Category: Software

Living with Linux offline and blogging about it!

Paul

No time to be offline!

Hey Let’s face it, I am more and more wanting to blog. It is however quite hard to do that while traveling or when I have family. So I been curious as to how to do that. As you know I’ve been using Linux more and more. I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The only problem sometimes is I didn’t have a internet connection and I know myself, that can be quite hard to write blog post. So I went searching around to see if I can blog offline. I found some great little programs that will do it easily in Linux.

Blogging Offline, Didn’t know you could do that?

If your like me, you probably think you have to be online all the time. I am just glad that I found a program that will do me everything that I wanted to do with blogging and publishing my posts. I hate those times when I do not have access to an internet connection and I have something that I want to write. I didn’t know you could blog offline either, but as I was wanting to delve more and more into Linux, I am steadily making Kubuntu my home away from Windows. I’ve always been fascinated with writing and Linux in general so that is why I am leaning more and more on teaching others about the Operating System.

Some programs that you should check out:

  • Blogilo — This is the one that I am using with WordPress right now and it seems to work really well. I’m really impressed with the software and I think they are making some great strides with offline blogging.
  • blogGtk — Looks good but have not actually tested this one out. I will install it later on but the screen shots don’t look anything like Blogilo and even then It looks somewhat the same. I guess I could live with any blogging software but right now I am loving Blogilo.
  • Gnome blog editor — This one looks to be for Gnome projects but does look promising even though I am using KDE. I don’t know anything more than that, I might also try that one out just for kicks.

As you can see these are just a Few of blogging tools that the Open source community has created to better fasciliate and make blogging just that much easier!

How do I add links?

There are definately several ways to add links. I will give you a few ideas and let you come up with your own way to help you blog offline.

  • Automatic Seo Links plugin — Great little plugin for the simplest of things. The little plugin will allow you to automatically associate any keyword with an URL. So if I were to tell you about Linux, it would automatically link to a website. This is quite handy and have it used it in the past. You should look into it if you have a wordpress blog.
  • Blogilo — Download you most recent blog post and you will already have links available to keep your readers on your site longer and encourage them to stay on your site.
  • Put the links in when your online — This is also something that is very useful because if your like me, you sometimes can’t think of the links but know that if you had internet access you could easily find them. So before you post with Blogilo, just go through the post and put those link in there when your ready.

I hope these help you create even better blog and allow yourself time to be offline. I really am enjoying Linux and how open the community is. Hope to see you soon!!

Keep It Real!

Paul Sylvester

Scareware List for July 31, 2009

Paul

Antivirussystempro1

Looks like they went out and made a quite a few domains lately so Here they are:

  • antivirus-live-pro.org ([intlink id=”1837″ type=”post”]Antivirus Pro Scareware[/intlink])

  • internetantivirusplus.com (Fake Antivirus)

  • mybestantivirusplus.com

  • securesoftwarebill.com (Rogue System Security Antivirus)

  • yourantimalware.com

  • totalsurfguard.com

  • systemsecuritysupport.com

  • stabilitysuite.com

  • powersystemstability.com

  • onlinecentersupport.net

  • identitysecuritysuite.com

  • etotalsecurity.com

  • defenseinteractive.com

  • defenseinteractive.com

  • antispyinteractive.com

  • antispyavailable.com

  • protectionsystem.org(Like [intlink id=”1837″ type=”post”]Antivirus Pro Scareware[/intlink])

  • realbestantivirusplus.com

Remember these sites are active and are scaring people into buying or installing there product, you should not go to these sites. As you can see the Scareware Writers and domains have been busy this week and have made these to use in this weekend I can bet on that.   These sites are trying to [intlink id=”3607″ type=”post”]scare you into buying there product or installing there fake antivirus software[/intlink].    If you are constantly inundated with pop up windows warning you have a virus or trojan and showing you a load of viruses or trojans on your screen. They will probably ask you to install software or buy the product that would be a big waste of time and could possibly install even more malware and also could loose money. You should never download any software from sites you don’t know or buy from sites that you’ve never heard from.

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 :

[ad#SUPERAntiSpyware]

A-Squared Emergency USB Stick – Portable Antivirus Kit

Paul

IT Security warfare is an interesting domain. It is a never ending race between the security software developers and malware writers. And since the security software always act after the development of the malware, they are always behind in this race.

But this fact poses a serious threat to the security of your system as a user. If you are not careful and regularly updating your antivirus applications, you might be late, and if the malware might get a chance to get the entry to your system, it can play havoc there.

Today’s Intelligent Malware…

Today’s malware are much more intelligent than their predecessors. They not only do the damage intended by their developers, but also make it difficult for security software to identify them. They try to disable your antivirus applications, they modify your system files so that you are not able to access the security software websites and forums, they hijack your browser homepages, they disable the update procedure of your security software and use all such tricks, which make their detection difficult.

What is the Solution?

In a such a situation, you need a security tool, which remains aloof from your system and can be used as and when required. A-Squared Emergency USB Stick is one such portable tool, which can be used in such a situation.
A-Squared Emergency USB Stick is a combination of two free security tools from the reputed security vendor EMSI. These tools are…

A-squared Free:

[ad]With a-squared Free you have got the powerful a-squared Scanner including graphical user interface. Search the infected PC for Trojans, Spyware, Adware, Worms, Dialers, Keyloggers and other malign programs.

a-squared Command line Scanner:

This scanner contains the same functionality as a-squared Free but without a graphical user interface. The command line tool is made for professional users and can be used perfectly for batch jobs

You can download this and save it in your USB Flash Drive. In some unfortunate instance, when the security software installed in your system is not able to detect any malware, and the malware damages your system files, then there are chances that this USB stick remains protected, because it may not have been inserted in your computer at the time when the malware has been doing its job.

