Website – Page 4 – Paul's Tech Talk

How to Setup your own Blog, The Easy way

PaulAugust 3, 2009

Over the weekend I had a chance to talk to my sister who was interested in having setting up her own blog. She didn’t know a thing about setting up her own blog and asked me to walk her step by step. So I thought I would also walk my readers through this whole process and help you set up your own blog to.

This process will take approximately an hour to two hours, each step will be talked about in detail through a series of blog post. This shouldn’t not take long for anyone to do, depending on the speed of your internet. In fact if you follow my directions, it should be really quick and easy. No mess or fuss.

How to Setup your Own Blog, The Easy Way

Picking the Hosting Provider & Setting up your Domain

[intlink id=”4118″ type=”post”] Setting up WordPress[/intlink]

[intlink id=”4122″ type=”post”]Securing Wordpess[/intlink]

[intlink id=”4135″ type=”post”]Picking your Blog Theme[/intlink]

So now with that being said, I would like to talk about domain names. If you want to have your own domain you have to make it unique. It should be something personal and go with what your looking for. Do you know your domain is almost like a brand-name? Just like Nike, Adidas, and McDonald’s people who hear that come back with the knowing that no matter where you are in the world. This also goes for your Domain, before you start this think of a what you will be blogging about and make a list possible domains. This is always the first step into creating a blog. Now I must warn you this process may take long or it might be short. Some or All of those domain names you come up with may be taken or they may not. The Most common name extensions can be seen through Wikipedia.
Now with that said on my next post we will talk about Picking your hosting provider and Setting up your Domain.

Computer Security : How you get infected with Malware?

PaulJuly 22, 2009

I have had several people how they get infected in the past few weeks and I have scoured the internet to try to come up with some answers. There are several ways to get infected and we will discuss them all here. In case someone wants to get a better idea on how to avoid these commons ways of infections

What is an Exploit?

This by nature is the first thing we need to discuss because exploits are most common with Malware due to the fact that they like to use them to gain control over an Application or computer.

An Exploit is a piece of software, a chunk of data, or sequence of commands that take advantage of a bug, glitch or vulnerability in order to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur on computer software, hardware, or something electronic (usually computerized). This frequently includes such things as violently gaining control of a computer system or allowing privilege escalation or a denial of service attack.

[Via Wikipedia]

Now it can come from several vectors that I know of and it doesn’t just have to be one but has to have several different programs running to happen. You see malware authors like to write code to crash your system in a way. Just like a Remote Code Execution, when they run the code it does something to the computer to make it install software without the users knowledge or permission. When Remote Code execution happens it is most commonly used to take control over a computer process where the program is located in memory or on the hard drive.

Opening a PDF

As you explore the internet you may come across sites with PDF’s that are there to hide there true nature. Just like the H1N1 Virus that is epidemic in the US, Malware authors are using PDF to run a number of possible exploits on people computer. There are a number of exploits that can be used in PDF and even examples for those who want to understand it even more. It however means you should turn off auto-load PDFs in your browser. Any browser will auto load PDFS without having to open a new session it will load in your browser without as much of a warning.

Fake files name

I don’t know what else to call this but you get an email with what looks like it is a picture but that isn’t always true. For example you would get a email from a friend and it says it is a document and may look like documentname.doc.exe which will also use an ICON that looks like a document and may fool you. See the Hidden File extensions that need to be fixed in Windows 7 for examples of what I mean.

Fake Codecs

Codecs are a necessity to view videos but most often are not real. [intlink id=”2991″ type=”post”]Fake Codecs[/intlink] are a way to get you to install malware when you actually think it is a codec. Install fake codecs can lead to trojans, virus, or even key loggers. I’ve talked abut this from time to time but figure it would be good to remind people about this.

Installing Fake Antivirus Software

Sometimes you may get to a [intlink id=”3964″ type=”post”]site that may look like it is a real antivirus[/intlink] but it in reality is a [intlink id=”3713″ type=”post”]scam and will scare[/intlink] you into buying there product. Sometimes the [intlink id=”3114″ type=”post”]Scareware will say you are infected and send you a file to run to help protect you,[/intlink] if that ever happens don’t run it. You should never run programs from sites that you have never heard of. Always go to trusted vendors first or at least Google for the product name before you install any questionable software.

Website tries to use web Browser exploits

Just like WebAttacker uses scripts to try to exploit several different known exploits in IE and other such Browsers. This is the most common way to get virus or trojans to be install into a computer. That is why I will always recommend getting away from IE and running Firefox or some other low profile web browser

Windows Up to Date

It is very important to keep you Windows System up to date. That said you got to understand that if you don’t keep your system up to date there will always be an increasing possibility of getting an infection. Due to the fake that malware authors right after Patch Tuesday will know exactly how to exploit a system that hasn’t updated there windows system to current. Install Service packs and other patches is the one way to keep malware authors at bay.

