Showing posts with label Opera. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Opera. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Noodling down in the Bayou for Superfish-like SSL Shenanigans

Come on in and get mucky. The Bayou water is cold but fine. Nothing in here that won’t probably bite you (hard enough to draw blood) or cause weird growths (on your system) if you dip in.

When we last hauled in the Superfish mess, Lenovo had ping-ponged back and forth about it not being a problem, then conceding it was a problem, issuing a removal tool, and now going into apology-mode.

Great. We are making progress.

Only as time goes on and the security folks noodle the bayou, they keep hauling out additional examples of this exploit and the mess grows deeper.

I don’t Twitter but do manually follow InfoSec Taylor Swift (@SwiftOnSecurity) and found this mindful tweet in the stream:

I think it is a great point of context with all the SuperCookies, mobile-app ID trackers, and the whole Internet of Things (IoT) we now live with daily.

So were are we now with this Superfish story?

This post is excellent (and highly Valca recommended for IT readers of all age levels) to bring everyone up to speed on the dangers of third-party “enhanced” download and installer file bundling.

Even more companies are using the same technique as Superfish and doing HTTPS-Hijacking & HTTPS-validation disabling.

The post goes in ways to check your Trusted Root Certification Authorities store and check around for some HTTPS MITM hijackers that are listed.

Then there are some very good recommendations and reminders for protection against that threat.

Test to see if your browser(s) are vulnerable:

Superfish, Komodia, PrivDog vulnerability test – Filippo.IO

Filippo Valsorda has coded up a page that allows you to visit it with EACH of your installed web-browsers to see if they are vulnerable to the Superfish, Komodia, PrivDog vulnerability. Easy to do and a great place to start assessing your system’s security.

Now for noodling in deeper waters:

Feed Me!

I want to highlight these blogs which much of the research and analysis documentation listed here. Some offer RSS feeds and have ongoing posts of themes that may be useful for the for/sec crowd. I’m always on the lookout and want to draw attention to the work behind great technical writers and researchers.

Constant Vigilance!

--Claus Valca

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Sunday, July 28, 2013

New Apps and Utility Updates

Submitted here for your frustration is a jumble of new and updated software applications I’ve collected over the past couple of weeks.

Think of it like the “pot-luck” box where everything is free for the taking after the week-long garage sale has concluded.

Only you might really want something in this mix.

MetroTextual 1.5 - SingularLabs - slick notepad replacement has some new improvements in this edition. Including Transformers (Plugins).

SpeedyFox - CRYSTALIDEA Software - Some time back got bumped to version 2.0.4. I run this regularly to clean up my Firefox/Chrome/Thunderbird databases. It really helps with launch speed. See also SpeedyFox Portable - PortableApps.com

CPU Meter Pro - Microsys - The GUI is very nice though the level of detail might be a bit less than some sysadmins might prefer.

DLL UnInjector - NoVirusThanks - unload DLLs within a selected process. More at this Unload loaded DLLs with DLL UnInjector post.

Download Backup Thunderbird - free tool to back up Thunderbird email clients spotted in this AddictiveTips post Easily Backup & Restore Your Mozilla Thunderbird Accounts & Their Data. I personally have always relied on MozBackup.

NetworkLatencyView - Nirsoft - New tool that calculates the network latency. Some details in this NirBlog post: New utility that calculates the network latency of every TCP connection. Looks pretty cool for you network troubleshooting and monitoring geeks.

TightVNC version 2.7.10. - What's New in TightVNC

LibreOffice 4.1 is here! - LibreOffice.org

LibreOffice - Home

LibreOffice Productivity Suite Download - LibreOffice

LibreOffice 4.1.0 Portable - PortableApps.com

Opera Next 16 hints at new features - BetaNews. I don’t really follow Opera web-browser development very closely any longer. Most of my time is focusing on Firefox/Chrome/Chromium/Internet Explorer. Hover there are some detail here that might be worth noting.

Network monitor debuts in latest Firefox beta - Mozilla Links. I really, REALLY like this addition…browser-bloat or not.

SMF v 5.0 – Search my Files - funk.eu - I’ve got more than many Windows file finders, searchers, and file indexing apps that I can summon at will. However funk’s SMF and NirSoft’s SearchMyFiles tools are my go-to file finders without peer. They both have been recently updated with loads new features and rather than see them as competitors, I see them as complimentary utilities depending on the search need at hand.

Intel® Driver Update Utility - Back while I was working on my “What is this “PC-Doctor Module” you speak of?” post, I noted Lavie’s system had the Dell Support Center software installed and how it can help with keeping OEM drivers updated. I checked my own system and the software wasn’t there. Maybe I uninstalled it? Anyway, this Java based application from Intel will do a scan of your system and report if any Intel-based hardware components are present and if a newer driver is available. Sometimes the OEM-branded driver will be preferred, however in most all cases, I have found the Intel driver is much, much fresher and more improved than the OEM version. Yesterday it told me my IntelProNic/WiFi network driver was way old so I updated it to the latest Intel driver version. No issues.

