Geek Stuff category archive

Kelly Martin has a fascinating article on “botnets” in Security focus:

What is a botnet? Today it’s an illegal collection of hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of compromised computers all being controlled with a common infrastructure. There’s even one case where a real botnet was found with about 1.5 million machines under one person’s control. Incredible. According to Symantec’s latest Internet Threat Report, 26% of all bot-infected computers are also located in the United States – making it the number one source of bots. These are most often home computers with viruses or web servers with buggy software that are compromised and then linked together for evil purposes. They’re usually controlled from a central location as well, providing a single point of failure, but as peer-to-peer botnets are developed the ability to fight this evil will certainly change.

If you don’t care about securing your computer, you ought to. Or you are part of the problem.

And once you do, you should read this article. It contains a lot of information in a small space.

With a tip of the hat to El Reg.

MS Outlook is the chosen email application for my new employer.

I have always avoided MS Lookout and Lookout Depress. I sort of have this thing about inviting viruses and trojans into my house.

I don’t do it. I like to practice safe hex.

When I AOL’d, I used the AOL offline email feature and it worked just fine. Then for a while, I used AOL’s IMAP client, AOL Communicator. It didn’t work too well with AOL 9, so I switched to Eudora, which works just fine with POP3 and IMAP mail systems. I liked it so much I bought a subscription. I tried Pegasus, which I really liked, but getting it to work with AOL IMAP was too much of a challenge for me.

Then I centralized all my personal email in Opera and haven’t looked back, even as I moved from Windows to Linux, even though KMail and Pine are wonderful programs.

At work, before the change, we used Lotus Bloats Notes; we used server-side, so it was slow, but the IS Manager at my previous employer wouldn’t let Outlook or MS Exchange on his servers on a bet. He also sort of has this thing about viruses and trojans too.

The reason my new employer is using Lookout is that a good portion of the staff–persons working out of home offices–already were using it. I think that’s a good business reason for choosing it, and I also think that using a standardized email client makes sense for a business.

But jeez oh man what a crappy program. It even looks and feels tinny.

And this morning it just stopped receiving mail. Nothing changed between when I logged off last night and when I logged on this morning. It just decided not to work. A reboot brought it back to life, but, honestly, real computer programs don’t act like that.

MS Outlook. Email for Lamer$ A less than desirable option.

The lease is up on the computers I use in my training classes and that my employer uses in trade shows. Eight new laptops arrived, so one of my colleagues and I had fun today getting them ready.

They did not come with Windows software installation CDs. Dell may be the last company that actually provides installation, as opposed to “recovery” CDs.

These did not even come with “recovery” CDs. They came with the capability of burning “recovery” CDs. We did that once. Six CDs..

But we don’t need recovery. We need disk images. One each for the different training classes we conduct. So this is how we prepared them:

Create a new D:\ partition with Partition Magic.

Configure the C:\ drive as desired:

Set the Windows Explorer options to show hidden files, not hide file extensions, show the full path in the address bar.

Remove a bunch of stupid stuff from the menu (such as MSN Messenger).

Install Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Install two printer drivers.

Mute the speakers.

Set up logon passwords.

Create an image of that configurati:on, saving it to the D:\ drive.

So, now, whenever we need to start the computers from scratch for a new class or a new sho, we simply restore the image from D:\, overwriting C:\, and we are ready to start again.

Boy, I love messing with computers.

Who remembers Microsoft Bob?

One person? That’s one more than bought it.

The Register seems to think that Origami, the current Microsoft ballyhoo, is another Bob (please follow the Origami link–it’s spectacularly pretentious):

Microsoft’s ‘Origami’ is no more than a new user interface for a tablet PC – Intel’s mini-tablet form factor Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC), to be precise. Intel showed several machines it described as prototypes and reference platforms at its developer forum this week, and we have pictures.

Wintel has been trying to make this kind of computer a success for 15 years, dating back to the WinPad, and Bill Gates hinted at a reborn Tablet almost a year ago. But small PCs have proved to be a graveyard for manufacturers.

(snip)

In San Francisco this week, Intel’s mobile products vice president Sean Maloney used Nokia’s 770 Linux tablet to show how one needed “the full Web” – which apparently only runs properly on a Wintel x86 device. The UMPC uses the same 800 x 480 screen resolution, but it’s a lot bigger, having to house an Intel processor. Nokia’s tablet is $350.

Oh, yeah, and did I mention? Linux rocks.

