IT Resource

Vista Security exploit - without the hype

Dave W — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:11:16 +0000

There’s been some wild and panicky stuff in some of the Tech press lately about a potential exploit that could bypass Vista’s security model. It all sounds pretty drastic but please bear in mind that most reports have been pretty sensationalist about it.

A ZDNet blog post contains a bit more ‘measured’ information about it along with responses from one of the guys who reported the exploit.

Sybase and YellowFin set up a tasty alliance

Dave W — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 05:15:20 +0000

Sybase has teamed up with Australian Business Intelligence (BI) provider Yellowfin to package up the Sybase IQ Data Warehousing tool with YellowFin’s Presentation layer & User Interface.

Sybase IQ is a database product optimised for fast analytics and reporting (using a column-based architecture), while the Yellowfin products will provide a web-based Reporting and Delivery capability with easy-to-use dashboards and charting tools.

The alliance already has a live customer in New Zealand based Paymark, and is actively looking to promote the packaged solution in Australia, NZ, Japan, India and China.

Yellowfin are at: http://www.yellowfin.com.au

Sybase can be found at: http://www.sybase.com.au

Sun makes LWUIT Mobile SDK open source

Dave W — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 05:20:35 +0000

Sun’s ‘Light-weight UI Toolkit’ (LWUIT) has been made available for download under a version of the GPL2 open-source license, which will make it easier for developers to create applications for the Jave ME mobile/smart phone platform.

According to Sun’s Craig Gering: “We are enabling mobile developers to quickly and easily create rich, portable interfaces for their applications,” declared Craig Gering, Sun’s senior director of embedded Java software.

“This software will also help address the mobile industry’s fragmentation issue by enabling developers to create a single interface that will work anywhere Java is found.”

More information: http://lwuit.blogspot.com/

Microsoft August update contains several critical fixes

Dave W — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:54:48 +0000

The August upate from Microsoft is likely to contain a number of critical and major fixes.

The update will include seven items rated as ‘critical’, the highest of Microsoft’s security alert levels. All of these will address issues that may allow an attacker to remotely execute code on a targeted system.

Four of the critical fixes relate to Office issues, one addresses critical flaws in Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003, another fixes a critical issue in Windows Media Player while the last addresses a critical vulnerability in Internet Explorer.

Also planned are five fixes rated as ‘important’. The patches include two remote code execution flaws in Windows and one in Office. The other two updates address information disclosure vulnerabilities found in Windows Messenger, Outlook Express and Windows itself.

The company plans to release the update on Tuesday 12th August. The release will also include non-security updates for the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool and the Windows Update, Microsoft Update and Software Update Services

English Premier League - for free on iiNet

Dave W — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:42:40 +0000

iiNet is offering free streaming access to English Premier League matches.

That’s “free” as in there will be no charge for the matches, and “free” in that iiNet won’t count the data usage (streaming will be in .wmv format, and will require Media Player 10) against the user’s monthly allowance.

The Premier League season starts on the 16th of August with Arsenal vs West Bromwich Albion at 12:45 UK time (9:45pm AEST). Up to four live games and five recorded games will be made available each week.

Intel “16 & 48 core” processors on their way

Dave W — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:41:05 +0000

Intel has announced details of a new generation of chips designed to handle increasingly complex and diverse requirements.

The “multi-core” processor technology, codenamed “Larrabee” will be showcased at an upcoming industry conference in Los Angeles.

By dividing tasks between cores, these multi-core chips will be able to cut energy use and heat while speeding performance, using a type of parallel processing.

Intel and AMD currently sell chips with two or four “cores,” but the new Intel chips (pencilled for release in 2009 or 2010) will have 16 to 48 cores and will be tailored for handling computer game graphics. The chips will also accomomodate the increasingly complex, ‘multi-tasking’ type approach that see users running many desktop apps at once.

Intel say that the major task for software developers now will be to make full use of the available processing power and multi-threading capabilities. Predicted research breakthroughs include voice recognition software so accurate it could be used to record witness testimony in courtroom proceedings.

Intel expects Larrabee “to kick start an industry-wide effort to create and optimise software for the dozens, hundreds and thousands of cores expected to power future computers.”

Larrabee’s initial foray into the multi-billion dollar computer graphics market will put it in an arena dominated by Nvidia and AMD, which both reportedly plan to market chips with hundreds of cores.