View DELL Service Tag and Express Service Code From Linux and Windows - The Geek Stuff.  Because sometimes it’s a hassle to flip your Dell laptop/desktop around to look for the codes:

1. Get DELL Service Tag on remote Windows system

Login to the Windows remote-host using VNC or remote desktop connection. Use WMIC on Windows to get service tag as shown below.

C:\>wmic bios get serialnumber
SerialNumber
ABCDEF1

Following WMIC command will give make and model number along with service tag.

C:\>wmic csproduct get vendor,name,identifyingnumber
IdentifyingNumber    Name                Vendor
ABCDEF1              PowerEdge 2950      Dell Inc.

If VNC or remote desktop connection to the remote-host is not available,  execute the following from the local-host to get the service tag of the remote-host.

C:\>wmic /user:administrator /node:remote-host bios get serialnumber
SerialNumber
ABCDEF1
[Note: Replace remote-host with the machine name of your remote-host.]

PeStudio 7.26 - winitor - (updated) - “PeStudio is a free tool to perform static analysis and investigation of any Windows executable file. A file being analyzed with PeStudio is never launched. Therefore, you can evaluate unknown executable files and even malware with no risk. PeStudio runs on any Windows platform and is fully portable, no installation is required. PeStudio does not change the system or leave anything behind.”


SoftPerfect Network Scanner - version 5.4.12 - a free network scanner, tweaked and updated. It’s one of my all-time favs.


Get the Start menu back in Windows 8 and 8.1 with Classic Shell - BetaNews - Tip from Mike WIlliams that Classic Shell 3.9 beta has improved their flagship tool for reclaiming the ground lost by users everywhere in the ongoing battle for Win8 Start Menu hill against Microsoft. I really like the way this looks. Pop over to Classic Shell directly to download the beta bits if you are interested. I find that I still (for now) prefer IObit Start Menu 8 Free for my Windows 8 tweaking. One of these days I’ll get caught up and empty out my lethargic Windows 8 post-launch pile-o-links that has more than a few additional alternatives. My little brother recommends Stardock’s $ Start8 application for what it’s worth.


Cheers.


--Claus Valca

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Saturday, August 25, 2012

Power Pile of Links

Chain links _ Flickr - Photo Sharing!_2012-08-25_17-32-04CC attribution: "Chain links" by HowardLake on flickr.

Got to go into the office tomorrow for one of those rare (for me) weekend special project rotations.

So I’m afraid a have just a bit less time that usual to spend on the blogging front.

Today’s offering is a large mix that covers LiveCD’s, some WinPE stuff, virtualization, new utility “how to” videos, third-party plugin updates, browser bits, networking, admin tips, password hint leakage, forsec, and a bit of graphical goodies.

ForSec LiveCD’s 

PALADIN 3.0.1 Forensic Software - Paladin just released version 3.0 of their LiveCD. You must have set up a free user account first and log in to access the PALADIN Download page. Changes in 3.0 & 3.0.1 are:

Version 3.0 New Features -

-- PALADIN Toolbox has been ported to Ubuntu 12.04

-- Network Share Icon has been added to the desktop to access network volumes that have been added via the MOUNT Tab

-- Boot support for current Intel Macs (including the newer MacBook Airs)

Release Notes

3.0.1 - Fixed issue where Unallocated Image function was producing 0 byte files.

Road to DEFT 7.2 and more DEFT Linux - Computer Forensics live cd - Deft 7.2 is scheduled for release in September 2012 and will mark a milestone of sorts. It will be the last x32-bit system release. Starting with 8.0 builds, they are going for x64 system support builds only. Shouldn’t be a deal-breaker, just keep a 7.x version handy as well.

DEFT 7 Cyber Forensic Tool Overview (by Casey Mullis) - LoveMyTool blog. Since we were speaking of DEFT, Casey Mullis gives a nice walkabout of DEFT 7 with nice screenshots if you are interested.

ESSPEE - Penetration Testing & Forensics - SourceForge.net - Updated to “R1 x86”. This is a new distro to me and is based on BackTrack 5 for pentest/for/sec work. Uses the “Unity” desktop interface.

Back|Track 5 R3 - new release. More details BackTrack 5 R3 Released!, BackTrack 5 R3! — PenTestIT, and from this H Security: News and Features post, BackTrack 5 R3 adds tools for Arduino and Teensy attacks. Choose your path carefully! Available in both KDE or Gnome flavors, with x32 or x64 platforms. In case you can’t decide, you may want to first look at this general KDE and Gnome Comparison post by ubuntucat.

WinPE Stuff

The few of you who regularly read this humble blog may have seen some recent activity in the comments sidebar. Turns out we had a recent celebrity visitor "Steve” from RMPrepUSB who posts a crazy-number of posts and tips on WinPE and USB booting in general.

Steve left a tip regarding use of the imagex.exe argument “/norpfix” switch when capturing images…specifically as it applies to junctions when the image is applied to a differently-named volume.

What is /norpfix switch, and what does it do? - Blogs from Zhou, Minxiao

In case you are interested, RMPrepUSB is a super cool tool to format and create bootable USB media. Lots of bells and whistles here and extreme tippage and tutorials for you WinPE fans.

