing your network. Do you have any wireless access points? Not…

We don't live in a quiet world, cars, equipment, alarms, fans, tv's radios, etc. etc. etc. We have a very noisy Radio Frequency world as well. All sorts of electronic devices can add to the cacophony…

All right, now it's time to give ad-aware a spin. I like being able to use several spyware scanners to get full coverage and cleaning. Ad-aware and spybot s&d are usually my first two choices. Realiz…

Ok - tv card - no name brand is now working... it was a bttv compatible card but it's always been "strange" for lack of a better word. NOTHING under linux has seemed to correctly detect it. Sometimes…

Things are going to be interesting. A lawsuit has been filed against the three listed above, everyone's favorites.... 180solutions, Direct Revenue, and eXact Advertising. This is coming from the Sunb…

I just happened across The Qemu site and found that qemu v. 0.8.0 has been released *(yesterday). I haven't had a chance to download and try myself, but it looks like the open source virtualization s…

According to Information Week, there's a new IM worm out hitting the MSN, ICQ, Yahoo and AIM networks. It poses as a come on for a Santa Claus site. On visiting the site, users receive an unexpected …

I haven't used yahoo search too much in quite a while, but there is an interesting post in their search blog about Yahoo Shortcuts. An example is typing in !ebay lamps takes you to ebay.com and searc…

You can tell we're in the last 10-12 days of the year when we start seeing all sorts of year end retrospectives, year's in review, countdowns of the top ___ of ___year ending___. Well, spyware has se…

Sunbelt Software has announced the completion of their acquisition of the Kerio Personal Firewall. They've also acquired the Kerio Server Firewall. The products have temporarily been rebranded... We …