Category: How-to

Get Thunderbird to launch Firefox/Chrome browsers in Linux!

Paul

This isn’t like Windows!

If your like me you probably clicked a link in Thunderbird and thought you would be taken to your favorite browser but that isn’t the case with Linux. The pop up screen asking you which application to launch is quite similar to Windows but there is a problem. If you have had no experience with Linux then you might ask yourself “Where’s the program files?” It seems that Windows and Linux differs from each other in that aspect. I did have to do some things to get Thunderbird to get it to launch a browser. This quick tutorial will help those new to Linux to do what they have always done on Windows. I will warn people that clicking on links in your emails is the first way to get a virus or a credit card stolen but that is for another topic and discussion!

Some Preparations are in order!

For some of use this is something that should already be included, but it seems that Mozilla didn’t add some important config scripts into the Thunderbird application for Linux. Thanks to Google, I found the answers and I thought I would also share them with people so it would be much easier for others to enable launching the browser in Thunderbird.

You will need to add these strings in Thunderbird:

In Thunderbird: edit > Preferences > Advanced > Config Editor

Right click anywhere in the list and click ADD > String. Then add these strings with values!

  • String: network.protocol-handler.app.http Value: x-www-browser

  • String: network.protocol-handler.app.https Value: x-www-browser

  • String: network.protocol-handler.app.ftps Value: x-www-browser

Once that is done, your ready for the next step of the process.

Where Do I find these files?

Most cases you will find these files in only one place and that is almost like a C: Drive. In order to find the right program, you first need to go:

  1. /usr/bin/firefox.sh (shell script)

  2. /usr/bin/chromium-browser.sh (shell script)

  3. /usr/bin/rekonq.ex (Executable)

These are the two files you will need to tell Thunderbird to launch the right application when you click on a link. You should only need to do this once for each type of link from http, https, and the last one is the file transfer protocol but if you do this, I see no reason why you would be able to launch your favorite browser. Depending on which browser you have installed, it should be easily found in the the bin directory and you should be able to launch your browser even if it is not a well known browser. .

Let’s Rock Linux

Paul Sylvester

List of Malware Sites for Aug 14, 2009

Paul

personalantivirus3

  • secure-spyware-scannerv3.com ([intlink id=”3607″ type=”post”]Personal Antivirus Scareware Site[/intlink])

  • secure-antispyware-scanv3.com ([intlink id=”3607″ type=”post”]Personal Antivirus Scareware Site[/intlink])

  • best-virus-scanner.com ([intlink id=”3607″ type=”post”]Personal Antivirus Scareware Site[/intlink])

  • homeantispywarescan.com ([intlink id=”3607″ type=”post”]Personal Antivirus Scareware Site[/intlink])

  • livetimeprotectionscan.com ([intlink id=”3607″ type=”post”]Personal Antivirus Scareware Site[/intlink])

  • beeves.info ([intlink id=”4217″ type=”post”]Internet Antivirus Pro Scareware[/intlink])

  • securitytoolworks.com (New Rogue Total Security Antivirus)

These sites gets installed in unsuspecting computers by way of exploits, backdoors, Trojans, or unsafe downloading practices. This usually means that if you have it you should remove it by any means necessary because this software has been know to cause more and more trouble as time goes by. This software is fake ware, it tries to tell you have a virus and that they can get rid of it. In fact, this software is not designed with Antivirus engine in it but to illicit pop ups and warning to raise the users security concerns about the computer in question. Downloading programs from bit torrents or other unsafe ways can and most likely will have these types of programs installed alongside the program you wanted.

Threat to System : Moderate

[rating:4/5]

Advice : Do a Complete system scan and make sure you don’t have any more hidden malware.

I recommend :

Do a Full System with One of these Free Antivirus Software:

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PDF Exploits and how to prevent them

Paul

Now we know that there are PDF Exploits being used more and more to fake anti virus software. I am here to discuss how to make it harder for these exploits to happen in the first. So I will be walking you through using Firefox as the browser, so if you haven’t downloaded Firefox. I would recommend downloading it, it is much safer than using Internet Explorer.

In Firefox, Click Tools, and then Options:

AdobePDFprevent

You will look for anything that says Adobe in the Applications tab and select either Always ask or Save file.   I recommend setting it to “Always Ask” for the one reason you will know if you have visited a site that uses PDF’s, it gives you a warning of when some website tries to uses Adobes PDF reader.

I also go into Adobe Reader:

Click Edit>Preferences

AdobePDFprevent1

Disabling Javascript will help prevent some of the more common exploits in Adobe, and anyway I do not need Javascript enabled to read a PDF because I hate flashing stuff while I am trying to read.