If I’m not careful I can loose hours at a time gong though Steve’s extensive tutorials. Here are justa few you might find interesting:

Windows 8 and WinFE - Windows Forensic Environment blog. Brett Shavers tips us to a cmd script from Troy Larson (The WinFE dude) that allows creation of a WinFE build from Windows 8 RTM. New to WinFE building? Well then, see also:

How to sync time in Windows PE - WindowsNetworking.com

VirtualBox and VMware Player updates

Pretty good synchronization getting these updates out guys!

First up, VirtualBox 4.1.20 is out.

Next, VMwarePlayer is rolled up to v5.0 with some significant changes.

For VirtualBox, be sure you download and upgrade your Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack at the same time. Likewise VMware users should also be sure to install the latest VMware Tools in your VMware hosted virtualized client OS for peak performance.

Defrag Tools Video

Defrag Tools - Microsoft Channel 9 - neat source for fresh reviews of MS tools and techniques now has two more quality videos up.

Update those Browser Plugins!

I’m thinking I’ve put in close to three hours this past week updating our home systems as well as Dad’s system to ensure they have the latest Flash/Java/etc. updates.

Adobe closes numerous critical holes in Reader and Acrobat - Update - The H Security: News and Features

There are lots of places and ways to download and get the updates; inside app updaters, direct from the software builder’s site, or from third-party locations like filehippo or majorgeeks.

I generally tend to just rock over to filehippo and pull them down. I suppose there is a risk they could have been corrupted or “seeded” with unwanted bits, but so far I’ve not had any problems and their Plugins Downloads page makes nice “one-stop” shopping.

At work it is hard keeping up with what “build” version we need to upgrade these to as for Flash there are both 11.3.x and 11.4.x versions which may cause problems for certain in-house software applications if compatibility is not verified first. However, most home-users should probably be on the 11.4.x run right now.

Likewise there are both Java 1.6.x builds and 1.7.x build branches. Again, most home-users should probably be on the 1.7.x builds.

Regardless, once you are done with your patching, hop your Windows IE, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome browser(s) over to Qualys BrowserCheck and run a quick free check to make sure they are sufficiently patched.

Additional Browser Notes

In my recent post Greased Monkey Business I celebrated the joy of finally finding a custom Grease Monkey script I could use that would justify adding it to my Firefox browser; Removing UTM data from URLs automatically for cleaner bookmarks. It has been a lifesaver to my blogging work.

So this past week I gave a second banana to the Monkey; Scrub Google Redirect Links for Greasemonkey from “ping”.

Check out this MakeUseOf post that goes into the details: How To Copy Crap-Free URLs From Google’s Search Results

Comodo IceDragon 14.0 released -- get it NOW! - BetaNews notice of the Comodo tweaked Firefox 14 browser release. (actually it is version 14.0.3). Direct download is available from this Comodo forums link: Comodo IceDragon ver. 14.0.3 is now available for download!!

BrowsingHistoryView - Nirsoft - Version 1.0 new utility release to view browsing history of all your web browsers. Nir Sofer has been offering browser-specific utilities to view browsing history, but this gem covers the four major ones at once; Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari. New Web browser history viewer - NirBlog

Network Fun

NetworkMiner 1.4 Released - NETRESEC Blog - New release improves handling of fragmented IPv4 packets. Hurray! Also no longer checks for pcap extension; works as long as it is a valid libpcap file, DHCP options are extracted, new parser for a particular protocol. There are also some nice GUI improvements.

Trace File Case Files - Sharkfest 2012 (by Jasper Bongertz) - video presentation of using Wireshark to trace out real-world problems and solve them.

Wireshark Security Update - ISC Diary. Wireshark builds got updated to squash bugs and patch vulnerabilities. Go get busy…Wireshark · Download

Notes for the Sysadmins

Simple but Extremely Useful Windows Tricks - Open Security Research - Nice list of handy Windows tips.

Why The Size of My Partition is Maxed Out at 2 Terabyte and How to Get Over it - Windows7hacker. Just guided Dad though adding a second internal HDD to his Vista system. He’s getting into digital photography and while he has lots of room left on his OEM primary HDD, adding a 2nd drive gives him an exclusive place to drop the files. I guess we could have gone with a external USB drive, but the internal was faster in the long run for large file transfers. Talked him into a 7200 RMP 1TB SATA drive. With some guidance got him to get it successfully installed. Then via a quick remote-control session, got it formatted, labeled, and added to the OS fine. Considered going for a 2+TB drive for a few more bucks, but this was easy enough. Next time I will have to follow the link tippage and set up a GPT disk if the conditions warrant.

Microsoft updated SkyDrive.com - Borns IT & WIndows Blog (Google Translated) - Nice review of the new SkyDrive updates.

RegKeyFixer - reboot.pro - sweet little tool by Joakim similar to Sysinternal’s RegDelNull. Related: Reghide

ForSec Links

Password hints easily extracted from Windows 7, 8 - Ars Technica

All Your Password Hints Are Belong to Us - SpiderLabs Anterior

A Fistful of Dongles: AFoD Interview with Eric Zimmerman - A Fistful of Dongles - Eric Huber interviews F.B.I Special Agent Eric Zimmerman. Great article (and Eric wears a mean flat-top to boot!). Many years ago I had applied to the F.B.I. hoping for a career there following in the steps of my grandfather who was a former Special Agent under Hoover. Alas…it was a path not to be.

