Monday, January 20, 2014

Minor RSS feed irritation squashed…

So here I am using Omea Reader to handle my RSS feeds.  It doesn’t seem like it has been updated in forever. I do keep my eye out for new and exciting developments in client-based RSS feed readers. So far nothing I’ve found yet exceed the capabilities I need that Omea can’t handle.

I’m following something like 200-230 RSS/Atom feed sources with it.  On an average day that will translate to about 500-600 articles to clear.

Note: that sounds pretty bad but I do also watch them on my iPhone with my Reeder 2 ($$) app. during the work-day so I can pick-out the ones I want to focus on and then cull down the bulk of them when I get home with some speed-feed-reading.

I do dread getting backed up at work or sick because when I’m too worn out to check my feed list daily, I can have close to 2000 articles to review and pick out what I want to spend more time on.

Anyway…that long introduction to say that in Omea, I’ve noticed that some article feeds appear multiple times despite having just as single feed link to pull from.

That ends up generating additional “bulk” in my feed list to have to clear.

Case in point…and the solution…the feed for ArchDaily.

I love design and architecture…both modern structure design as well as older buildings as well. Some stuff I just don’t get and others the design can really evoke an emotional response out of me.

When I browse to the site in Firefox (or IE) and select the RSS feed icon it presents me with the following RSS feed source:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ArchDaily

And that’s the one I have been using. Omea Reader accepted it and it looks quite normal…only when it loads the pulled articles, I have triples!  [Well really a double of the article is displayed with a third being the same article but for “comments”.]

Couple that feed article pulling behavior with the fact that the site produces many, many articles per day and I can have a lot of “fluff” in my unread feed count to sort though and clear.

Weird.  Especially so as I have my Omea feed setting for ArchDaily to not accept duplicates of the same article (it can do that).

Also, my feed entry for ArchDaily does have the Feedburner favicon showing, but the three articles have one Feedburner icon and two ArchDaily favicons.

otplmmvc.p0rLook Ma! Three for the price of one!

When I click the RSS icon on some sites, I may be offered feed link options to RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0, ATOM, or a feed source just for comments.  For ArchDaily I just get the feedburner link.

So this morning I browsed to ArchDaily over in Firefox again and this time launched the site with Firebug running so I could take a look at the page code.

Guess what I saw?

dc25xbh0.al3

Yep. Two RSS feed page references that didn’t have anything to do with Feedburner; http://www.archdaily.com/feed/rss/

Hmm.

So I copied that feed link, deleted the Feedburner one I had originally in Omea and recreated it with the discovered alternative RSS feed link, and hit refresh.

Voilla!

One RSS feed article per post, the correct favicon, and a lot less overhead.

imwdmkse.4fq

I have a few other feeds like this one that do doubles so I’m off to repeat the process of looking on the page-code for alternative RSS feed links.

So if you are an RSS feed junkie and the RSS option being offered is wonky, take a shot at exploring the page code and you just might get lucky and find a better “unpublished” feed source link

Cheers,

Claus V.

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Saturday, January 11, 2014

ForSec News SuperPost

I’m really embarrassed I let this collection of ForSec posts grow this large. There really aren’t any good excuses.

Honestly.

If it were any other weekend, I might take the time to break them down into a series of smaller posts, but the weather is super-nice after our recent Gulf-Coast hard-freeze and I really want to get outside and play for a bit.

So either set aside a lot of time before you get started, get a nice beverage handy, or just bookmark the monster that it is and come back when the weather outside is frightful.

Seriously, it’s that big but the material posted is also that good.

Warm Up Exercises

Practical Cyber Security Training Techniques for New IT Support Employees - (PDF link) - SANS Reading Room paper.

(IN)SECURE Magazine - Issue 40 (December 2013) Released including topics

  • Testing anti-malware products
  • Using Tshark for malware detection
  • 5 questions for the head of a malware research team
  • Malware analysis on a shoestring budget
  • Report: Virus Bulletin 2013
  • Digital ship pirates: Researchers crack vessel tracking system
  • Exploring the challenges of malware analysis
  • Evading file-based sandboxes

Doing things faster - Hexacorn blog - nice summary of personal tools and techniques used to improve your IT workflow.

Hacked Via RDP: Really Dumb Passwords — Krebs on Security

All About the Windows AutoRun

The ISC Diary has been running a series of posts on Windows auto-run techniques.

These reminded me of a very long-running series of related (and highly-detailed) posts over at the Hexacorn blog that started back in 2012 with the most recent (Part 6) posted yesterday.

Well worth bookmarking for reading and refreshing.

Blog Posts from the Forensic Experts

Holidays and crazy winter weather hasn’t slowed the blogging production of these masters of the forsec world.

Speaking of RegRipper…

Moving down the road a bit

And over in the factory

And one last interesting post…

Case Studies

Sharpen your saw on these fascinating breakdowns of malware and incident responses.

