Category: security

FACEBOOK Privacy Issue yet again.

Posted onAuthorTruXter2 Comments

FACEBOOK Privacy Issue yet again.

Got this on my Facebook account today. From one of the less techy people on my friends list.
They talked about this coming for some time. Well it’s here.
Privacy issues.

FYI: ALERT* As of yesterday, NEW PRIVACY setting called “Instant
Personalization” that shares data with non-Facebook websites and it is
automatically set to “Enable.” Go to Account >Privacy Settings >
Applications and Websites >Instant Personalization > Edit or
customize Settings, and un-check “Enable”. BTW, if your friends don’t do
this, they will be sharing information about you. PLEASE
POST THIS TO FACEBOOK

One of the downsides is this can and probably will lead to many accounts getting stolen once this is exploited by the curious.
Another thing is, your friends might not fix their stuff because they aren’t worried about it.
Ever get that phone call from a fake debt collector who actually names people you know?
It’s easier than most people think.
There is a scam going on where some people are Calling people and saying that you have a friend who got a loan and used you as a reference and they even say your friend’s name. They tell you that you are responsible for their loan and debt. How do they get your friend’s information? how do they get your name ? How did they get your phone number ?
Look at your privacy settings on facebook. You most likely have your phone number visible to everyone, or friends of friends. All they have to do is get your friend to add them. Then they dig through their friends and see who’s phone number is showing. Another scarier one is they tell you that you got a loan and they mention your friends and family members if you have them categorized.

People, Facebook is not holy ground safe from the evil. Yes you had more safety on myspace. More spam on Myspace, but that is slowly changing now… Isn’t it ?

Look, it’s not just your safety and security and privacy, it is your friend’s safety and privacy. If you feel that it’s just paranoid blah blah, at least change your settings for your friends. but truth is, in the end, you will never know it’s your fault.

Patch Tuesday 10 5 10

Posted onAuthorTech News

Thanks for the .net patch xs 2. but you can keep the silverlight.
Why would they even continue to patch and update that thing? who uses it? is it to stop flash? Stop java?
Useless I tell you.. Useless
Well enjoy your patches, while I patch my peice of junk xp machine at work (actually good computer but our “IT guy” is afraid to evolve) and reduce productivity.

Old Dell Hd In a brand New HP

Thanks for the update. No idea what I will be doing with it. Didn’t really seem like any Security fixes.

Welcome to Zero day 2.0

Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 SP1 on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008 x86 (KB2416447)
Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 and 3.5 SP1 on Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP x86 (KB2418241)
Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 on Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 x86 (KB2416473)

A-Squared Free Is Gone

Posted onAuthorTruXter

Many of us knew of Asquared free. The software that got Emsisoft noticed in Google. It was the best malware scanner out there. Well Emsi found it in their best interest to remove their malware scanner and merge it’s code with their virus scanner. I have no idea how long the virus scanner will be free. I do know the virus scanner / Anti virus was trial for as long as I can remember the company site.

There is another way to still get A-squared free, is by downloading the “emergency kit“. and just run it as a stand alone. The Emergency kit was created for usb use. That I.T. guys can float around the office without having to download and install the software on every single infested computer. Also prevent a virus (during the active infection) from directly attaching it’s self to the malware scanner and crippling it.
I was downloading asquared updates yesterday july 26th 2010 during the day at work. When I got home, it was off the site. I tried to update my home pc but was prompted with a notice of the change and would have to uninstall and that a-squared would no longer scan for me.

By now you understand I got an infection while at work and got spooked by it by the time I got home right? Well I am running the emergency kit. So far found 4 viruses that Norton didn’t find, malware bytes didn’t find and that S&D didn’t find. In fact they all showed I was clean. Even though I got the fake virus scanner prompt on this antiquated operating system (XP).

The Official TruXtertech Toolbar

Posted onAuthorTips Of Tech

Official TruXtertech Toolbar

Got tired of Googling all of the tools I use on a regular basis and decided to put these all in one toolbar.  Since I am of the two I.T. guys at my job, This tool bar will come in super handy.