A sentence:

A Florida man was sentenced Wednesday to eight years in prison in a computer theft case involving more than 1 billion records that Acxiom Corp., a data-management company, collected in its work for large corporations.

Scott Levine, 46, of Boca Raton, Fla., was handcuffed and escorted from the courtroom after U.S. District Judge William R. Wilson sentenced him for the theft of 4,789 computer files.

(snip)

Levine owned Snipermail Inc., a Florida company that distributed Internet ads to e-mail addresses. Prosecutors said Levine, working with others, stole Acxiom records that included names, telephone numbers, street addresses and e-mail addresses.

And an extradition request:

US investigators have requested the extradition of four Nigerians accused of running 419 scams in the Netherlands after the arrest of a gang in Amsterdam and the nearby town of Zaandam earlier this week.

It is the first time the US has asked for the extradition of individuals accused of running 419 scams, a clear sign that authorities want to put an end to these schemes. Convicted scammers can expect hefty jail terms.

And a conviction:

A Nigerian 419er was last Friday jailed for 376 years by a Lagos court for “stealing, forgery, impersonation and conspiracy to obtain money by false pretences” contrary to the Advance Fee Fraud Act, the Nigerian Daily Independent reports.

Harrison Odiawa, 38, aka Abu Belgori, managed to extract $1,939,710 from US national George Robert Blake on the promise of a percentage of a bogus $20.45m Ministry of Health contract. The classic advance fee scam saw a duped Blake transfer the “advance payments” after seeing forged documents – including a certificate of registration with the Corporate Affairs Ministry and the aforementioned forged Ministry contract – which convinced him he was indeed about to get rich. Blake raised the cash from his company, Quest Exploration and Development, and his own personal assets.

And advice on how to practice safe hex. (Yeah, I’ve posted this link before. Personally, I think some of the recommendations are a little extreme, but the overall drift of Art’s approach is excellent.)

Here:

Thanks to The Register.

According to The Register, Google is working on a Linux distro:

Google is preparing its own distribution of Linux for the desktop, in a possible bid to take on Microsoft in its core business – desktop software.

A version of the increasingly popular Ubuntu desktop Linux distribution, based on Debian and the Gnome desktop, it is known internally as ‘Goobuntu’.

Google has confirmed it is working on a desktop linux project called Goobuntu, but declined to supply further details, including what the project is for.

This could be interesting. With Google’s weight behind it, this might be the first serious challenge to Microsoft’s monopo dominance since it crushed OS/2.

I used to run OS/2 when I ran a Bulletin Board. It was a rock-solid operating system–never crashed, never heard of the BSOD or the GPF.

I ran it on a 486 computer with 16 MB of RAM, a real screamer for its day. One day I set out to lock up the computer. I had 16 programs open before it started to complain.

Once I brought the BBS live and treated the computer nice, it never crashed.

Kind of like a Linux box.

.

I went back to Second Source today and spoke with Ken, the owner, and got permission to take pictures of some of the unusual computers I mentioned yesterday.

They are made by Ron Sanderson, of whom the Wilmington News-Journal wrote in 2004 (a link to the story is not available–it’s archived):

At 62, he’s a veteran of modifying all manner of machinery. In 1982, he completed a 15-year restoration of a 1953 Ford Crown Victoria. (It netted him first place in a national competition.) He’s renovated, cleaned and sold nearly 30 Harley-Davidsons, he says. In 1983, he disassembled all but the seat and frame of his Harley within two hours of its purchase and sent the parts out to be chromed. The bike, to which he attached a radar detector and a cigarette lighter, landed him a page in Easy Rider magazine.

His passion now is computer modifications, or “mods,” which are to PCs what hot rods are to cars. First intended to push the speeds of processor chips, mods often were the province of gamers. And as the companies that produce the powerful and expensive graphics cards essential to fluid play started designing cards with sharp colors, gamers intent on showing them off incorporated windows into their PC towers.

His work is also regularly featured at the Newegg.

All the computers shown below are for sale at Second Source:

This one greets you as you enter the store:

And this one’s over by the repair bench:

I’m not sure what the case of this one started as–it looks like something that might have been in a rack of a mainframe or a communications center:

Here’s another view of it:

This one came in with the morning milk:

Bringing new meaning to the term “micro-computer”:

And this one will always keep odors away:

And here’s a view inside the litter box:

Ken told me that Mr. Sanderson also will make computers to order, but that those cost more than the ones on the shelves (makes sense to me). Those that had price tags ran around approximately $499.99.

