THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA

This time of year, people have a ton of out of office messages and they don't realize how much they 'leak' good social engineering information about their offices [or even a lot of funny information]

This was suggested as one way to combat the OOF messages that end up on listserves:

Microsoft Exchange Server: Suppressing Out-of-Office Generation:
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/techinfo/tips/mailtip01.asp

The point is that OOF messages are not automatically set up to go outside the domain.  Exchange, by default, does not send them out the domain.

Why are they a security issue?  Because they disclose information that could be used to do Social Engineering in a firm.  Thus ensuring that only those people that NEED the information about out of office should get it.

To be honest with you, with my Audiovox 5600 Cell phone, I'm hardly out of touch to need a "Out of Office Message"

And the first clue that this should be suspect is that on the card it says "Visit our website by typing into the address in your browser bar, do not use a seach engine to find the site"  Hmmm...now that's interesting that they say to type in the address and not use a search engine....

Maybe it's because the "word of mouth" out there is that this is a scam?

So what are the clues this is bogus?

1. The car dealership that Dad got this from isn't a major car dealership but one of the "sub" dealerships
2. The fact that they wanted us to just go to the site and not use a search engine

When getting these too good to be true offers... remember that they ARE too good to be true.

We have to get a case to protect it...and we're surfing on http://www.vajacases.com/ for a case to do it justice.  She was going to get one with a hook on it rather than a normal "knob" thing that hooks into a belt clip because we find in Cell phones that that "knob" holder will weaken over time and the cell phone ends up dropping on the ground.

I don't think we want a video ipod to drop on the floor.  Our gang at the office likes the sideways cases that the Audiovox 5600 has as they don't get popped off the belt loop when the person sits down.

...and he's saying that he's predicting many more things on the net.... but he reminds us that searching the 'net should be the 'start' of our research, not the end of our search.  Another interesting concept is 'net neutrality' where the Internet pipe won't be limited by what it's transmitting.  It reminds me of how I take it for granted that I can find an ISP to give me a business connection to let me do what I want and need to do.  Vint Cert argued that the Internet is what it is because it was not limited by what people did with it.  That the best ideas comes from people who just do stuff on the web and are not limited by what they can and can't do.

He talked about when the Internet first started there was a single hosts.txt file that kept track of the connected systems....but that they realized that it was too cumbersome to keep it up to date all the time.....

...my a lot has changed hasn't it?

As always, Vlad comes to the rescue with the SBSShow.  It features Eriq Neale about the latest book in the SBS family, "SBS Unleashed".

(with the caveat that I wrote two chapters in the book so, as usual I'm going to be a smidge biased here)

Someone asked in the blog yesterday as to why they needed this one if they already had the others, well, for one, if you have, or are thinking about adding ISA 2004 to your product line up, this is definitely the book on that as no other book has the "ISA Diva" Amy Babinchak in it.  Then, it has Eriq's own Mac integration specialties in the book.  There's no other 'interop' book in the market.  So if you have that one client with a Mac, or are starting to get questions about adding Macs to your SBS network, this will be your bible.  It's got a chapter on patching and WSUS which isn't in any other book, that I think, to get ready for R2 that will have WSUS in it.

But listen to Vlad's show as to why, I think, that one can never have enough SBS books. 

We welcome Sam the SBS Server to our blog for a special Christmas interview....

Q.  Hi Sam, Merry Christmas!

A.  Merry Christmas to you!

Q.  So are you ready for the holidays?

A.  Just having my owner take an offsite backup, log files look good, disk space very nice, daily email says I'm looking good.

Q.  Sweet!

A.  So you have your Christmas shopping done/

Q.  Uh..no... I think I might have to see if there's any late online bargains as I have a few folks to shop for.

A.  Online shopping is cool...

Q.  Yeah, so Sam, I'll let you lead this interview as I think you said you wanted to wish some folks a Merry Christmas"

A.  Yes I do.  There's some very special folks out there that I'd like to take the opportunity to thank.  First off, right back to SeanDaniel.com I'd like to wish a Merry Christmas to the fine hardworking folks that gave birth to me, the SBS Product Team.. 

Q.  They are a pretty cool bunch of folks, aren't they?

A.  Yes they are.  Then there are the gang of the SBSPodcast team.  Man they have really rocked this year with all of their hard work and expertise that they have been giving to the community.  So much so that I've heard some folks say that they wished other teams did the same thing and provided the deep technical dive like they do.