There are antivirus tools. Virus scanner tools and Search Engine optimization tools.

so now when building website, there is tons of media to listen to and SEo tools to ensure the website being designed is properly optimized and handily ready for Bing, Yahoo and Google to crawl about it.

Grab a copy of this toolbar and see for yourself it is very much useful for Most of your IT needs and wants.

Security Camera Amazement

Posted onAuthorTruXter

Sitting at a Houston Fire Alarm company who also does security systems, I was participating in a webinar from VideoIQ I was surprised at the bag of gadgets they had to show. Due to the agreement of watching the video I can’t tell you much about the innovative ground breaking networking device about to come. Just be certain it will cut short all of the issues you face in many large facilities. So keep watching their site for an update.
I can however tell you about the cameras they have on their site with between 160 gb of storage up to 500 gb storage. They call it “Zero-bandwidth recording” Some cameras are capable of up to 1080p 30fps true HD recording.

This will be a great future for HiTech Fire using VideoIQ products. This is the type of thing that customer want, but do not want to pay for. It is the stuff they wish they had when their  $10 camera takes a fuzzy video and the suspects can not be  identified.

Spy stuff Online

Posted onAuthorTech Review Man

Since we were kids we all had fascinations about spy stuff. We all wanted to find the clues and catch the crook with special secrete hidden devices that observe the criminals. We all wanted to perform surveillance and undercover detective work. Okay maybe that was just my batch of friends. We also wanted to be ninjas so .. lol.

Well I found a site that has some of the coolest equipment for doing such things. They have cameras hidden in Lighters and pens listening devices and all sorts of stuff. This place is actually quite cool. If anything you can look at the site and browse their goodies. It’s cool stuff I tell  you

http://www.spyultimatum.com/

What is a Phishing Scam

Posted onAuthorComputer Tweaker1 Comment

In short, it’s someone who contacts you pretending to be someone else, disguised as well as possible into fooling you into believing this. They will use mail,email phone call, or direct face to face contact. in an email they will make a fake website that looks just like your bank’s website. They will send you an email to their website and the email will look like it came from your bank, they will say “hurry we need you to sign in and change your personal information because we think you have been compromised” or they will tell you to just send them your information. next thing you know, you are out of money and in debt.

This video belongs to another person I liked it so I embedded it. It gets to the point

Beat the Comcast Hijack

Posted onAuthorTruXter1 Comment

Have you seen your computer redirect to search3.comcast.com or search5.comcast.com ? Don’t worry, you do not have a virus. Your web traffic is being filtered. Kind of like if your phone misdials a number, you get a mcdonalds commercial or pepsi commercial. Not cool, right? Read below if you want a better understanding of what that means. A cool fix of the issue is there. If you don’t want to read all of that, scroll to the bottom and look for the bold text “Simplest way I know“. That’s the way for someone looking for the quick fix.

If you do not know by now, Comcast is doing something I can describe as being the same thing they were told not to do. But not calling it what they said they would. They are throttling bandwidth and monopolizing from more than one direction. How?

Ok for starts they are filtering and snooping your internet traffic. You can see proof of this activity if you use Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer, and type in a link that does not work. Now this in no way says that Internet Explorer is any safer than Firefox, in fact it says internet explorer does the same thing but by the works of Microsoft Bing.

If you type a link that should land you to an error/404 page while using Firefox, it takes you to “http://search3.comcast.com” . Now you see I will not actually link that page because the whole reason they send you there is because they actually make money from yahoo search and the advertisements on that page. Of course they affiliate with Yahoo, they tried to use Google as an example to why they should collect money from website owners because of the traffic they send them.

This move they are making is taking money from the pockets of the Firefox developers. The people at Firefox built their browser and hard coded the search to work with their affiliate program with Google, Firefox team did leave you/us the option to change to what ever search engine we want. Most of us just left it to the default page. This of course left motivation and or funding to the Mozilla group so they can keep developing and reaching more people with their creative works. The creative works of a group who is not a corporation with a desire to force us into a specified direction, to better highlight other software bundled with it, like an operating system that came forcefully attached to a crappy browser, (windows? mac? lol you figure it out) but no it was a method of freedom. Firefox was the step away from CompuServe and AOL forced browser and constant blast of advertisements. but now someone has their hooks into the money of Firefox. I have the fix

How to fix this issue is go to MVP’s HOSTS site, download the zip file to your desk top and extract all files in that zip straight to your desktop. Right click the file labeled “hosts” the one with no extension and select “open with” and find your notepad.exe file and open with that.

