Category: Security

Windows 10 was End of Life – So I decided to go to Linux Mint using ChatGPT!

Paul
A fun illustration of a person stepping off a sinking ship with the Windows 10 logo on its sail, onto a bright, stable island with the Linux Mint logo. Bright colors, cartoonish but clean, eye-catching.
A fun illustration of a person stepping off a sinking ship with the Windows 10 logo on its sail, onto a bright, stable island with the Linux Mint logo. Bright colors, cartoonish but clean, eye-catching.

Windows 10 = End of Life updates

We knew this was coming a mile a way.   It’s been advertised by Microsoft for years now and I just didn’t like Windows 11 and how they were wanting everyone to have an account to be able to use Windows 11.  I shouldn’t need to link my account and that is one reason I “Jumped Ship” to Linux Mint.   Don’t get me wrong, I use Windows 11 at work and I have no problem with it in my organization but Microsoft has very little information from my work life to my personal life and I am going to keep it that way.  Since Microsoft is wanting to prevent users from making local accounts, I0 decided it was time to go check out some other operating systems like Linux Mint.

Using ChatGPT to help Installation!

I knew with my own built system, I built this desktop from mother board to GPU and Intel cpu.   I knew I would have some issues with the installation of Mint to this system because it isn’t a prebuilt or one that is built by any companies.  Let me be clear my system was built by me 3 years ago and it has been solid ever since the real issue is that the Mint is a lot of time developed for prebuilt systems, Asus, Dell, HP, and even Microsoft computers.    It’s not something that will be a lot of issue for most because if you have a laptop or desktop that is pre-built then it most likely will install without a problem but my system has some special needs.  I need it to do Video editing, Gaming, and even word processing from time to time.   That’s where ChatGPT was really helpful.    I didn’t have to go searching Google or Bing for how to solve issues like my video drivers and my KeyChron Keyboard which is AWESOME with this setup.    Don’t get me started on Getting Resolve Video editing to be able to work with Linux but Chat GPT walked me through how to setup all the things I needed for me to be able to do what I needed.   It even suggested ways to install the software from

Apt-get  update to Apt-get Install
  Or from the
Software Manager

First Impression of Linux Mint

It’s really not bad and I have a Good Geoforce RTX 3050 that is working just fine with the video drivers that I installed using ChatGPT.   Gaming on it might be a bit different but most of my games including Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 are working just fine using Steam and Proton.   They’ve really did do a good job with that and making it more available to the Linux Community is strangely getting better and better every day.  I’ve used ChatGPT to help install Microsoft Flight Simulator even though there is people who have talked about how to get it to run on ProtonDB but it would of been harder to do without using ChatGPT to help install and get the game running smoother than it would have in previous years.   The graphics for the game are top notch even now using the Graphics drivers and it even has seen some better FPS on MINT than  Windows 10.   So I can’t say I am looking at this without saying it is getting better.

 Final Thoughts on Mint

If you’re staring down the “End of Life” message on Windows 10 and wondering what to do next, Linux Mint is absolutely worth trying. The learning curve is real, especially on custom-built hardware like mine, but ChatGPT made every step from Nvidia drivers to DaVinci Resolve, way easier than digging through old forum posts.  What surprised me most is that not only does everything I need actually work, but in many cases it works better. My games run smoother, Resolve is stable, and my Keychron keyboard feels like it was built for Mint. If you’re on the fence about switching, let me just say this: I wish I had done it sooner.

In my opinion I’d say give a few Linux Operating systems a try and decide which one is best for your situation and know that at the end of the day.  Your data is kept away from Microsoft now that you are using a free operating system.

The Surprising Advantage of Being Talkative in Job Interviews!

Paul

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Be Yourself in an Interview!