ShellBag Analysis - Windows Incident Response Blog

SetRegTime - Windows Incident Response Blog

Linkz for Tools - Journey Into Incident Response Blog - Corey Harrell has some info on this post, particularly those tipping us time-challenged guys to the Time Zone Converter – Time Difference Calculator and Time Zone Map. Also valuable is the final section “Process, Process, Process” which strikes home the critical value of knowing in advance HOW you are going to do exactly WHAT it is you want to accomplish; supporting examples include links to the Forensic Process Lifecycle (PDF) from Lance Mueller at ForensicKB, the previously GSD blogged SANS DFIR Poster 2012 (PDF) download, and Corey’s own Journey into IR Methodology scratchpad.

Man versus AntiVirus Scanner - Journey Into Incident Response Blog - Corey shows of the value of having skillz and technique and a rock-solid process in a John Henry’esqe dance against an anti-malware scanner. Really a great tutorial and exercise.

Registry Decoder 1.4 Released and Updated Registry Decoder Live - New versions are available. I noticed that in the past separate downloads were available for x32 and x64 however I don’t see that in this release. I’ve not followed up yet to see if the newer version handles both automatically or not.

Generating computer forensic supertimelines under Linux: A comprehensive guide for Windows-based disk images - Forensic Focus. ForenicsRichard has also released the Shell (Bash) and C Source code as well.

Finding Smoking Gun and going beyond that – Helpful Forensic Artifacts - Hexacorn blog - another strong article supporting previously mentioned themes of having a process to use in looking for clues which here are referred to has HFA’s (Helpful Forensic Artifacts) to guide the overall investigative and analysis journey and discovery.

HexDive 0.4 - New update at Hexacorn to a tool which extracts strings from a file/sample for additional review. Corey recommends using BinText or Strings to further review the output.

The “Hikit” Rootkit: Advanced and Persistent Attack Techniques (Part 1) - Mandiant M-unition blog

The “Hikit” Rootkit: Advanced and Persistent Attack Techniques (Part 2) - Mandiant M-unition blog

Grab Bag

Change the Windows Logon Screen Background - CybernetNews tips us to Luke Payne Software » Logon Screen Rotator. While I do rotate my Win 7 desktop login picture periodically, (right now it it Tardis based), generally I keep it stable. This is a cool tool however for those who like a bit more variety.

Organize & Manage Huge Photo & Video Databases Using Snaps - AddictiveTips reviews the Snaps - Photo management application.

Microsoft Reimagines Paint - Next at Microsoft - New “version” of the perennial “Paint” app. (Win 8 only).

Tip o' the Week #133 - The Art of Cut n' Paste - The Electric Wand

Cheers!

--Claus V.

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Sunday, January 22, 2012

The GSD Curmudgeon says “Get off my Yard you Dang Kids!”

Sigh. I’m getting old.

I recently read a post at ReadWriteWeb by Scott Fulton, III Mozilla's Plan for Keeping Firefox Relevant in a Post-Browser Web.

That day I became dangerously close to becoming the old technologist guy equivalent of the “You kids get off my lawn!” guy we all probably know.

What is Mozilla doing to my beloved Firefox of the near and dear “future”?

  • HTML5 runtime functionally support (for driving in-browser, non system proprietary, web-apps).
  • Extending cloud-based services.
  • An on-line identity management system called “BrowserID”. (How it works)
  • and more stuff imagined and planned.

That left me grumbly then John Paul Titlow at ReadWriteWeb posted this Mozilla: We're About to Grab More Data About You, But Here's How We'll Keep It Safe.

Mozilla has some big plans up its sleeve in 2012. The non-profit open source foundation is planning some features for its Firefox Web browser and beyond that will require greater access to user data. In a blog post, the organization explains exactly how it intends to use and handle that data. In short, very carefully.

The blog post John Paul references is up at Mozilla Privacy Blog: Mozilla to Offer New User-Centric Services in 2012.

While I recognize and appreciate the very challenging work that browser developers have (not just at Mozilla), I think I’m grumbly for two primary reasons here with Mozilla.

First, I was a very early adopter of Firefox. It was quicker than IE. It was slimmer (memory and feature bloat) than IE. It was more secure than IE. And I could plug all kinds of things into it (Add-Ons/Extensions) to customize it with only those features and capabilities that helped make my experience on the Web better. If I didn’t need it, I didn’t' install it and thus kept the Firefox browser lean and mean.

I really do “get it” with the coming exciting wave of “web-based apps” and running them in your browser and the security it will now bring (think JavaScript/Flash). It’s the next “big” evolutionary shift for the Internet. Really. Who of us really still think of the Internet as being just a super-large reference library and world-wide town-square/market anymore? It’s now a world-wide commercial mall and entertainment center. Really. Oh sure, you can still go down that wing none of the hip kids hang out at and find the pubs where the old-timers hang out, a few plain coffee-bars where the wanna-be journalist “bloggers” hang out and trade stories of yore, and maybe go into that virtual bookstore of arcane knowledge and technical minutia that some of us still love. But really. None of the cool companies and consumers come down this way. They demand different things. Better things. A new paradigm of interaction and operation.