Scroll down till you see the list of website addresses and the ip address of “127.0.0.1” .

My trick is to make this my top line

127.0.0.1 search3.comcast.com
127.0.0.1 search5.comcast.com

This now ensures that my computer will never go to them again.

It however does not put any money back into the hands of the firefox team, but it does not profit a company who is making money off of me because I pay my bills on time, now they also want to make money off of my searches while some other team created the web browser I am using. I have a fear they will do the same that aol did with netscape, buy it up and crud it out till no one uses it anymore, causing the extinction of one last free field for us to graze in.

Another alternative is to leave Comcast all together. I am not against that really. but of course Comcast has taken every cable provider in the area I live and bought up all of their business. Leaving me no choice but to use them if I use cable. Dsl hub is pretty close, I am sure I can pay the same price for dsl and get cheaper cable with more channle and not be bothered by Comcast. but really, what good would I be in the act of toppling the monopoly of comunistcast ?

Maybe I am the only person who hears Comcast complain about increased internet use, every time they increase their internet user count by buying out another company (and all of their equipment). I mean really , if you are losing money guys, stop buying crap and just ride your profits for a while, let the customers be comfortable, you are scaring us.

but on another note, as an extra twist of the knife, since Comcast is using Yahoo for their search engine affiliate :-)

put this in your hosts file

yahoo.com search3.comcast.com

and then close it, select “save” don’t rename anything.. now from the files you saved to your desktop

locate the one labeled “hosts.bat” double click it. you will see a blue box, hit your space bar one time and you are done.

Now close all browsers and re-open them

now go to

sdhfajdhfasjdkf.com

If it takes you to “http://search3.comcast.com/?cat=dnsr&con=ds&url=www.sdhfajdhfasjdkf.com”

Then something has gone wrong, read again, try again.

There is always open dns, this of course really puts you in the same place but slower internet and someone else is filtering your net usage.

and http://www.webmasterworld.com/firefox_browser/3966582.htm

you can always drop Firefox and go for another browser of the same engine.

K-Meleon browser

It won’t fix your issue but you won’t see comcast filtering your traffic.

Simplest way I know is make your web browser go to yahoo any time some one types in the “search3.comcast.com” term by navigating to this folder with notepad (opened in administrator mode) “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc”
open the file labeled “Hosts” by using notepad in administrator mode.

That will highlight everything in that file.
Now copy this line and add it under everything you see in that hosts file I showed you how to get to.

72.30.2.43 search3.comcast.com

72.30.2.43 search5.comcast.com

Then close all of your browsers and re-open them. and try to go to this web site “search3.comcast.com” or “search5.comcast.com”
instead you will be redirected to yahoo. there . you keep comcast from further profiting on internet usage you already pay for.

 

 

Alternatively you can use a different DNS than the one that comcast provides. and this allows you to not worry about most of the comcast $$ making pages you will land on… because you are no longer 100% in their network. It allows you to use the service of the people that comcast pays to bring the internet to your area.
Primary DNS Server : 4.2.2.2
http://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm
because it works.
crap loads faster and I don’t get that stupid page from comcast when I land on a link.

Windows Update Keeps Re-directing To Google ?