Speaking of malware analysis, I recently found a new (to me) blog that has some great analysis posts.

The posts are quite detailed and richly illustrated. Definitely worth checking out and adding to your RSS feed pile as I have done.

Meanwhile, over at the Open Security Research blog, a new series has been started on using the debugging tool WinDBG.

WinFE News

It has been forever since I last built my WinFE. I’m hoping to update it by walking through a fresh build in the next month or so. Brett Shaver’s blog site is rich with great tips and tools and documentation that makes rolling your own (stock or custom) WinFE package a piece of cake.

More ForSec LiveCD News

Back when I started blogging a lifetime ago, there were really just less than a single handful of useful forensic-focused LiveCD builds available. Most have disappeared but luckily a wealth of others sprung up to take their place. It’s all I can to do to stay on top of all the updates and releases of my favorites.

Hackage & Pwnage (and other almost depressing news of late for consumers and from the thin front line)

Like about most every American, we woke up to very bad news around Christmastime with the announcement that Target had been seriously breached. The post-mortem work appears to be silently continuing but the news has been saturated with corporate data and account breaches lately. We are still waiting for our replacement cards to come in. What a drag but small price to pay. It seem like things are getting worse, but what is discouraging is that these are probably the only ones main-stream media is focusing on and people are paying attention to. These smaller breaches occur daily at businesses large and small. My only hope is that not only will excellent forensic analysis lead to applicable lessons learned to improve things (if actually deployed) but that the public will understand the sharper and narrower razor’s edge we seem to be walking down with our personal data and the dependency of data security. Of course this whole “NSA” backdrop is another fine mess but I’ll leave that for another day.

First the bad news recorded here for posterity.

And woe the consumer…

…and what about those SnapChat users?

Of course if you try to do the right thing…expect possible whack-a-mole response to your head…

Talk about frustrating…

Have I been pwned?

Meanwhile, leave it to an Aussie to continue to fight the good fight for consumer security.

Have I been pwned? -  Check if your email has been compromised in a data breach

It’s not only a great way to stay personally informed about any security breaches but it’s a good way to show non-technical family and friends this really does impact them. Family and friends may shake their heads at the news stories, but when you have them type one of their email addresses into here and it (unfortunately) shows up…it becomes much more personal.

A few odds-and-ends in closing…

Just some odds and ends I’ve found these past weeks

Avira PC Cleaner – a second opinion scanner - Avira – TechBlog. Spotted via this BetaNews blog post, Avira reveals stand-alone Avira PC Cleaner.

FBCacheView - NirSoft - Shows Facebook images stored in the cache of your Web browser

Security Essentials for Windows XP will die when the OS does - Ars Technica - Really? Like anybody was surprised by this news.

Cheers!

--Claus Valca

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Sysadmin Linkfest Grab-Bag Collection

Over the past several months I’ve collected the following interesting links, articles, blog-posts, and utility notices that caught my fancy.

I’m pretty confident you will be able to find at least one link here to entertain yourself with.

ComputerZen Ultimate Utility List 2014 Edition

Scott Hanselman's 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows - Scott Hanselman - I found more than a few power-tools listed here that I use and several new ones I made the note to explore further. Many of the tools here are developer specific but that doesn’t mean the average sysadmin cannot locate something they could use.

Utility Rundown

Updates: Coreinfo v3.21, Disk2vhd v2.0, LiveKd v5.31 - Sysinternals Site Discussion

Using Autoruns to validate system drivers - Clint Huffman's Windows Troubleshooting in the Field Blog

RawCopy - reboot.pro - NTFS file copier for low-level disk reading by parsing the $MFT, including locked ones.  Spotted via this BetaNews post: RawCopy lets you copy any NTFS file -- even if it’s locked

Of course that “RawCopy” shouldn’t be confused with these other (also great) file copiers:

USB Related

USB Image Tool 1.64 released. See the USB Image Tool main page for one of the best USB device imaging apps I’ve ever used.

Having trouble making files contiguous on a USB drive? - RMPrepUSB, Easy2Boot and USB booting.  Great tip on using Defraggler to make specific files contiguous on your USB drive.

Sysadmin Tips and Talk

How to Copy Recovery Drive to an External Drive in Windows 8.1 - Next of Windows

Adobe credentials and the serious insecurity of password hints - Troy Hunt’s blog

How to Get a Windows XP Mode Virtual Machine on Windows 8.1 - Lenny Zeltser - very clever!

Remotely query user profile information with PowerShell - 4sysops

WinSxS Folder Cleanup – Regain disk space in Windows 7 - 4sysops

Remoting Week: Non-Domain Remoting - Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog

Case Of The Missing Ini Files – A WinDbg Reconstruction - chentiangemalc - Brilliant explanation on how with tremendous patience and WinDbg, some missing INI files were re-created for customer program operation.