Understanding is the best solution to being good talker in the interview.   There are many who are saying you shouldn’t talk that much in an interview.  I tend to think this isn’t really a good approach unless you want to come off as one who doesn’t want to be engage with the interviewer(s).   Some would say, that you should just be yourself and I think that is good because if you are comfortable with the interviewers than it comes off as good fit for the job.   If you come off as nervous or uncomfortable then you may come off as not the right fit.   You might not know it or not but having the secret to keep quite maybe is the one thing that didn’t get you that one job.   You should be actively listening but you should also be engaging and be ready to show them that you are the right fit for the job.

Showcase your Knowledge, Passion and Expertise

One of the biggest advantages of being talkative is that you show your passion and experience in during the interview.   Some manager’s will like it and others will not, It just varies from one person to another.   Some managers will want you to be concise and to the point because they are way busier and maybe don’t have the time to do the interviews.  Read the room and understand when they are ready to go.  Showing you have a passion will in one way or another provide them the assurance that are the right fit for the job because they don’t want to hire someone who will hate their job and just do the bare minium.   Building Rapport is also good because they will want to know that you can do the job and put the customer first.   Also let’s not forget that if you have the ability to build a connection with the interviewers because they will get to know you even more and They may see that you have a lot to bring to the company, which could lead you to having a job offer come your way.

Authenticity and Positivity

Both words are nouns but they have some great advantages as you are interviewing.   You being authentic can help them see your personality and even see your values while at the same time measuring if you will be someone that people will come to acknowledge and being personable with.   It’s only human nature to want to create connections and be social, so there isn’t anything wrong with being authentic and personable towards the interviewer(s).    The real aim is that you shouldn’t talk way to long and you should keep your answers short as possible but you should also actively listen and respond to questions or show them you are the right candidate in one way or another.  Just remember to address the potential concerns that the interviewers might have and by doing that you are also showing that you are concerned with their feelings.

Stories help make it memorable

Remember to be authentic but also come up with stories that will showcase why you are a good fit for the job.   Understanding the job description and knowing what they are looking for can go a long way into being memorable.  They created the job description for a reason and we should be mindful of that while interviewing with them.  It’s definitely a two way street when it comes to job interviews, You get to know the people and make a connection with them and also learn more about them and see if the boss is someone you would like to work with in projects and other ways.  Ultimately you will be working with this manager and you’d have to decide if they will be a good influence on you and vice versa.   No manager is the same and as such you can tell from the interview if the manager does a lot of micromanagement or if they are more free spirited which can be a great plus in any work environment.

Have you had experiences where being talkative helped you in an interview? Share your stories in the comments below! And don’t forget to subscribe to my blog for more career tips and advice.

 

The Best 3 Free Tools for Desktop Support Professionals

Paul2 Replies

Display Driver Uninstaller

Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) is something that every desktop professionals should have mainly on computers that may have Graphics cards that are required for the job such as Nvidia or even AMD cards.   You will find that every so often some driver updates causes a problem and this is a very good tool to uninstall the driver completely.     I will say this is open sourced and is very good for every day support when you might need to use this little utility for just those occasions.   You will find this free tool will be used more and more and you can even keep it on a USB drive as a way to use it offline when you need to do use it.   It’s very small and won’t need a big USB drive but this is only one of the few that you might have available to use on your USB drive.

Portable Apps

Portable Apps has so many portable applications that it would be hard to talk about all them.   However there are several that I will talk about that you can install on the USB drive.  Depending on the size of your USB portable drive you have will depend on what you might want to install on the drive.   However if you have a big enough USB drive, you could in theory install all available applications from Portable Apps and then you would be set.

  • Revo Uninstaller Portable — Great for those pesky programs that might not uninstall all the way or when something goes wrong with uninstalling programs.
  • HackthisPortable — Good for looking for viruses, and Trojans that might be on the system and gives you a run down on what might be running on any given system.
  • McAffeeStingerPortable and Kaserpky Task killer —  These are great apps for programs that you have issues with when they want to keep running even when you need them to not be loaded or running on a system.
  • CPUZPortable and GPUZPortable — great ways to find out even more about finding out what drivers you might need for GPU and looking at what type of CPU might be on any given system.  In case you needed to know.
  • Microsoft Safty Scanner — Great portable app that you can use on any Windows system in case you might have a Virus infection and is being blocked from being download or run locally.
  • CCleanderPortable —  Another great applications to use to clean the registry and other places in Windows that might be causing problems and helps fix some of the registry problems you might have.

