NETGEAR Launches Open Source WGR614L Wireless-G Router
Monday, June 30th, 2008NETGEAR Launches Open Source WGR614L Wireless-G Router
Nough said. I’ll be getting these exclusivly from now on as long as netgear has them out.
Archive for the ‘Tech Tips’ Category
Vista can be literally told to delete files…MS says it’s ok not to worry
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007Oh this takes the cake. Talking about an exploit you can drive a truck through. The funny part is..it’s able to be very easily done. I have to post this one in full:
Vista has speech recognition hole
Microsoft has admitted that speech recognition features in Vista could
be hijacked so that a PC tells itself to delete files or folders.
Vista can respond to vocal commands and concern has been raised about malicious audio on websites or sent via e-mail.
In one scenario outlined by users an MP3 file of voice instructions was used to tell the PC to delete documents.
Microsoft said the exploit was “technically possible” but there was no need to worry.
The firm has pointed out that in order for the flaw to be exploited the
speech recognition feature would need to be activated and configured
and both microphone and speakers would have to be switched on.
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There are also additional barriers that would make an attack difficult
Microsoft security researcher
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“The exploit scenario would involve the speech recognition feature
picking up commands through the microphone such as ‘copy’, ‘delete’,
’shutdown’, etc. and acting on them,” a Microsoft security researcher
wrote on the team’s official blog.
Some Vista users have already tested the exploit and
were able to delete files and empty the trash can so that the documents
were not retrievable.
Microsoft has said that even if the machine was primed
to accept voice commands it would be unlikely the user would not be in
the room to hear the file with malicious instructions being played.
The firm also said that voice commands could not be
used for privileged functions such as creating a new user or formatting
a drive.
“There are also additional barriers that would make an
attack difficult including speaker and microphone placement, microphone
feedback, and the clarity of the dictation,” wrote the Microsoft
researcher.
While speech recognition was a feature of Windows XP, in Vista the use has been widened.
“While we are taking the reports seriously and investigating them
accordingly I am confident in saying that there is little if any need
to worry about the effects of this issue on your new Windows Vista
installation,” said the researcher.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/6320865.stm
So this means when you walk away form your vista machine you really need to either unplug your mic or turn off your speakers. yOu also can’t use the software mixes in vista as i’m sure a trojan wil be developed that will first turn on voice recognition, then turn on the mic and then turn on the speakers and then playback a file telling the machine to start deleting things. New security procedure for vista:
walk away form computer
turn off speakers or unplug or use the mics hardware switch to mute it or turn off the machine
A cheap way to get Vista
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007For home users you should only consider Vista Home Premium. Why? Vista home basic is even more stripped down than XP Home. There’s an interesting way to avoid paying so much money to Microsoft for Vista…install the upgrade version on a blank hard drive without any other versions of windows present. . Impossible? nopers. Here’s how you do it:
1. Boot with the Windows Vista Upgrade DVD.
2. Click “Install Now.” NOTE: during the install delete all of your partitions and then reformat the drive after recreating the partition.
3. Do not enter a Product Key When prompted.
4. When prompted, select the Vista product edition that you do have.
6. Install Vista normally.
7. Once the install is complete, restart the DVD-based Setup from within Windows Vista. Perform an in-place upgrade.
8. Enter your Product Key when prompted.
I am going to add one more thing to this…format your drive before trying this. I have a feeling Vista will search the hard disk for a previous installation and if it finds it it might invalidate that key forever since upgrading xp to vista invalidates that xp license forever.
RHEL 4U4(Centos 4.4) kernel issues with memory
Monday, November 6th, 2006For some reason Red Hat can’t leave the memory timing in the kernel be. Every so often one of the kernel releases causes an issue similar to what is being seen here.
The fix I have used every time to fix Red Hat’s “I’m not going to give cache memory back like i should issue”?
edit /etc/sysctl.conf
add vm.swappiness=0
run sysctl -p
Do all of this as root. So far this has always forced the mahcine to start digging into file cahce isntead of defaulting to swap. RH 2.4.x kernels do this a ton and tuning swap usage is quite involved. With 2.6.x it can be(and usually is) much easier.
The Nuclear Option: When to Use it on Any Computer
Thursday, April 6th, 2006? Wiping an infected computer is best for any OS | George Ou | TechRepublic.com
This is spot on. If the system is compromised the only way to ensure it’s clean is to nuke it. That is why you backup and backup often. Unless you can say without a doubt you have checksums of every file before and after the compromise was detected there’s no way to be sure if the system is truly clean..this is most true if the system is rooted.
Now mind you some operating systems are more prone to be taken over than others..but the premise is the same. If the machine is rooted the only way to insure cleanliness is to wipe it and start from ground zero. Then you have to verify all of your backups from your last known clean one for compromise.
Firefox Memory Leak Called a “Feature”. I Call it Wasteful.
Monday, February 20th, 2006As much as I like Firefox..this decision was brain dead. Firefox caches your tabs data in memory. It then tries to cache 4 -8 levels deep PER TAB in ram. I have watched Firefox use 250 megs or more. I found two tweaks. Both of them chop the amount of memory Firefox uses. Unless you are on dialup you do not need memory caching of webpages and linked pages. Here’s how you kill it:
in your address bar type about:config
find browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers
double-click it and change the number to zero.
The next one further reduces Firefox’s piggishness:
find the setting browser.cache.memory.enable
double-click it to switch it to false if it says true.
restart firefox.
next mission..pare down thunderbird’s ram usage.
*UPDATE* the browser.cache.memory.enable setting turned off it turns out is breaking scripts that apparently MUST cache results into ram. Use this setting with caution.
Nuke Old Drivers
Thursday, February 2nd, 2006Removing unused device drivers from Windows XP machines
I found this on makezine.com. It turns out that ghost devices(remember that nightmare in windows 9x?) are still present in 2k and xp. I have tried it here under my 2k machine and was astonished at the stuff still loading. Time to clear out the rest of my winders machines. Any ghost entries will be greyed out. However make sure there is a non-greyed out duplicate before you nuke it if it is like an ipod since you’ll nuke your ipod doing this if it is disconnected and you are not paying attention.
When you install a device driver on a Windows XP machine, the operating system loads that driver each time the computer boots regardless of whether the device is present–unless you specifically uninstall the driver. This means that drivers from devices that you have long since removed from your system may be wasting valuable system resources.
Follow these steps to view and remove these unnecessary device drivers:
1. Press [Windows] [Break] to bring up the System Properties dialog box.
2. Select the Advanced tab and click the Environment Variables button.
3. Click the New button below the System Variables panel.
4. In the New System Variable dialog box, type devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices in the Variable Name text box and 1 in the Variable Value text box.
5. Click OK to return to the System Properties dialog box and then click OK again.
6. Select the Hardware tab and click the Device Manager button.
7. In Device Manager, go to View | Show Hidden Devices.
8. Expand the various branches in the device tree and look for the washed out icons, which indicate unused device drivers.
9. To remove an unused device driver, right-click the icon and select Uninstall.