AdobePDFprevent2

This will prevent it from using your web browser you will have to use Adobe Reader to read this.   From my understanding if you use Adobe Reader in your browser they can put redirects in internet explorer and have some control over what you browser does when you load it up.   This prevents any exploit from taking over IE, or Firefox because now they work alone and not together.   While you at it with Firefox, I would go into the Addons Section.   Click Tools>Addons and Disable the Adobe Reader Addon to be even more safer on the internet.

Now this won’t protect you a 100% but will greatly make it harder for those invisible Iframes to infect your system.   I also have Free AVG running and [intlink id=”3884″ type=”post”]SUPERAntiSpyware Pro[/intlink] running all the time to better protect my system.   You may need to download the PDF to be able to read it.  You can change the Firefox options above to save it instead of asking what you want to do.

Securing Your WordPress blog

Paul

In the last few blog post we talked about:

This post we discuss securing your WordPress blog and creating even more of a WordPress Firewall, as I call it.   You don’t know what bot or person might be lurking around your blog to get access to installing malware or worse off taking control over your blog for there own nefarious reasons.

Photo by: Terry Mun Photo by: Terry Mun

Now since you have installed WordPress and have it working now what do you want to do blog?  Blogging will be coming later in this series but for right now we want to take a good look at removing your Default Admin user.   Like the default routers admin profiles and password this makes it even easier for a hacker to try to find out the password.  Although You should never use a simple password.   You should always use numbers and letters in random order to make a really strong password and have it at least 8 characters long.  The longer it is the better off you at preventing unauthorized access to your blog and your blog posts.

Prevent access to Wp-admin and or image directory from bots.  This can be good you can also use this in combination to disallowing every IP but yours to help prevent people from gaining access to your pictures or you admin login page.   This is all preference and how secure you want to control access to admin page.   I feel if you have good security in place you should be in good shape.   If you don’t have a permenant or static IP and have a rotating IP you can however increase your security by password protect the wp-admin directory from unauthorized people.

I’ve also been using a few plugins to help protect your admin page from hackers, they can help prevent unauthorized access by limiting how many times you can attempt an a login:

  • Login Logger – keeps track of recent logins to WordPress for all users, as well as all failed logins. It records username, time, IP address and how long since each login attempt as well as time since last active for each user.

  • Limit Login Attempts – Limit the number of login attempts possible both through normal login as well as (WordPress 2.7+) using auth cookies.  By default WordPress allows unlimited login attempts either through the login page or by sending special cookies. This allows passwords (or hashes) to be brute-force cracked with relative ease.

I have talked about [intlink id=”3698″ type=”post”]Wordpress security plugins and other things[/intlink] you can do to better protect our WordPress blog.   I would suggest looking at that and make sure you harden your security for WordPress so that you don’t have a problem with hackers.   Although these are just a few you should go check out the WordPress article from the creators of WordPress and also consider using some of those recommendations to keep your WordPress blog secure.

On the next blog post we will talk about Blog themes and how they help your audience.   We are almost done but do stay tuned.

Setting up WordPress

Paul

In the last few blog post we talked about:

Now we can talk about setting up WordPress, although this probably won’t be a long topic.  I feel it is necessary to help people feel less stressed in setting up a blog.   Most of my family don’t have a clue how I set mine up, and I am thinking they are uncomfortable because this is foreign to them.   I intend to try to easy everyone’s stress levels by explaining it in a more relax atmosphere.

As most people will know I started my blog 3 Years ago, and haven’t stop blogging sense.   Some would call this what a blogger does.   I call this an experience, because what I’ve learned over the last three years is priceless.  As you can tell when I started my blog I was clueless about how to blog.   Over the 3 years I’ve learned a lot and a glad to be part of the blogging community.   It’s been a long process but a really fruitful one.

Photo by: Terry Mun Photo by: Terry Mun

Now I am wanting to pass the experience onto new users on.  Most people will expect a website management to be hard.   Creating a website even harder, here I will talk about installing it.

One way to install WordPress is through some Hosting providers website tools they offer to install WordPress for free.   They basically use a script to install WordPress.   Usually they are a version behind the last release of WordPress, now since WordPress has also integrated upgrades you can easily upgrade after your install the older version.

The other way is just as simple, You can install it using an FTP upload.  Now I am so glad WordPress has a tutorial for this.  I had to use it at least once in the three years to install WordPress.  You would however have to download the WordPress zip file and make a sub directory, calling it WORDPRESS and extract into that then upload that whole directory to either your main or sub directory.   If you’d think it is hard, I would argue it isn’t.    This way only took me 10 minutes at best to upload and install.

Anyway you choice is a quite a simple setup, If you follow the instructions and tutorial step by step.   There should be no problems.   Although no matter how good you are there have been problems in the past with installation and that might need to be dealt  by the hosting provider technical support.   Each hosting provider should have a way to contact them to resolve and you should not hesitate to call them for technical support they are there to make you succeed.

In the next blog post we will talk about Securing You WordPress Blog and why.