As you can see there are several portable apps you can install on any given USB drive and have ready at moments notice if you ever need it.  So this is great tool that you can use for what ever you might come your way.

WinDirStat

WinDirStat is something that helps me find what might be hogging a system drive.  It is great and showing graphically what could be taking up the space of a hard drive.  It is portable and can be put on USB also but can also be download and used for many different reason but mostly when you need to find out why the hard drive is so full and how what you can delete to create space.  So this is something most Desktop Support people will use at one time or another.   I have used this several times in the past to find files that can be deleted, you just have to be careful what you delete and never touch anything in the Windows Directory or Program Files directory unless you want the system no run properly when you reboot.

These are what I have on my USB just in case I need them but these are only a few of them because there are even more tools that I use when I need them however this would start you on the right to having a powerful USB drive when you might need it.   Do you have a favorite tool that you want to let everyone else know about?  Why not leave a comment and tell people about it.

Don’t forget to subscribe to keep updated on any new posts.

 

 

The Prevailing winds of the Lastpass Breach — How it affects you!

Paul

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Understanding the Lastpass Breach

Let us be clear about this, people really don’t truly understand what is going on with this breach.   It however will not stop the threat actors from taking control of your data if they get a chance.   This means they will go after the websites you will visit or maybe impersonate you in some way to get the access they are seeking.   Either way it isn’t like we can just sit back and do nothing.

“It is possible to crack those passwords,” Melissa Bischoping, director of endpoint security research at Tanium, said via email. “Instead of running the math to determine how complex your password would be to crack with modern equipment, it’s best to go ahead and do some credential hygiene.” — CyberSecurity Dive

Credential hygiene is necessary in our day to day routines because it helps stops theft of our accounts and our personal information.  However that doesn’t that the Meta data associated with your vault was encrypted, in fact it wasn’t and can be used to exploit this issue.   So even if they don’t brute force yoru password vaults, they can do fishing or means to get the access they are seeking so they can get even more information about you to use against you.

The Lingering effects of Password Managers

Password managers are a necessity in today’s time because of the all too common breaches.  Even if Lastpass wasn’t breached, some other site or sites would of breached and you’d still have to change your password or add multi-authenticator access to prevent any authorized access.  This goes without saying, we will see other breaches and it will not just be Lastpass.   Sooner or later some other Password manager will be a target and we will see this again but that shouldn’t deter you from using a Password manager it is the one tool we will always need to create even better Passwords than we could by our selves.    Although Many in the Security field are advicing users to go to another Password Manager.  I too have not like the taste of what Last Pass has done.  They way they made it sound less important that it truly is but that just might be because they’re lawyers got involved.   Either way I will suggest three things to better help you even if you keep Last pass.

  1.  Check your interations and make sure you have them high.   I think the minium we should have is over 500,000 interations to make sure they can’t be hacked the next time as easily.   Also if they are low, now is a good time to bump them up even though it makes you more of a target right now.  This will help in the future, in case there is another breach.
  2. Change all your imporant sites passwords, don’t just wait to get hacked might as well go through and see which sites you are truly using right now and go ahead and change your password and if you can add an authentication method to help protect you incase there is another hack down the road.
  3. Create a new masterpassword which isn’t anywhere close to what you have now.  If you can create your own acronym with a minium of 12 digits that would help. (What is an acronym?)  I suggest not using the most common acronyms but creating one that you can only remember and use that.   It may take some time but it could be something you have to say everytime you type in on your computer, just don’t let everyone else hear it.

