Computer Tips -Tech Info

Sans had an interesting malware analysis this morning about a blob that appeared to be ascii text (gibberish) that was retrieved by a piece of malware. It turns out that the ascii text was a cleverly encoded exe file (windows executable or program file.) It took several iterations of their analysis to uncover the actual […]

This morning I was doing a fresh install of Windows XP SP2 into a Virtual Machine. So far, things are fine I went through windowsupdate and found 3 updates the first time, then rebooted and hit windowsupdate again to see 55 updates available. A lot of times when I set up a new pc for […]

This has been one of the “problem child” patches this time around and it looks as though it’s worse than initially thought. Apparently, instead of “just” crashing IE SP1 when viewing compressed http 1.1 web pages on WinXP SP1 or Windows 2000 SP4…. as stated in Microsoft’s bulletins, this could also lead to a buffer […]

One of the things I didn’t mention in my first skype post was the “getting skype to work with linux” bit… The version available via urpmi in Mandrake was 1.2, so I installed it (before I had the usb audio phone) and gave a try. It gave consistent errors trying to access the audio device […]

I’ve seen skype I just haven’t used it personally until very recently. In fact there was a place (dialpad?) that I had used once upon a time for a few free long distance calls online. It was neat, but had some limitations (delay). It quickly became non-free and frankly the microphone I have hooked up […]

This was weird and now that the switch is replaced I haven’t been able to duplicate it, but let me explain. There was a netgear fs608 (8 port unmanaged) switch plugged into a linksys router (model number not noted.) The cable was straight (although the fs608 has support for link through straight or crossover cables.) […]

NO, I didn’t mean to type satellite. Stratellite. This is an idea that I’ve written on before and I think it has some interesting possibilities. The idea is to positition a large airship (helium balloon of sorts) in the stratosphere. Put it above the steering currents of the jet stream and equip it with the […]

I’m having to make sure I put the date in the title of these posts now…. over the weekend there were rumors of a new powerpoint vulnerability. Sans had an early notice of some trojan droppers using powerpoint files. And by the 20th (Sunday) it was being called a 0-day. There is a good FAQ […]

I’ve got a slew of articles open that I’ve been holding to post about. I’ve also got a few other things to post, so this may be a busy posting afternoon. There’s quite a bit going on here, but things are RELATIVELY quiet out on the internet it looks like. A flurry of typing going […]

A couple weeks ago the hot story was about the demonstration of a vulnerability in a 3rd party wireless card driver on a Mac. The individuals that demonstrated the vulnerability (in a video taped presentation) also claimed that many wireless drivers were vulnerable to this same flaw and it included the MacBook native drivers (among […]