Sigh.

So the browser needs to change to keep up. Bigger, more embedded features. Probably faster. Probably louder too with base-boost and kickers. Hopefully the security alarm on it will be better too.

Secondly, my bones ache every time a new ID management system comes out that gets closer to being a cloud-based requirement. I know, it’s for my own good their doing it. Really. I’m so much safer having more and more of my user data off-loaded to the Webs and Clouds. Clearly the higher and higher it goes away from me the safer and safer and harder and harder it must be for the underground dwellers to grab it. Right? What? Oh, I have to just “trust” everyone “out-there” with my user data and All-In-One credentials and stuff. I’m sure everyone will be honorable and diligent in keeping my account and passwords and user data safe and secure. Nobody ever gets their customer’s account/password information lost to hackers, or on a laptop, or on a USB stick anymore, or via a network traffic hack. Right? That was just in the “old-days”. These new solutions are really, really safer.

I get it. I do. And I appreciate everyone working so hard to keep Firefox and my web experience so much more safe, more secure, and more powerful than ever before. I appreciate modern AC over running a fan past a block of ice to cool my house. Really. And who doesn’t like the convenience of a cellular smart-phone over a plain-old copper analog line service wired into your house?

My browser is growing up, and the world it is living is changing as fast as it is.

Sigh.

I still use (and probably will) Firefox as my personal “production” web-browser of choice. It works for me and my way of being productive.  That said, when I’m surfing the web, give me Chrome. I guess I have to still drive the daily commuter into work and back, but yeah, on the weekends I like to pull out the latest sports car for tooling around the highways and byways and back roads.

You know, I was a very early adopter of Chrome. It was quicker than Firefox. It was slimmer (memory and feature bloat) than Firefox. It was more secure than Firefox. And I could plug all kinds of things into it (Add-Ons/Extensions) to customize it with only those features and capabilities that helped make my experience on the Web better. If I didn’t need it, I didn’t' install it and thus kept the Chrome browser lean and mean. In fact, I hear from the Google Chrome Blog that Chrome is about to get more Speed and Security with pre-rendering of pages and enhanced URL and file-download checking. What’s not to like about that!

I gotta admit, high-school senior (these kids again!) Danny Stieben’s timely post at MakeUseOf blog probably sums it up right: Why It Eventually Won’t Matter What Browser You Use [Opinion].

It won’t. Honestly. It just won’t. Time to face the music and admit I’ve got to adopt the new (browser/web) core “technology” design model and landscape or I’ll become irrelevant and end up spending the rest of my days in that dilapidated and decaying wing of the New Web Mall hanging out with the other curmudgeons and making fun of those really dorky guys and gals still using AOL web-mails, web portal home-pages with their IE 5/6 and Firefox 3 web-browsers. Seriously? Who uses those anymore?!! Get a clue.

Here. Spin a wheel and take a pick. Take one. Use one. Just don’t become friends or companions. Someone’s bound to change and the relationship will sour, and there will be a new favorite.

The GSD Curmudgeon ends with these moving and inspiring words of wisdom and perspective on the whole thing.

Great Motivational Speech - It Just Doesn't Matter - YouTube

Ok…soap box away. We will now return to regular GSD programming.

--Claus V.

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Saturday, August 14, 2010

Browser Quick List: [Ref Only]

It’s been a while since I posted a single-source reference for web-browsers I use and deploy.

Dumping these links here for reference only.

Use them as you will.

That should do it for now.  May be updated later.

Since you scrolled down this far:

Claus V.

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Sunday, June 20, 2010

Father’s Day Linkfest: Slowly Smoked Goodness…

Here is quite the collection of Windows-related links.  Although it has been quite a while since the last one, I promise I’ve been diligently collecting the most promising links I could find, and slowly roasting them over the past weeks.

The fat has dripped out and burned on the bottom of the smoker pit leaving only these tender, flavor-laden morsels behind.

Savory.

Plate up!

Windows System Utilities

Freaking and Tweaking Windows

Remote Desktop Management: Reloaded

  • Microsoft Download: Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan) – This is a really neat tool (though not the only out there) that allows you to manage all the different Remote Desktop connection accounts you have.  It presents them in a tree/list format on the left and then shows them in thumbnail format (or active in a single pane) on the right. (4sysops blog has great screenshots of it in action in his post Free RDP client.)  I’m using it right now to manage multiple remote packet capture systems across our network and it makes hopping between them a breeze.  Natively supported on Windows 7; Windows Server 2003; Windows Server 2008; Windows Server 2008 R2; Windows Vista, folks with Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 will need to obtain version 6 or newer of the Remote Desktop Connection client software. See Description of the Remote Desktop Connection 7.0 client update for Remote Desktop Services (RDS) for Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1, and Windows Vista SP2 for more information and the download links at the bottom of the page.