Video: Checking the Digital Signature of Windows Executables - Didier Stevens

Virtual Machines

Releasing IE11 virtual machines to modern.IE - Windows blog

IE11 Virtual Machines Now Available on modern.IE - IEBlog

Basically, IE 11 for Windows 7 and IE 11 on Windows 8.1 virtual machines have now been released by Microsoft. Go get ‘em!

Oracle VM VirtualBox - Version 4.3.6 was released a while back. See the Changelog for details.

Project Management Software

I hesitated dropping these links here rather than giving them their own post. But here they will sit.

Project Management Tips and Software - my original post from back in 2007. Been a while…

Express Project - free project planning software. I think this is what got my re-hunt for project management software restarted. Screenshots

GanttProject - free desktop project management tool

Bridging the Gantt - PDF Link - SANS Institute Reading Room paper. Nice intro to the Gantt tool.

OpenProj - Project Management - Free project management program.

Open Workbench - another free project management program.

TaskJuggler - free project tool.

dotproject - Open Source project and task management software

ΤΙΜΙΟΣ Gantt Chart Designer - almost as simple as you can get.

Manual Gantt Charting in Excel - David Seah

Miscellaneous Software Finds

NimbleText - a fine little freeware (for now) tool

PhotoFilmStrip - Ken-Burns Slideshows in Full-HD - just updated to version 2.0 in late November 2013. I love this tool and it really makes doing videos of static digital picture files much more interesting for presentations.

LibreCAD, 2D-CAD - version 2.0 was recently released.  MS Visio does all my heavy lifting, but I’ve seen some CAD masters do amazing floor plans with their CAD app that can run circles around my Visio work. So this seems like a great place to get your feet wet in CAD software at a great price point - Free! See also the large list of YouTube video tutorials: librecad - YouTube. For those who want to really try with no commitment, check out LibreCAD Portable 2.0.0 (2D computer-aided design (CAD) tool) over at PortableApps.com

Ultimate Windows Tweaker 3.0 for Windows 8 - I’ve not done much tweaking to Lavie’s Windows 8 system. We did add a start-button replacement utility and make some minor tweaks but that was pretty much it. That said, this would be a great tool for doing some more advanced tweaks to Windows 8.

Projects - Bitdefender Labs - Bitdefender has a number of free security-focused tools here for the interested.

Cheers,

Claus V.

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Astronomy Software freeware

I don’t believe I’ve posted any significant lists of astronomy freeware software since 2006.

Last week I saw Microsoft released version 5.0 of their WorldWide Telescope project so it seemed a good time to post that and a few others.

Then there is Celestia.

You can install nice add-on features via packages from The Celestia Motherlode including both real and fictional spacecraft.

And there is also a Celestia Portable version as well.

Couple either of these with Stellarium (or Stellarium Portable) and you have a very nice package for your star-gazing activities.

As a handy supplement there is also Google Sky. Read the About page for a quick rundown of the features.

If you want even more software options, check out this gizmo’s freeware posts that outlines many more options: Best Free Astronomy Software

Claus V.

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Network News Linkfest

Here is a collection of linkage I’ve collected that falls nicely under networking categorization.

Lots off tutorials, new applications, and best practices.

They’ve been building in here for a while so some topics may be a bit outdated but they were still useful to me, hence posting for posterity’s sake.

In case you are a network sysadmin and have been living under a rock, Microsoft released a new version of its network analysis tool Network Monitor (NetMon). The new tool is called MessageAnalyzer and comes will all kinds of neat bells and whistles.

It may not quickly replace Wireshark (or a few other network packet capture tools) in your toolbox but I used NetMon heavily in the past and it was great for some specific traffic capture conditions. So I’m still eager to learn about the features this new tool offers, which are pretty neat.

Defrag Tools over at Channel 9 has just started some video tutorials on it:

WhoIsConnectedSniffer - new freeware tool from NirSoft to listen to network packets and then lists the detected systems and devices the packet traffic indicates. This is a “passive” scanner rather than an “active” scanner. Pretty cool. A few more details in the NirSoft Blog post New utility that lists computers and devices connected to your network

Remote Desktop Protocol 8.1 Update for Windows 7 SP1 released to web - Remote Desktop Services (Terminal Services) Team Blog - Since first collecting this link in November 2013 the page currently says the download was pulled due to quality issues. Still, it’s an interesting read if you are into RDP.

The Physical Side Of Networking (By Tony Fortunato) - LoveMyTool. Great reminder of the need to keep  your network hardware connection points clean and protected. Never forget the physical level!

See below for another reason it’s good practice to check your network for device chatter in unexpected places. (I’m still negotiating with Lavie for purchase approval of either Dualcomm DCSW-1005 or Dualcomm DCGS-2005L network tap for the home…its likely to be either that or a new set of Vera Wang bed sheets depending on the priority list that wins out).