Posted onAuthorGame News3 Comments

Yep this also happened to me. While at work. AT WORK !!! sorry had to say it like it is supposed to be said, yelling.
Now at my job, I am not “The Tech Guy”. I am the drawings and images guy. I mean I know plenty, but they already have a “resident nerd” and well, he is pretty good at it. So by my wandering around on the internet doing things “my way” and stumbling into an ” Oh dang!” moment isn’t the best thing for my career. First warning was ” Microsoft is ready to install Explorer 8″ Yep you guessed it, I installed it . Not thinking one time that I was on Firefox the whole time.
Ok I started with the on board Symantec end point. It caught either 8 viruses , or the same virus kept trying to rescue it’s self. lol I have no idea, I was panicking and hurrying , I saw the word ” Trojan” in the pop up warning from Symantec, and freaked out. I decide I better go check Windows update site and see if I ever downloaded Internet Explorer 8, The page would not load, I run to another computer on the network and all is fine, I head back to mine, still nothing. So I headed to the first place I could think of. Bitdefender’s online malware scan. It never lets me down. Well this time it surely did. I take it up a notch and head to “Malware Bytes” and start doing a search in Google and search the term “windows update takes me to Google” and started reading all the people praying and begging for help. The ever so faithful “tech guy forums” turned up an unanswered request for help, wow that was surprising. After about 45 minutes of reading, I find nothing (well I actually found the right thing but over looked it like 10 times) and malware bytes is done scanning, It found nothing, nothing at all, I try and update it, will not let me, along with anything else I tried to scan with.
So now I break out A-squared, not the worst thing in the line up for sure, but it did not find anything either. Ok now I am feeling like I am losing my mind. Well as this is going on I am still reading threads in forums about the issue. I go back to this thread . The first link in the first and only response, well tried that. Second link I click it it takes me to Super AntiSpyware. First thought is ” Well crap, this place looks like it’s just going to make the issue worse. I figured that it really couldn’t get much worse if I scan the file first. So I wander off to the download area for the free version. All was fine until I get to the point that I actually try and download it. Another dead link.. “hmmm, the link is dead, it is blocked, it must be what I need” is exactly what I thought. Ok also another thing about that name, just kept making me think about power rangers. It really sounded like the slogan from some kid’s show “super anti-spyware free trial go team action go!!!” is what I kept saying and giggling.
I walked over to another one of the computers in the office and download the file and slip it onto an open space on the server.
Walk back to my computer and here comes the I.T. guy, just in time. I let him fumble through it like I did. He made a lot of the assumptions I did at first, I walked away to the store next to the office and get a soda while he does exactly what I did. I get back into the office and there he is, lol just like me.. Reading the forum posts for a second time. We agreed that super action malware scanner was the way to go. Well we install it while Spybot S&D or something was finishing it’s scan.
We reboot to safe mode administration by pressing F8 after the bios scan, just before the windows logo. Yes I was just sitting there hitting the F8 button repeatedly till I got the boot menu.
In administration mode we ran the quick scan. Within seconds it finds 3 Trojans and a dns changer, by the end of the scan Super AntiSpyware found two root-kits and two registry key modifications.
We rebooted after the scan and checked to see if Microsoft Windows Update worked, all was fine but still could not update any of the virus scanners. So we reboot to safe mode administrator, and do the full scan. Nothing came up.

So far not all of the issues are resolved, I will go through my “hosts” file and see if there are any changes there. Probably not but hopefully there are. I know how to change that. and I will add the link that I got the file from in the first place to the list of blocked sites. I may even email a heads up to the guys from mvp’s hosts file website (google it).
This is the help I have for you. I hope it works for you. Heck I’m going to run that goofy named program on my home pc now and see what it finds. http://www.superantispyware.com/
Hope it helps you get un-hijacked. I promise that program actually works, just the name is stupid and their web designer is cheesy.

Also that “Google” page I kept getting redirected to was not regular google. it was an affiliate page. Google English. So the freak was making money off of each search we did while we tried to resolve the issue.  Google needs to ban that account.

China Put’s Computer Users at Risk

Posted onAuthorTech News

Ok the simple skinny break down.

China decides that it will crank down harder on it’s people’s internet usage by mandating an installed software  that allows the government to snoop and monitor people’s usage.

Looks like everyone is hard at proving that the software can be reverse engineered and then software can be created to manipulate the usage of said software for malicious use, or theft. Yes the software is meant for a filtering system , to reduce the people of china from seeing specific things, but it also is set for checking and double checking for modifications.  Let’s call this a true

Zero Day Notification.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8094026.stm