  •  mRemote -- (free version) – Was a similar multi-remote connection management tool I found mentioned in a few comments about the above application.  I had never heard of it before but it seems to support a very wide range of remote protocols, and allows uniform management of them all, including RDP, VNC, SSH, Telnet, HTTP/S, Rlogin and a few others.  What was nice was that once you download and install, it will then assist you in locating/sourcing any additional downloads to support other protocols it can handle that it doesn’t find pre-loaded on your system.  Seems to have a strong fanbase. Overview

  • chriscontrol - Project Hosting on Google Code -- (freeware) – ChrisControl was another interesting remote control tool I rediscovered in it’s new home on GoogleCode pages.  The Beta 2 version was released in January 2010 so the author is still hard at work refining it.  ChrisControl is curious in that as long as you have the target system’s IP address/hostname and a valid account id/pw, then you have a good chance of connecting to it.  First it see if RDP or VNC is installed/running.  if RDP is available, it uses that to connect.  If VNC is present it will use that.  If neither, then it prompts the user to remote install VNC server on the target system!  You have options to uninstall the VNC server when done. 

  • I’d recently posted this link to the Remotely Enable Remote Desktop :: IntelliAdmin - (free tool) – but it seems appropriate to re-include it again.  This utility automates a trick to get RDP started when not enabled on the box.. Get the micro-file from this link: Enable Remote Desktop – Remotely (exe download-link from IntelliAdmin).  I tend to avoid direct links but the download link from their blog-post page actually points to their full-featured application, and not the standalone tool.  I’ve had the opportunity over the past few weeks to use this tool a few times and every time it save my bacon.

  • TeamViewer 5 is now out (free for personal (non-commercial) usage) and has some new enhancements.  Check out the TeamViewer Download page.  There is also a TeamViewer Portable version.  I found really cool that if you download the setup installer and run it, it gives you two options; “Install” to fully install on the system or “Run” to execute TeamViewer on the system “portably/temporarily” (and without the need for the user profile to have “admin” privileges on the system.  That’s a cool feature that calls to mind the way ShowMyPC offers the exe download of it’s own product which when executed, unpacks and runs…rather than installs.  ShowMyPC, btw, was updated recently to v3050.  Speaking of TeamViewer, I had been able to use TeamViewer on WinPE builds with great success.  However, the newest versions didn’t seem to execute well. I did manage to create an ugly work-around that again lets me keep use of TeamViewer as an option to remote-connect to a WinPE 3.0 booted system.  Yes, another blog post awaits on this one…

  • 2X Client Portable 8.1.870 Released -- PortableApps.com. This multi-connection management tool has also been recently updated.  It also is similar to the Microsoft RDC-Manager and does support RDP connections.  I’ve dipped my feet into using it a bit as well and was pleasantly surprised with the performance.  I really like the “tabbed” remote system display arrangement.  While the “client” tool is free, you can also use it to connect to systems running the 2x Application Server.  Check out the 2X ApplicationServer download page for more information on that side of operations.

Free Microsoft Money!

No. Seriously!  I mean it!  Get Microsoft Money free.  This “Sunset” version doesn’t require any on-line activation.  It is really slick and for a former Quicken user, is very mature and polished.  Lavie and I love it.  What don’t you get with this wonderful and sophisticated yet approachable financial management tool?  Well, as well as I can tell, almost nothing is missing except integration with Microsoft’s own on-line “Live” capabilities, which for the poor folk like Lavie and I, isn’t much we would be using currently anyway.  It is simply an amazing opportunity.

Even if you don’t really think you would use it, if you don’t already have a personal finance management (banking/credit/loans/etc.) software, download this and play around.  Heck, at least download the installer and keep it handy.  Read the download details page linked below carefully for full details.

“From the MS download page Overview

All versions of Money Plus sold at retail and online, required users to perform an “Online Activation” step in order to keep using the product, even if online services had already expired. Online Activation was also required for every machine onto which Money Plus was installed. Now that Money Plus is no longer available for purchase, the online activation step will eventually become unnecessary and unsupported. This Money Plus Sunset package is targeted at removing the activation dependency. There are two versions of Money Plus Sunset. The Money Plus Sunset Deluxe version is meant to replace Premium, Deluxe, and Essentials versions of Money Plus. The Money Plus Sunset Home and Business version is meant to replace Money Plus Home and Business. Please note that Money Plus Sunset versions come preconfigured with: · No online services (no online quotes, no bill payment, no statement downloads initiated by Money, no data sync with MSN Money online services, etc…) · No support services (support services are limited to online self-help only, see Money Plus Sunset EULA and Microsoft’s Support Lifecycle pages for more details) · No need to activate the product.

Don’t let all that scare you off.  You can still manually import transactions from banks (if they support MS Money or compatible formats) down into this version of MS Money to save time from hand-entering them.

Seriously…Microsoft is giving away Money for free.  Who would have ever thunk?

Google Sites

So a while back I was working on another side project and found some tips on using Google Sites to host files and other materials for downloading by your blog’s fans.  Sounded like a clever idea although I do have a handy and free Box.net account already with a few publically made shared folders like that one that contains reg.keys for enabling/disabling InPrivate Mode for IE 8.