Q.  That is an excellent resource isn't it?

A.  Oh, no kidding. 

Q.  You have other podcasts done about you, right?

A.  Yup, Vlad Mazek, Chris Rue and Susanne Dansey have been hosting a wonderful SBS podcast called SBSShow.com.  So good in fact that the two shows on Disaster Recovery even got a shout out on a SANS.org newsletter.

Q.  Wow.... that's really cool!

A.  No kidding.  Then I'd like to really wish all the Microsoft partners that either have already stepped up to the plate and gotten the Small Business Specialist credential or are in the process of getting that.  Knowing that there are folks that want to indicate to their customers that they specialize in Small Business is really cool.

Q.  You have a lot of great community members as well.

A.  Oh, no kidding ...from Eric Ligman and the gang at Mssmallbiz.com to all the the guys and gals of the TS2 community, I hope that everyone realizes all the really cool energy of all of these groups that support the Microsoft Partners.  Now I must admit that I'm based in the USA, so I don't know all the cool people all over the world, but the ones I know locally here are really cool.

Q.  You even have international partner groups don't you?

A.  Oh yes, it's pretty amazing, I have folks around the world at www.sbsgroups.com.  Much of this energy started from the Community that came out of www.smbnation.com and it keeps growing and growing.

Q.  It is pretty amazing how world wide your SBS family is isn't it?

A.  Yes it is, I have people around the world that care for me and watch out for me, from Marie in Charlotte to Wallace and the gang in Shanghai, I have a worldwide community of folks that take care of me. but remember you get all of this if you are registered Microsoft Partner.

Q.  Does that cost?

A.  On no, that's a free sign up to all those resources and benefits.

Q.  Oh wow.

A.  Yeah it's pretty amazing....there are just so many people that do so much out here... I just know I'm going to forget someone, so consider this a 'Thanks" and "Happy Holidays" to all of my community members out here all around the world!  Happy Holidays to all!

Q.  You do have an impressive community out here.

A.  I do indeed......so I'd better let you get on with your Christmas shopping... hey ...what are you doing?

Q.  Uh... I was going to use you for some online shopping.  Mind if I borrow your Internet Explorer and do some online shopping?

A.  Yes I mind, very much so.... you know the rules, you don't surf on me. You've got your own laptop that you've got Internet access to that I've given you rights to, you know better than to use me to surf on.

Q.  Oh... yeah....sorry... uh... sorry Sam... Merry Christmas Sam.

A.  and a Happy Holidays to you and all of the folks that care about me....

The SBS Unleashed book is now out, but I still haven't gotten mine from Amazon.com.  (With the disclosure that I wrote two chapters in this book) If you are building a SBS 2003 sp1 box 'today', this is the one...the only one in fact that covers SBS 2003 sp1 and does it justice.

There were so many times as I was reading the chapters that I kept saying...Oh I didn't know that....Not sure if it's in bookstores yet...and I know that I haven't gotten it from Amazon yet.

I've been building some virtual boxes lately for testing purposes and I gotta say that first off I'm more comfortable with Vmware than VPC.  I'm a subscriber to the VMWare subscriber bundle and have used the Vmware virtualization products longer.  But due to some issues I had where Vmware was not liking the version of a DVD encoder program, I downloaded VPC to try that.  Now either I set up something wrong, but the installing and loading of the operating system on VPC versus VMware is vastly different in my experience.  VMware was nearly like a real machine install with an average of about 2.5 hours... whereas Virtual PC... I swear it sat at 9 minutes to go for about an hour.

After I got the security update for VMware and the update for the DVD encoder software, VMware worked a lot better and I'm back to that platform to build my virtual machine.  Once you build an image, I'd make sure you back it up and snap an image so that you can reuse it without having to go through the hours of building that server.

View Recording

Recording Details

    Subject:              Patching your network - how to get started
    Recording URL:        https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/winserver_usergroup/view
    Recording ID:         B3H4JQ
    Attendee Key:         N"}P_8b

If you want the slide deck, it's at www.sbslinks.com/WSUS/WSUS.ppt 

Microsoft and Computer Security in 2005: Real progress was made by Microsoft and its industry partners in 2005.:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/dec05/12-21Security2005WrapUp.mspx

Forget that Diet: Microsoft Encourages Consumers to Resolve to be More Secure Online in 2006: Q&A: Amy Roberts of Microsoft’s Security Technology Unit discusses the “Protect Your PC in 2006” resolution and other Microsoft consumer-security efforts.:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/dec05/12-20Security.mspx

--------------------------

As we close the year... think of your security related issues in 2004 versus 2005

How was your year?

Better?
Worse?
Why?

