January 2007 - Posts
Most administrators use the command prompt to run administrative tasks.
The problem is that if you are using Vista, opening the CMD will not allow you to run
commands as an administrator(unclear to me as to why couldn't they simply let the UAC
take care of it).
To solve this you could start the CMD using a shortcut with RUNAS, a better solution
though is creating a shortcut for CMD and setting the check box by the 'Run as administrator'
(Properties>Advanced).
As I am getting familiar with Vista I was very surprised to find that the
Telnet client is not preinstalled with the OS and it has to be added by:
1. Click Start and go to the Control Panel
2. Select Programs and Features
3. Select Turn Windows features On or Off.
4. Check the Telnet Client option and click OK
Finding files in Vista is greatly enhanced. At this stage I don't want to get into the technical
details of how it works yet I would like to focus on the results: You can find anything in Vista
and fast!
At first I found it odd that when I open the Start menu I can write directly into a search
box. Slowly it grew on me.
When searching several options will narrow down the results you receive:
- Prefixing the search with a(or several) criteria you want to use:
size>10mb bigdocument
rating:<*** U2
- The use of natural language (needs to be turned on by going to Organize>Folder and Search Options>
Search[Tab]>Use natural language search
files created today
My first example includes tags (e.g. size,rating). These tags stem from the column heading in Explorer,to view
all of them simply right click a heading and choose the 'More' options from the list...
For the full details take a look at the Windows Vista team blog.
Ok,so the cops weren't really chasing me...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2D9S4Bybfs
By providing a keychain device to PayPal users and additional layer of security will be put in
place. The layer will be in the form of a randomly created password that will be visible on the
device(in addition to the standard password) that will be needed to access the account:
In a previous post I have discussed the subject of vulnerabilities market-the subject comes
up again. It seems that companies currently have programs that will pay people who discover
vulnerabilities in OTHER companies products.
To me this raises several ethical questions:
1)Why pay for vulnerabilities?
It is possible to claim that anything done towards exposing flaws(thus warning the
users and obligating the vendor to fix it) is a good thing.
On the other hand doesn't this cause people to look for these flaw with renewed and added
vigor? And once these people do find a flaw,who will they sell it to,a company that offers a few
thousands of dollars or to a group of people that are willing to put up 50k?
2)Why does a vendor offer to pay for vulnerabilities in another vendors product?
The fact that the company offering to pay for the vulnerability is not the company that is
the owner of the product seems to be somewhat odd in my eyes. It is obvious that the owner
of a product would prefer to lower the tone regarding security flaws discovered in it's own
products, thus frowning upon such initiatives. Yet at times, it seems that the eagerness of companies to
help other companies by disclosing security flaws in their products is not driven by their
will to help the products users but by something else(gloat?).
And as usual, you have the opposite angle which says that the company offering the money
will disclose all details to the vendor. Yet we all know that the company disclosing the flaw
will want to get the credit and the publicity (if it is a serious issue the publicity will be huge).
Wouldn't it be "nicer" if the company would disclose the information without requesting the credit and
without creating a fuss around it?
3)Leave it in the dark?
No software is perfect. Flaws will exist in every piece of software and it does not matter
how much effort is invested in preventing them. Considering the fact that currently the new
trend is to target applications and not necessarily the OS we will see a huge amount of
flaws(in my opinion) being discovered in pieces of software that we haven't really given much
thought to.
It can be claimed that a large number flaws will never will be exploited as they will never be
discovered. In other words unless the flaw is published no one would have used it. Considering
the fact that most of the applications(not the OS) do not have a standard update facility yet,
and due to old habits users may not pay as much attention to them perhaps leaving hidden
vulnerabilities alone may not be a bad idea.
Yet, letting the sun shine on them will obligate the vendors to develop patching mechanisms
and the users to actually use these mechanisms.
The major challenge in creating a mechanism for patching is that each vendor will have a different,
non-standard mechanism. This will be very inconvenient for the user community-enter tools that analyze
a system and provide patches for all software installed...
Every story has three sides:Mine,yours and the truth. I think that this is the case with our
subject,and consider it-building a tool to update all software on a system may not be a bad
idea...
As the release of Vista is coming up Microsoft has lanced a site on which people
can share their digital media. The site is accordingly named(considering the marketing
slogans):
www.showusyourwow.com/
The depth of the DNS tree is limited to 127 levels and each node can be comprised of up to 63 characters...
Couldn't have made it through the day without this information.
The most common reason for such a question to come up is security.
TCP/UDP ports are virtual windows on the walls that represent your computer.
If a perpetrator would like to gain access to your system he would do such using one
such window.
We might close all those windows (and it is advisable to do so when accessing the
Internet, by using a firewall that blocks direct access to the ports on your system),
yet due to their nature there may be times when you would like to allow access to your
system (hosting a website on your system or simply sharing files among systems).
Another important facet of the issue is that once a system is penetrated by a perpetrator
he might want to call his friends and have a party or in other words a malicious software
might open a port and allow access to others(publish your IP and port on an IRC channel).
Better yet,if you are infected by a virus, it might be using your system to scan for other
systems that might be vulnerable while striving to infect them.
How can we check who exactly is opening windows on our systems?
The best way to do this is to verify which process has opened a specific port.
If the process is familiar you are OK yet if you identify a process which you can not
account for you may be in trouble.
The following methods can be used to match open ports to processes:
- Windows XP and higher- use the NETSTAT -O command
- Pre XP- Download a neat tool called FPORT from Foundstone (McAffe)
Once you have the output you can simply Google the process names to determine their roles.
If you do this from time to time it possible to track behavioral changes and easily track down
unknown open ports on a system.
If you don't know Sysinternals you are in trouble. Sysinternals provide a bunch of small yet
very useful applications. One such example is 'Process Monitor'- if you need to find which
process is locking/accessing a file it is perfect.
Sysinternals was acquired by Microsoft in July 2006,this is their new website:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx
I can't really say what happened since I don't understand it yet it works,so I guess that is important.
After losing one memory bank on my system(one of two 1GB sticks) and forgetting about it
I was awakened when my virtual machines would not start...Now looking for 133 memory sticks
is quite a challenge but I found a few that might be good.
So I tried to install it, two new sticks...system counts the memory and verifies it and then simply
freezes...I replace the old stick,it works...
I put the old one and then new one together-doesn't work(which is logical).
Switched between the slots and presto...two memory sticks from different manufacturers
with different speeds and it works...
Why ask questions...