Eventually I came back to Google Sites and figure it had enough features and such to be worthwhile to set up a basic GSD site page. Nothing there worth seeing for now, but in time I might be able to use it to make a more technically organized website of tips and such.

There are lots of pre-built templates to get started with.  I chose a “project tracking” format for some reason.   We’ll see what happens.

A Tiny, TinyApps Diversion

The succinct TinyApps bloggist has been hard at work finding “outside the box” solutions for external storage media and usages.

Get your crazy on with these amazing tips and hardware finds!

Of course, all the USB HDD talk has got me crazy thinking about other related items.

  • Into The Boxes: Issue 0×0 had a great tip from Don C. Weber on page 14 regarding re-purposing the controller/connecter from external HDD enclosures .  Sure, toss (destroy/hammer) the bad 2.5” HDD, but keep the USB mini-port to SATA  hardware adapter in your kit.  It’s a dead-simple way to access SATA drives and is a “green-recycling” solution to boot.

  • USB Boot Without BIOS Support – Kent Hall’s “What the….?” blog – Although most all “modern” BIOS systems support booting from external USB devices (properly configured of course), some hardware you encounter might not.  Chris’s trick involves using PLoP Boot Manager and RawWrite (if making a floppy) to create a bootable floppy/CD pre-booter if you will, that then leverages up the USB device to do the actual post-pre-booting from.  Not an everyday need but so simple it wouldn’t hurt to have such a boot-CD pre-crafted, just in case.  PLoP Boot Manager supports a number of features and is worth looking at even if this scenario doesn’t fit your need.

Free Firewalls for Windows

Currently, the Windows 7 firewalls and my own home router are providing me sufficient firewall protection for my comfort zone.  Maybe in a while I will revisit my Windows Firewall post roundup and see which ones still remain and if any new-comers of late are present.

In the meantime, snack on these….

Graphically Seen and Heard

  • RasterVect Softwarescan. – (freeware) – Great tool to convert raster images into vector formats.  See also Vector Magic which can “vectorize” bitmap images online for free or the $ desktop version.  I really love and depend on Vector Magic.

  • Bing’s Best-3, Windows 7 Themepack Released – The Windows Club.  I love to download these themepacks and extract the wallpapers from them.  I’ve got a massive wallpaper folder I run now with these best-of images.  Beautiful stuff.

Utility Gumbo.

It’s all in the pot today!

And the Browser Wars continue…. 

Whew!

Happy Father’s Day!

--Claus V.

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Sunday, December 27, 2009

Browser Wars

I’ve got to admit I’ve been keeping my head down lately regarding the latest round of Windows web-browser releases.

While the EU has been hard at work making sure its proud members and residents have 12 Lucky Browsers to select from on their fresh Windows installs, I go the simple route and install Safari, Opera, Firefox, and Chromium to allow me some flexibility with things. Yesh, IE is still on my system as well.

So here is a roundup of browser-related bits I’ve collected for the interested recently.

Opera

  • Opera browser – now sitting at version 10.10

  • Opera Browser End-Users Request: Opera Installer Without Unite Feature – Donna’s SecurityFlash. I’m not convinced the security related issues of Unite are fully addressed, particularly when folks are able to download and install it themselves in a workplace environment without the blessing of the sysadmins.  Donna’s post contains this link to disable Unite via a rather clever though ugly manner.  Good information.

  • From all of us to all of you– Opera Desktop Team – Link to download the 10.5 pre-alpha build along with their new JavaScript engine built from the ground up, faster startup/shutdown times, and some new tricks with “private mode tabs” and/or “private mode windows”.  Fair warning, the team reports memory usage is high, unexpected quits occur, and (gasp) Opera Unite is disabled.

  • Opera Mini 5 beta 2 – I love Opera Mini on my Blackberry device.  Try out the new beta release.  I’ve been feelin the lovin!

Firefox

  • Firefox 3.6b5 – Download the latest baked beta version for all you “cutting edge” browser fans.

  • Firefox 3.6 beta 5 is out: Time to give it a try – TechBlog.  Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 Released – Firefox Extension Guru’s blog. Latest Firefox 3.6 beta fixes 133 bugs, promises faster page load times – Betanews.

  • Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition 3.6 Beta 5 --PortableApps.com. Try this version out if you want to run it on your system but don’t want to install over your current-release version of Firefox.

  • Firefox 3.5.6 – Or download the current “stable” release version. Firefox 3.5.6 Released – FF Extension Guru’s blog and Releases/Firefox 3.5.6 – MozillaWiki have some info about this build.

  • CheckPlaces :: Add-ons for Firefox – I really like this Add-on and use it weekly.  It checks for duplicated or invalid bookmarks in the new Favorites structure of the Firefox 3.x family of browsers.  It is fast, has more than a few options, and ensures that your bookmarks are current (and can get the favicons as well).  Very useful when you are manually syncing bookmark files between systems.  See this post How to Find duplicate and dead bookmarks in Firefox over at TechnoSpot for great how-to-use and screenshots.  In the past I used and recommended AM-DeadLink but though it rocked, it hasn’t been updated in quite a while and isn’t compatible with the newer SQL-based Firefox bookmark databases.  AM-DeadLink 4.0 Beta-1 is available in the site’s Beta section, but still no FF 3.x support. Read the post to see why.

