October Linkfest

One last post for the day…probably.

This should get all my “Miscellaneous” links I’ve been holding onto cleared out.

That leaves me with my “project” posts to go.  If all goes well, I’ll get one more out tomorrow starting with a revisit to some great and free micro/portable anti-virus solutions, perfect for toting around on USB sticks.

Hardware

I’m seriously leaning towards getting Alvis a micro-portable notebook.  It is a web-book?  Just when I thought I had the laptop/notebook discussion down.  Christmas is getting close!  Feel free to leave suggestions Alvis, but don’t comment spam me! ; )

Two blog sites that I have found so far that stand out in particular on these devices are

UMPCPortal - The Ultra Mobile Computing reference site

Liliputing — Compact Computing

Certainly the Asus Eee PC is a popular choice, as is the Dell Inspiron Mini 9.  I would like to get one with (gasp) XP loaded, only because that would enable me to support it the best right now.

Any recommendations for such device?  Target user is a web-fanatic 14 year old teen girl who spends most of her time on the Web at MySpace and such.

Antec Skeleton Open -Air PC Case Review – ExtremeTech – Not the kind of platform I want at home, honestly, but would certainly look wicked at work!  Hmm. Now if I can just write a justification for us needed a test-bed platform….

Brother-unit was very generous with a birthday gift to me and now I am waiting on FedEx to ship my new D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router.  Yeah, buddy!  I really wanted the embedded VPN server features of the D-Link DIR-330 Wireless G VPN Router but I had to listen to Dwight’s advice and go with one that would be compatible in the future with the N specs, even though right now our laptops are just G spec wireless.  The DIR-655 also supports a USB storage device, so it is kinda like getting a server share as well.  Just right for my new blue Western Digital Passport Essential 320 GB USB 2.0 Hard Drive.

In-Security News

• The Little Black Book of Security – PaperGhost goes ape over the theatrics of trying to Do The Right Thing and report over 5,000 ebay logins found on the net.  Think it would be easy right? Nah. (NOTE: his server is having some redirect issues so if the page doesn’t load, bookmark it and come back.  It’s worth it, I promise!)

• Large Collection Of Stolen EBay Logins - SpywareGuide Greynets Blog – While you wait for the above to come on line, here is the meat of the story regarding those 5,000+ stolen ebay logins he found. Bummer.

• Quality Assurance in Malware Attacks - Part Two – Dancho Danchev’s Blog – Really fascinating review of how malware authors are now positioning themselves as selling quality malware that has been proofed against anti-malware scanners as well as testing methods that allow them to bypass security vendors/researcher who often offer web-based malware signature scanners for free as a honey-pot among other things.

• The Cost of Anonymizing a Cybercriminal's Internet Activities – Dancho Danchev’s Blog – Great perspective on the cost of staying underground by computer criminals.  It’s getting cheaper.

• 56 Arrested in DarkMarket Sting, Says FBI – Wired’s Threat Level blog – Hooyah!  FBI punks 56 cybernet criminals.  Very interesting story and lots of background on the Special Agent who led the operation.  Grandpa would have been proud of the Bureau!

• SQL Injection - New Approach for Win32/FakeXPA? -  Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog – Really detailed breakdown of how a SQL Injection method on compromised web-server works.  Good information.

• Service isolation explanation – Microsoft Security Vulnerability Research & Defense blog – Technical info on an attack vector using a Windows service and how privilege matters.

Super Tip of the Day

How To Add & Remove Entries From The Right-Click Menu - MakeUseOf.com

There are lots of utilities that I have mentioned in the past that help add additional features and functionality to the Windows Explorer right-click context menu.

This post is great because it touches on how to accomplish this “au-manual” via Folder Options or the Registry.

Related MakeUseOf posts:

• Customize Your ‘Send To’ Right-Click Windows Menu
• Take Back Control Over Your Right Click Menus
• How to Add a Command Window to the Right-Click Menu

Freeware Picks of the Week

Finally, here are some great freeware finds/revisits that you want to pay attention to

• Wireshark: Wireshark 1.1.1 Development Release – Wireshark really ups the ante here with this one.  I really like their new “Landing page” that is displayed when the program is run. Available in versions that range from a full installer, a U3 package, a PortableApps USB portable version (my favorite) as well as a Mac OSX version.

• Xinorbis - Updated to version 3.7.3 – XP/Vista compatible.  This is a free, awesome, and powerful hard-drive analyzer.  Lots of graphs, charts, tables, and tree-displays.  Really great for some auditing work on drive utilization.  Now available in both install and “portable” versions. Of note is the fact that effort has been made by the developer specifically to improve “portable operation” on USB drives.

• Rapid Environment Editor – Great little tool to help edit Windows environment variables.  Not a utility for most users, but for the sysadmin or tweaker, this might make things a lot simpler.

• Revo Uninstaller – This great uninstall tool for Windows got bumped to version 1.75 with the inclusion of scanning algorithm improvements.  One of the best alternative Windows program uninstallers there is. Period.  For more alternatives to Windows Add/Remove programs check out this GSD post:  Freeware Software Uninstallers

• MKN Software – Wow. I can’t believe I haven’t come across MKN before.  Yep. You guessed it. Another German software outfit.  My seventh-generation German blood must be stronger than I realized.  For example:
  • MKN TaskExplorer 5 - MKN TaskExplorer is an advanced process management tool that gives you full control over the applications running on your system. No replacement for Process Explorer, but pretty nice nonetheless.

  • MKN MemoryMonitor - MKN MemoryMonitor monitors and optimizes the system's memory usage and performance.  I usually leave memory cleaning alone, but here you go.

  • MKN PerformanceMonitor - MKN PerformanceMonitor shows information about system and processor performance. Oohh!  Pretty graphs!

  • MKN NetworkMonitor » MKN NetworkMonitor monitors inbound and outbound network connections. Like Current Ports.

  • MKN NetSniffer Console » MKN NetSniffer Console monitors and analyzes network traffic in real time. Because a sysadmin can’t have enough packet-sniffing utilities!

  • MKN ErrorLookupTool » MKN ErrorLookupTool is a small tool that looks up messages and constants for Win32 error codes. When Windows breaks it helps to understand what broke.  And we all don’t speak Windows Parseltounge….

Cheers!

--Claus V.