News out of the 2014 CES continues to indicate the electronic industry’s love-affair with making almost everything “networked” despite the lack of obvious benefit it may bring. I’ll spare you all the linkage but this one article by Peter Bright at ArsTechnica sums up it very nicely and is aligned with my current attitude towards all the noise: Smart TVs, smart fridges, smart washing machines? Disaster waiting to happen

SoftPerfect Switch Port Mapper - feature-limited trial/$ - new utility I found recently from SoftPerfect. There are a number of tools that can assist wit network switch port identification, and this tool has a particularly nice interface. Thought I would share though I’ve not personally tried it.

clumsy - free - an utility for simulating broken network for Windows Vista / Windows 7 and above. I know it seems counter-intuitive for a network admin to purposely try to make their network run “worse” but this is a super-clever tool (no installation required) to help test your network/application performance under less-than-ideal conditions. Spotted over at the neat utility notice blog One Thing Well (clumsy)

Important Security Update for D-Link Routers — Krebs on Security. Got a D-link router? Read the post and see if you need to do some patching.

Scanning without Scanning - ISC Diary

Virtual Router Plus - Virtual Router Plus Official Project Site - “Virtual Router Plus turns any Windows 7 and Windows 8 computer into a Wifi Hot Spot using Wireless Hosted Network technology.”  Spotted via LoveMyTools post Virtual Router for Windows Portable Software AP (by Tony Fortunato)

Wireshark 1.10.4 and 1.8.12 are available - ISC Diary

Cheers,

Claus V.

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NewsFox Update

I’ve moved on from using a browser-based Add-on extension for my RSS/ATOM feed reading.

Currently I am using Omea Reader as it best meets my power-feed reading and processing needs.

There are many-many more standalone client-based RSS feed readers for Windows as well and I keep my eye out on them just in case something better comes along.

On my iPhone I am now using Reeder 2 (Apple Store) having upgraded from the (still works nicely) original Reeder app for iOS. I like this one the best as I stubbornly use “standalone” feed readers rather than one of them many online/cloud-based feed reading service platforms. It works for me, though migrating my feeds from Reeder to Reeder 2 was less than easy.

Anyway…long introduction to say that the Firefox based RSS feed reading Add-on NewsFox has been updated again.

I still heavily follow the NewsFox development as it was IMHO the best Firefox based RSS feed reader out there, followed by Sage.

So if you are interested, here are some links regarding the latest updates for NewsFox:

Cheers,

Claus V.

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Extending WebCacheImageInfo (kinda just a bit)

Near the end of November 2013,  Nir Sofer announced release of a brand new toy utility, WebCacheImageInfo.

Pulling EXIF data out of image files is nothing new to almost anyone, but Nir’s new tool did make it much easier to harvest that information when found in images that are related to web-browsing.

From the WebCacheImageInfo tool page:

  • This utility works in any version of Windows, starting from Windows XP and up to Windows 8. Both 32-bit and 64-bit systems are supported.
  • The following Web browsers are supported: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, SeaMonkey, and Google Chrome. Opera is not supported because it stores the JPEG images in Webp format.
  • WebCacheImageInfo won't work if you configure your Web browser to clear the cache after closing it.
  • It's recommended to close all windows of your Web browser before using WebCacheImageInfo, to ensure that all cache files are saved to the disk.
  • Be aware that WebCacheImageInfo only displays JPEG images with EXIF information stored in them. It doesn't display other images stored in the cache of your Web browsers.

However, unless you are a real geo-navigating pro, trying to figure out the “where-in-the-world” did Waldo take that photo using just the raw EXIF data can be a bit daunting.

Luckily there are some very nice and full-featured freeware applications that can help out and place the photo’s geo-data on a map (assuming the data hasn’t been spoofed/falsified of course!).

GeoSetter - This is one of my favorite tools for the purpose. Written by Friedemann Schmidt, it has an amazing GUI and is super-easy to use. It supports JPEG/TIFF and many common RAW file formats. Note it does use the ExifTool by Phil Harvey and download of the application is offered both in an EXE installer package as well as a Zip file.

Speaking of the ExifTool by Phil Harvey, there is also a nice ExifToolGUI maintained by Bogdan Hrastnik that also contains support for mapping of geodata in GoogleMap. It doesn’t look like it has been updated in quite a while but still is pretty useful.

See this additional list of tools that use Phil’s ExifTool engine: ExifTool Utility List.

Since we are on the subject, these might be interesting posts.

Regardless of the purpose you might need this tool and information for, it again stands a great reminder just how much personal information can potentially leak out when folks upload/post/share digital photos on the World-Wide Intertube network without sanitizing the EXIF data first. Just saying..

Cheers,

--Claus V.

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