(and please comment to the blog as I'd love to see your thoughts)

You Had Me At EHLO... : Intelligent Message Filter Updates:
http://blogs.technet.com/exchange/archive/2005/12/14/416070.aspx

How to update the Intelligent Message Filter version 2 in Exchange Server 2003 SP2:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;907747

...okay ... I gotta say this about the features and functions in Exchange 2003 sp2....

I gotta reghack myself up to 75 gigs.... I have to manually enable IMF..... now I have to manually enable updates though the registry?

Exchange team?  Do you not like gui or something?  What's up with the registry hacking in that platform for this stuff?  I'm a GUI gal... I got a decent video card in the server.  Why not use it and build something more GUI to support this? 

And ... where is this detailed in a downloadable release notes on the web?  I only have one Exchange server and the fact that I have to load it [and it's not uninstallable mind you] in order to get to the online only help file I think is asking a lot of us SBSers ... at least those of us who'd like to read and understand before deploying it on our one and only Exchange server.

You need to listen to this podcast and check out the articles on Vladville.com regarding Spam prevention

The Official SBS Support Blog : Inside SBS Episode #13 - Spam Prevention on SBS 2003:
http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2005/12/20/416320.aspx

You know the other day when Mr. Murphy visited my firm and the boss didn't have access to CompanyWeb?  Chad thinks I might have done this to myself by cleaning up the Sharepoint templates out of my "Shared Workspace" contact section.  You see I didn't like those templates showing up in my Live Communication Server fed contact list so I took them out... in doing so... we think I broke the wizard template that adds a user automagically to Companyweb.  I'll be setting up a couple of new users and we'll see if this is indeed what I did.

So I'm trying to build a new VMware version of a SBS 2003 sp1 image to play with as I build the old version too small... so I go to clean up my old images and I deleted the vmware images... and I go to build a new one with a larger drive space and every time I get to a certain spot it blows up on me... not blue screen mind you... but total power off black screen.

Microsoft Online Crash Analysis - response:
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/response.aspx?SGD=3405b86d-cd0f-4bc4-9c86-053d10474daf&SID=234

And I've just downloaded InterVideo 7 but that doesn't seem to be helping...oh well... maybe I'll try vpc or something.... what's weird is how it worked before when it was a 8 gig virtual SBS, but now that I'm trying to make it a 20 gig virtual SBS it keeps blowing up.

Oh well... I always have my spare baby server that I can load this up on if need be....

Windows SharePoint Services components may be deleted after you reinstall the Intranet component of Windows Small Business Server 2003 SP1:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;909988

Look at this... it's our first automagically deployed SBS critical patch... isn't that COOL!  Do you realize how long and far we've come from the day I sat across from folks and explained to them how patching was one of the worst things I did on the SBS 2000 box?  Do you realize how far we've come from when I first read about a 99 page white paper from Jeff Middleton who suggested that patching needed to be done monthly?  Do you realize how far we've come from when Jeff explained the qchain process and the dependancies and how it was a mess?

We've come a long long way.....and yes.. that patch is SBS approved [pretty obviously SBS approved since it's specifically for us]

So the Eriq Neale SBS Unleashed book shows up today and I'm flipping through the pages...which looks really cool by the way.... and she reads the title  "SBS 2003 Unleashed" and she says......

"SBS 2003?   Isn't that old?"

I nearly started laughing....this is something that we had talked about that the VAR/VAP would get but the business owners' wouldn't.  They don't get that a book called SBS 2003 Unleashed that is based on SBS 2003 sp1 is 'indeed' the latest book on the latest version of that operating system.  That it is the most up to date.  There are times that mere words make a customer get a view of the product.... and right now ...my sister thinks I bought an old book.  :-)

Mr. Murphy lost today... I got my workstation fixed...it was the WEIRDEST thing as the login for the person having the problem was not working with the right permissions to companyweb.  And I checked the default web permissions....and I reset the users permissions...and I..... well I checked everything but the right thing.

For some reason this user was not an authorized user at all for Companyweb.  Binu opened up a live meeting/shared session and drilled down in the Sharepoint Companyweb Console....and there.... buried under there was the fact that that one user was not set up as a Sharepoint user.  Now how that happened.... I have no clue.....

But just goes to show you ....

If you've

• Checked user permissions
• Checked the web site permissions
• Checked that it works for another user

Go to another workstation, log in as that user and if that doesn't work...double check and make sure that the user is set up to to access Sharepoint as a user in the first place under the Sharepoint console.... it could be something as dumb as just that....