Disclaimer: My only relationship to Second Source is as an occasional–and satisfied–customer. It’s the place to which I refer any of my friends who need computer repairs, and it’s where we got my younger daughter her first system. Not to mention the motherboard I used for my first motherboardectomy, several keyboards, cables, and other digital miscellany.

I dropped by my local used computer store today, hoping to stumble on a used PCMCIA wireless network card, for when I’m on the road and in a hotel with only a wireless network.

No luck, but I saw some interesting handmade computers. I wish I had had my camera with me; I’d have taken pictures if they gave me permission. They all had CD drives, floppy drives, and everything else needed for a fully functional box.

One was built inside one of those plastic milk carton thingies.

One was in a cardboard carton.

But the ultimate one was in a Tidy-Cat cat litter bucket.

Maybe I’ll run by there tomorrow and see whether they’ll let me take some pictures.

It’s been a month now since I ported my Dell Inspiron laptop over to Linux, and I make progress every day.

Immediately after the installation, I had basic functionality–three browsers and several email application come with Slackware Linux, along with the KOffice Suite and numerous other applications selected by Pat Volkerding, the creator of Slackware, but I quickly downloaded Opera and got it working for email and text newsgroups.

Even before that, I got F-Prot Anti-Virus (which is free for home use) and a firewall working. Whenever I put a computer on the internet, those are my first priorities. I have no intention of running naked through the internet.

I installed Gnome. I don’t use the Gnome interface; I like the look and feel of KDE better, but a lot of the software I use needs libraries (for Windows users, that’s sort of like DLLs) that are part of Gnome.

For binary newsgroups, I went with Pan. To do parity checks on multipart posts, I selected par2cmdline. In Windows, I had been using QuickPar.

To manage split files (*.001, *.002, and so on) I first tried to use HJSplitLX (I have used the Windows version for years), but, despite my having the correct libaries on my machine, it didn’t like me. Then I found KSplit. And, natch, to decode the posts, I downloaded and registered Rar for Linux. Again, I’ve used the Windows version for a long time.

Slackware initially saw both my built-in CD r+w DVD r drive and my external CD r+w DVD r+w drive as plain CD-r drives, but it was the work of only a few minutes and not much Googling to get it to see them as rw drives (the trick is to mount them as SCSI drives–because they are r+w, Linux considers them to be just another type of HDD). I also found a CD/DVD burning program for the K Desktop Environment (KDE) that I really like.

Last weekend, I got Open Office working. OO comes in Fedora, Mandrake, and Suse Linux versions, but not in a plain vanilla Linux version; Slackware is classic Linux, without a bunch of proprietary garbage added to it (I think that’s why I like it). The Open Office Slack Build script converted it into a format that could load in Slackware.

(For you Windows users out there, Open Office also comes in a Windows version; it opens MS Word and other documents flawlessly and also saves in MS Word *.doc format. My son uses it on our Windows computer to do his homework. It gives you a full-featured office suite with an open source license. That means it’s free as long as you observe the terms of the license.)

I also got my printer working. The Lexmark didn’t like Linux, even though Lexmark publishes Linux drivers; I posted a question to the newsgroup, alt.os.linux.slackware and was emphatically told, dump the Lexmark. I didn’t want to, but realized, I also had an Epson attached to the Windows box. So I swapped the Lexmark and the Epson. It works perfectly, just as promised.

Last night, with the help of this webpage, I got my digital camera to mount with Linux. Once again, Linux sees the camera as if it were another HDD and mounts it as a read-only SCSI drive.

To play *.wmv media (Windows Media files), I followed the instructions in this post and grabbed the codecs here. I downloaded the “essential” codec package and put it in /usr/lib/win32 so GXine and Xine could find it. There was no installation required; I simply dropped the files in place.

Left to do:

.

Of course, I’m now stuck with a bunch of excellent Windows software I now longer need. If you’re interest in highgrade Windows utilities and programs, drop me a note.

I did it.

I ported the laptop over to Linux last night.

The laptop is not just a computer. The desktop that Second Son uses to play his games is just a computer. The laptop is mine. You hear me!! Mine!!
ALL MINE!

So I’m going to have a fun weekend making everything work. I’ve got the basics: Opera and F-Prot. Now to make everything else work.

(Update, 11/26/2005)

Both DVD/CD drives work for reading discs. The USB Mouse works. The speakers work.

The firewall works.

The newsfeed and the email work.

Two things left:

Get the CD burning features to work.