  • Voyage - “A Firefox Addon to Rediscover Your Web Browsing History” is a clever add-on to visualize your browsing activity and history.  I’m curious what benefit this could do for visualizing Firefox-based history usage in a forensics type response.  Maybe it could make presenting the user’s activity more “understandable” to the suits when presented in this format rather than a dry Excel timeline.  This visual timeline presentation might be worth exploring more…

  • How to fix Firefox 3 freezing or heavy disk use – Confluence – I’m not sure if this is a real “fix” or not. Some say it helps wonderfully others…not so much.  I think the thought is that the way Firefox interacts with the malicious site database it keeps and checks URL’s against can cause “lockups” when FF reads it.  Of course, if you are a more savvy web-citizen, you might try disabling the malicious website checking features entirely in Firefox. See this Firefox 3 makes my hard drive thrash • mozillaZine Forums post for more on tips related to that.

  • Memory Fox Helps Tame Memory Usage in Firefox – MakeUseOf blog.  I’ve got enough system RAM to not be so concerned about how much memory Firefox uses (still a lot).  I’m more aware of the maxed-out CPU rates I get.  Seems worse when NewsFox is checking RSS feeds.  This trick might help with RAM, but not so much with CPU control.

Chromium

Browser-Related
  • YouTube "Feather" Beta – New “opt-in” beta to possibly improve YouTube video playback.  I’m pretty sure it is cookie based.  “The "Feather" project is intended to serve YouTube video watch pages with the lowest latency possible. It achieves this by severely limiting the features available to the viewer and making use of advanced web techniques for reducing the total amount of bytes downloaded by the browser. It is a work in progress and may not work for all videos.” Your mileage may vary…  Me?  YouTube works great on my laptops but for some reason I’m still not finding the sweet-spot with my AGP video card settings and Win7 RC build on the desktop.  Most of the videos are still showing up pixilated-pink.  However if I save the FLV file and do playback once downloaded, they are just fine.

  • How to Fix Annoying YouTube Jumpiness in Firefox - Lifehacker.  Now this trick DID work for my laptops in Firefox where the YouTube freeze was painfully annoying.

    Many users, myself included, visit YouTube on an almost daily basis. Ever since Firefox version 2.0 implemented the session restore function, when you are watching a video on YouTube (perhaps on other video sites as well, I haven't really tested that), you may notice a tiny freeze-up of the video every 10 seconds or so. This happens because the session restore is by default set to save all open tabs every 10 seconds. This is especially noticeable if you happen to have a lot of tabs open at once.

    The quick fix for this problem, at least for my own sake, is to increase the time between each of the saves performed by session restore. By opening about:config in your Firefox address bar, then typing browser.sessionstore.interval in the filter box, you'll see a value of 10000, which is in milliseconds. (Meaning your session is saved every 10 seconds.) I changed this to 300000, or every 5 minutes, as I don't have the urgent need for tab restoration. If you feel like being more on the safe side, try increasing it to something a bit lower, say 120000, or every 2 minutes.

  • Workaround to Manually Uninstall, Remove or Delete Firefox Addon With Add-Ons Uninstall Button Disabled - My Digital Life.  Because we all have it happen to us sometime or another by some “rogue” software installer “feature” add-in.  Me? I go the hard-case route and take workaround method #4 on the page.

  • hp smart web printing in firefox - Google Search. So our HP Photosmart C6280 printer is really cool and everything, but like most HP products, to really use all the features, you can’t just use the default Windows driver for it (though Win7 has a nice one).  No, you have to install the full HP Photosmart C6280 All-in-One Printer driver/software package which adds in some “Smart Web Printing” features to Firefox and other browsers.  Trying to remove it manually is possible, though painful.  Instead just do a custom install of the HP software and while watching closely, find and de-select inclusion of this software in your install.  I always do a custom install of HP printer software and only pick the features I really need.

  • Using Flash 10.1 beta? You may want to turn off crash logging - Within Windows.  If you recently downloaded and installed the latest 10.1 beta (or new Flash Player 10.1 beta 2 released 12-17-09) then you might notice some hard-drive thrashing.  Rafael Rivera worked out a way to disable crash logging pretty simply.  I’ve done the trick and while I didn’t really notice a problem to begin with, I’m a bit more comfortable now with it in place. It’s a painless and easily reversed trick.

  • New in Labs: Default text styling – New Gmail feature.

  • Pencil Project – Not for the general public but this project kinda brings a MS Visio-like diagramming experience to the Firefox browser as an add-on.  It is really sharp and cool.  For folks who can’t afford the full Visio experience, and don’t need the Dia Open Source alternative, this might be worth investigating for quick and at-hand diagramming.

  • Google Analytics has been hard at work tweaking and improving their page-monitoring code.  Newest tricks added to the stable are.

Cheers.

--Claus V.

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