Once you are aware about the presence of the malware, you can try to use this portable antivirus kit to clean your system. The command line tool coming with this portable antivirus toolkit is especially useful because many of the present day malware can potentially disable the GUI interface of the popular security software.

[Download A-Squared Emergency USB Stick]

[This is a Guest Post from Silki Garg, who enjoys writing about Internet and PC Security Issues. Check out her latest articles on ClamWin Portable Virus Remover and Windows Security Options Tool WinPatrol.]

Careless Facebook profiling can lead to Identity Theft!

Paul

I just got in contact with a old friend from High school and another friend of mine suggest the new friend. I was looking at her profile and couldn’t believe what I saw:

Something users shouldn't do!!!As you can see this is not good I was amazed at how many people are giving out there birthdays and who they are married to to friends and family. So we heard about how people are claiming they need help or are in need of desperate money. This is nothing new, as you know people are having hard economy times and people are using the social engineering to scam people out of money.

I feel that I should warn people the important necessity.   You shouldn’t be broadcasting your DOB and who your married to to your friends, just in case they get hacked.

Recent activity indicates that identity thieves are hacking into trustworthy profiles before selling on the login details to interested parties. This information is used by spammers to target legitimate users, posting misleading links on their “walls” – personalized message boards.

[Via Computing.Co.UK]

This deservese a little mind and a lot of understanding.   By the spammers hacking into facebook accounts they have the chance to scam or spam people with links to possibly have a virus or trojan installer.

[ad#ad2-right]For example This one blog talks about the Virus:

Symantec’s Norton Antivirus software has flagged this as a “high risk” Infostealer.Gampass virus. More info on this particular Trojan vius is here. (Note: Symantec warns the risk level is “low,” since it originated in 2006, but this new Facebook email is a new iteration of the same virus.)

You might be inclined to click on this link because it’s from a friend, but they did not intentionally send it to you — and yes, their Facebook photo is attached, too.

[Via Sync-blog]

facebookident2Now I went searching through my friends list and also found this little bit of information.  As you can see this one is asking for people to use there account to scam people out of money.  They could use this to find out even more information of the Other partner and make you believe your talking to the real deal.   Saying they need money because they are stuck over seas or something like that.   I’ve seen this on other blogs where people have sent money to “friends” but are actually people who are the scammers.  Then if you send the money you are out of luck with your money and possibly your friends to.  I am sure there are more but this is prime examples of what you shouldn’t do and why.

So what can you do to prevent Identity Theft and/or being scammed?

    [ad#cricket-right-ez]

  • Roboform Review — A Password Manager that will help protect your passwords from key loggers and other such phishing sites.    I strongly recommend it to to all who are security minded. (Never use the same password for all your accounts)

  • Are you worried about your identity? — This is good information in checking out sites that might be questionable.  You can find out what type of site it by using your brains.

  • Old Phish Become New again — This is blog post about twitter and what may happen if you did give out your password.   This is a good example of why you never should give out your password to third party websites.

  • Twitter Spammers a getting more smarter — This is also good example of what happens when you see become friends with someone who isn’t real.   You could be the next to be spammed and/or impersonated.

If you follow some common steps you to could prevent from being the victim or getting your Identitiy stolen.   Some things to remember is Never tell anyone your Birthday the whole date like someone did on twitter a few days ago.  It’s nice that they are growing older but that gives people that much more information to use to steal your money or your idenitiy.   Think before you give out any personal information like Age, Married, who your married to and anything that might be used to be able to access your account or your impersonate you.  Remember only you can prevent from being scammed or lossing your identity, you wouldn’t want to have to pay for your mistakes.

Zero Day For IE7 Being used in the wild.

Paul

It looks like IE7 patches are being used right now in the wild.  According to TrendMicro:

HTML_DLOADER.AS exploits the CVE-2009-0075 vulnerability, which is already addressed by the MS09-002 security patch released last week. On an unpatched system though, successful exploitation by HTML_DLOADER.AS downloads a backdoor detected as BKDR_AGENT.XZMS.

How the IE7 Exploits are being used

[Image from TrendMicro Blog]

[ad#ad2-right]As you can see this this can be very bad for the companies who wait a while.  Internet Explorer is still being used 1 out of 4 users and I see it it all the time on my stats.   The Good news is this isn’t as hard to get rid as the Conflicker but should be taken serious because the writers might start to want to get even more malicious and make it even harder.

This is the next step to prevent yourself from getting caught with your pants down so to speak, you need to patch all systems that have internet access.  I still like the Autopatcher because it will do the job with very little input from the user.   It also makes it easier for people to patch big systems.  You should also consider installing some Free Anti-virus software to help protect the systems you do have.

From the looks of this virus, someone could easily make this into a botnet and you know how that can could affect your systems and your ISP.  So it is best to get this months patches on the floor of your company as soon as possible.

You should also consider telling your users to start using Firefox to prevent infection from even happening. Until you patch, you are vulnerable.