Get Open Office loaded (unfortunately, v. 2. right now is just in RPMs, and they need a couple of Gnome libraries I don’t have yet).

(Update. 11/27/2005)

I gave up on xcdroast and got K3B for the K Desktop Environment. It works great.

I also installed PAN and am happily back on Giganews.

Open Office is still not cooperating with me, but I still have KWord to process words. OO came in RPMs, and Slack doesn’t like RPMs all that much. Plus there’s some more Gnome stuff I have to get to make the install work.

Next major task is to get CUPS working.

(Updated 12/4/2005)

I installed Gnome and have all the Gnome libraries.

I have CUPS working and can now print and the USB floppy drive is on line. Two major tasks remain: getting my digital camera to mount and getting HJSplit to work. The minor remaining task is get my USB thumbdrive to mount.

Oh, yeah, Open Office is working, thanks to this script.

Texas and the EFF are suing:

The state of Texas and consumer activist group Electronic Frontier Foundation filed lawsuits Monday against the music giant, alleging that its copy-protected CDs violate laws against spyware and make computers vulnerable to attack.

But The Register doesn’t see any effect on Sony’s bottom line to date:

The only figure that matters – the bottom line – appears to be unaffected by the fiasco. CNet’s John Borland reports, and as retailers confirmed to The Register, that Sony hasn’t lost sales from popular titles infected with the notorious XCP copy-restriction technology.

The poorly written software leaves a PC wide open to hackers, and attempts to remove it can disable the CD drive. Sony Music reluctantly announced a recall and exchange program for XCP-infected CDs last week.

But the rootkit can be easily defeated:

Sony’s controversial DRM technology – which installs rootkit-style software when users play Sony BMG CDs on Windows PCs – can be defeated easily with nothing more than a piece of masking tape, security researchers have discovered.

(snip)

Now analyst house Gartner has discovered that the technology can be easily defeated simply by applying a fingernail-sized piece of opaque tape to the outer edge of the disc. This renders session two — which contains the self-loading DRM software — unreadable.

So that (from the same story in El Reg) . . .

“After more than five years of trying, the recording industry has not yet demonstrated a workable DRM scheme for music CDs,” Gartner concludes.

But (still from the same story) . . . .

Placing gaffer tape on the edge of a CD may make it unbalanced and could cause damage to the disc or (worse) drive as it spins at high speed. A better option, as Reg readers point out, might be to disable Windows autorun.

If only Windows listened when we tried to turn off Autorun!

Meanwhile, Sony has given hackers a ticket to a gold mine:

Hacker websites are using Sony’s DRM uninstaller in an attempt to take over Windows PCs. Under pressure, Sony recently released a tool to remove the rootkit technology installed when users play Sony BMG CDs on Windows PCs. This happened after it was shown Sony’s DRM code (First4Internet XCP program) created a handy means for hackers to hide malware from anti-virus scanning programs.

I’m rebuilding the family computer. Not physically; I’m wiping the box, fdisking and repartitioning the hard drive, and reinstalling everything. It’s got so much junk on it from my son’s web-surfing it’s starting to drag real bad.

So we’re blowing it away and starting over.

I love doing that kind of stuff.

‘Course, if I had my druthers, I’d put Linux on it, but then my some of my son’s games wouldn’t work, and he’s the primary user of that box. But I might make it dual boot, Windows and Linux; haven’t decided yet.

A whole day of playing 52-pick-up with CDs! kEwL, dEwD!!!

I don’t know anything about PHP. I do know how to cut and paste. I spent some of yesterday rearranging the sidebar on this page, so the links appear below the other stuff. In particular, I wanted to get the “Pages,” now renamed “Other Stuff” at the top of the sidebar.

I was very proud of myself for managing to do this with breaking anything.

My next major project is to get Samba working so I can use this box as a file server for the Windows computers. The Samba manual is 936 pages long. That should keep me off the street for a while.

This site is running on a IBM PC 300 (that’s a Pentium 300 machine that was rescued from the boneyard) under Slackware Linux 10.0 with the Apache webserver v. 2. The blogging software is WordPress with the Connections theme.

I’m running the Firestarter firewall and F-Prot anti-virus for Linux. I’m still looking for an HTML editor that I get along with to use on this box.

I been messing about with Linux for about six months and am just barely beyond complete newbie, but I find this machine, as old as it is, is faster than my Celeron 1 GHz box with Windows XP sp 2. I don’t think I’m much longer for the world of Windows, at least for my home computers.