See more at:
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20080804fact.htm?iid=pr1_releasepri_20080804fact

Keyboard shortcuts for Vista

Dave W — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:32:09 +0000

Here’s a handy little list of useful Vista keyboard shortcuts:

Win + d - show Desktop
Win + f- search for files
Win + g - cycles through Gadget selections
Win + l - lock your computer
Win + m - minimize windows
Win + t - cycles through Taskbar programs
Win + u - activate the ‘Ease of Use’ Center
Win + x - cycle through the ‘Mobility’ Center
Win + Spacebar - bring Gadgets to the front

Also - if you use the Quick Launch toolbar, pressing the Win key + a number (from the top row of the keyboard) will launch the corresponding application in the Quick Launch toolbar.

e.g. if your first 4 Quick Launch icons are Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint - If you press Win+2, that will start up Word, Win+4 will start Powerpoint and so on. This only applies to the first 10 QuickLaunch icons Win+0 being the last).

Using the ‘ping’ command

Dave W — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 05:37:11 +0000

Ping verifies IP-level connectivity to another TCP/IP computer by sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Echo Request messages. The receipt of corresponding Echo Reply messages are displayed, along with round-trip times. Ping is the primary TCP/IP command used to troubleshoot connectivity, reachability, and name resolution.

Examples of Ping

Windows
ping google.com

Pinging google.com [64.223.167.99] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 64.223.167.99: bytes=32 time=37ms TTL=57
Reply from 64.223.167.99: bytes=32 time=37ms TTL=57
Reply from 64.223.167.99: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=57
Reply from 64.223.167.99: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 64.223.167.99:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 37ms, Maximum = 75ms, Average = 47ms

Linux
ping -c 5 itresource.com.au

PING itresource.com.au(203.88.118.177) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from kookaburra.cbr.hosting-server.com.au (203.88.118.177): icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=36.6 ms
64 bytes from kookaburra.cbr.hosting-server.com.au (203.88.118.177): icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=36.5 ms
64 bytes from kookaburra.cbr.hosting-server.com.au (203.88.118.177): icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=37.0 ms
64 bytes from kookaburra.cbr.hosting-server.com.au (203.88.118.177): icmp_seq=4 ttl=57 time=36.9 ms
64 bytes from kookaburra.cbr.hosting-server.com.au (203.88.118.177): icmp_seq=5 ttl=57 time=36.6 ms

— itresource.com.au ping statistics —
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 9000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 35.918/36.638/37.106/0.400 ms

Mac OS X
ping -c 10 itresource.com.au

PING kookaburra.cbr.hosting-server.com.au (203.88.118.177): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 203.88.118.177: icmp_seq=0 ttl=53 time=40.019 ms
64 bytes from 203.88.118.177: icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=47.502 ms
64 bytes from 203.88.118.177: icmp_seq=2 ttl=53 time=43.208 ms
64 bytes from 203.88.118.177: icmp_seq=3 ttl=53 time=50.851 ms
64 bytes from 203.88.118.177: icmp_seq=4 ttl=53 time=46.556 ms

— ping statistics —
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 40.019/45.575/50.851/3.588 ms

Useful links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping

http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/p/ping.htm

Gizmo’s tech support site

Dave W — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:29:39 +0000

Quick post to tell you about a very useful site (recently ‘wiki-fied’ covering free software for business, development and home use. There seems to be a lot of useful stuff in there and it’s pretty active as well…well worth a look:

It can be found here - Gizmo’s Tech Support Site

DNS cache poisoning exploit released

Dave W — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:21:42 +0000

A quick note to warn you that the first code sample has been released to try and exploit the recently announced DNS cache poisoning vulnerability. While most users will be relying on their ISP etc to ensure they have patched the hole, you should also make sure that you have applied any required OS patches/updates (e.g. Windows MS Security Bulletin MS08-037).

Also - you should note that while attackers may be able to redirect you to a bogus IP, they will not be able to replicate a digitally trusted security certificate. So if you go to your online banking site and see that you are on an ‘http’ page or if you get the IE7 warning page about untrusted/mismatched certificates then you should be careful. Of course, many sites use Shared certificates so it is quite common to see this warning message but you shouldn’t expect to see it when using online banking or similar.