Those Password Managers

Finally, let’s talk about your choices in this matter. Even though I talked about this in the previous post, we should at least look at the ones that might want to go another service.  Here are a few of them that I saw around the internet:

  • Bitwarden  — This is the one I perfer to go to because it is so opened sourced and you have several options to choice from.   It is where a lot of people are going right now after the LastPass Breach, I am sure of it.
  • 1Password —  This one I only know about through what i’ve heard.  I’ve heard good things about this but there are not many options to those who are wanting free.   This is good because they’ve been in this for quite sometimes.  I’ve heard of this company for MANY years and still has some great value to give to their users.
  • Dashlane — I’ve never heard of this product but it comes highly recommended by other because of how security focused they are.  You will have to pay a yearly subscription fee and there is only a demo version that means you do not have a free version.
  • Roboform — I’ve talked about Roboform way in the past and still it was a very useful password manager when I was using them 10 or so years ago.  So they must ast least be doing something right to still be in the business.   I haven’t explored them lately but I might just do that again to see how they are doing.

As you can see you have several choices to choose from if you decide you want to get away from Lastpass but ultimately you will have to decide what you want to do.  I am still going to possibly go to Bitwarden because of the open source or I might go back th Roboform if I can find my license that i had with them in the past.  I haven’t really decided I think Bitwarden would be my best choice because I know people can look at their code and help keep my passwords secure.   Are you planning on changing or staying with Lastpass?  Who will you be going to if you are going to change Password Managers?  Why not leave a comment and tell me your options.  I’d love to hear them and find out exactly what you are thinking about this LastPass breach.

How Keyloggers work and why you should worry!

Paul

keyloggers

 

The History of Keyloggers

Keyloggers have been used ever since the dawn of computers.   It used to be a problem even in DOS(Directory of Systems).   If you haven’t used Dos that is normal, it hasn’t been used for years and years but it was still was a problem.  What are Keyloggers?  Well, to put it in a way that even those who might not know about computers will understand, is a program or app that will watch everything you do, this includes everything you might say, might type, and then report back to the person or organization who created the keylogger.   If your phone was infected they could use the keylogger to even know your GPS location and you would not even know it.   This is where it has gone in the past and I am sure it will get even worse in the future because of all the IOT(Internet of Things) we have being used to control our Fridge, or even our thermostat.

The Information gained by a Keylogger

Even today, we should be watchful of who might be looking over our shoulders.   It is even more difficult to do that in security because Keyloggers will tend to hide in the background and not show signs that you have a problem on the system or systems involved.  The information a threat actor might gain from using a keylogger is tremendously valuable.    I don’t say that lightly either, when a threat actor gains control of a system and wants to gain access to something even more secure this is one of the ways they can get the information needed to gain access to that really important documentations.   They can sit on a system for weeks to months without being noticed and gaining valuable information such as passwords, account information’s from banks to email addresses, Even your Social Security Number and even what websites you might of visited while the keylogger is installed on your device.  This is just a small part of how much information a keylogger can gain just by being on a system.   They can learn habits of the user, if you visit a site at 12:13pm almost exactly each day, then they will know what you are doing on your break or what you do at night if this is a system at home.  They could even know your location just by having a keylogger on your phone and be able to track you through the day to figure out your habits.

It’s not a victimless as you think

No matter how many times you hear of keyloggers, you probably don’t realize just the truth of the matter.   That the reason to install keyloggers into a system is for money, extortion, or blackmail.   These are just a few of the reason why a threat actor would do this.   They’re doing this usually for money but not always they will do this to make a statement or gain access to information.   This is where the value of keylogging comes into play, anything a user does can potentially show valuable information from black mailing someone because they are visiting sites we shouldn’t be visiting for pleasure or to get the information needed to impersonate someone to gain access or ruin someone’s credit.   All these can bring shame to the victim and make it even harder to survive.   This is one reason security has always been one of those hit or miss areas in IT.  As soon as we find the program, infection, or worm, they go about coming up with new ways to do it all over it.   You see we are always trying to analyze the structures of the programs they create and find them in the wild.    So as soon as we know about the program they have to change the program to be able to do it again on some other systems.