In one of my next posts I will recommend software to use to help prevent some of this or even how to disable some of the most common exploits. If you like this post please feel free and tell you friends so they may also learn more about Computer Security.

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Michael Jackson Malware on the Rise

PaulJune 27, 2009

In the last 24 hours the spammers and scammers have begun to distribute spam with the guise to:

Harvest Email Addresses — This seems to used to ask users to respond to the email to get “top secret” information about how he died. Security experts believe this is an attempt to verify email addresses for future spam attempts. Although it isn’t wise to reply to people you don’t know about it at least has very little risk with your computer for the time being.

Fake Codecs and Hidden Trojans — Seems this is the main thing they are doing right now to get personal computers on their networks. So you should never visit a site you don’t know about without having an Anti-virus software and A firewall to better protect your system.

Extortion Ware — This one is very interesting, and According to Webroot. You should avoid sites that you don’t know anything about. With News of anything major you should keep with the trusted news sites. This one looks to be the bad guy type.

These seem to be a common ploy with scammers and spammers who want to get money from you in one way or another. I have been watching the Google searches and haven’t seen any malicious sites but I could of missed one here and there.

You should always have an [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Anti-virus and Firewall[/intlink] available to help protect your system from these types of attacks. If you had some kind of protection to better protect your computer. Remember no one can stop computer infections but you.

WordPress Security Tips — For the untrained :

PaulJune 10, 2009

I was reading over at Malware Diaries, about a hacker that doesn’t secure his exploits. What gets me is that I am so surprised that he did that, then I thought about it and I read what Trend Micro had to say about it:

Creating a website is indeed a big task but, considering the present threat landscape, monitoring it and keeping it secure from attacks is a bigger one.
Website administrators have the responsibility to keep their systems malware free, secure web server files from unauthorized access, and keep their website clean of malicious codes, for their own sake and most especially, their visitors’.

[via Trend Micro blog]

[ad]Now admittedly Trend talks about the [intlink id=”3578″ type=”post”]Gumblar[/intlink] and how they compromise websites with either a FTP password stealer or and SQL Injection. These are a common practice with hackers and thief to get the credentials to use your server for their means. So I wanted to talk about some things you can do to better protect your WordPress blog. Since I have a WordPress Blog this was something I know about.

WordPress Security Scan — This is a great plugin to help you identify and also suggests how you can fix them to prevent a hacker from getting in the first place.

Block Wp-Folders from being Indexed — This can be done by going to your robots.txt file and making sure it says:

Disallow: /wp-*

Protect your Wp-admins folder — Attackers can use brute force attacks to without much waiting to get access to your Wp-admin page so you should:

Login Logger Plugin — This is good to see if anyone is trying to login and keeps a log for those instances where you might need to block a certain IP in the .httpaccess file section.

Limit Login Attempts plugin — This has a set amount of login before that IP is locked out for a certain amount of time. You can have it set to what you want an hour or more, it just depends on your preference.

Bad Behavior — This is a good little plugin to help with spam such as referral spam and comment spam. I’ve been using it for the past few months and my referral spam has dropped drastically to almost Zero.

These are just a few things I’ve done to help protect my blog and protect my community and users. I will not disclose everything because I have to keep those bad guys from getting in but I have I hope started you in the right direction. I would also suggest using something like [intlink id=”2646″ type=”post”]Roboform[/intlink] that comes with a password generator to use that with your wordpress login password. This will also help prevent from gaining access easily.

New address cnuncn.com, old Yahoo email

PaulMay 1, 2009

In my Previous Email about yahoo [intlink id=”3330″ type=”post”]email accounts being use[/intlink]d and then their contacts being deleted. I recently came across another post about this email but with a new address so I go to the site and see and It looks like the old one:

It looks like this site was registered on 9-27-08 and Looks like the other site nekcn.com:

[ad#cricket-right-ez]As you can see this looks like the other one, both of them are Chinese websites. I have heard from one or two users that this is a Scam website trying to scam you out of money. I am also sure the scammer just started doing this with the emails due to my previous post about this site. I wouldn’t purchase anything on these sites. I have created a Forum area to discuss Email scams like this one and warn others of new scams like this one. I hope you warn the person who sends this out that they have been compromised and should reset there password. This is one way to gain control over your account.

Remember there are sites out on the net that [intlink id=”3407″ type=”post”]would like to get your email account or your Facebook account [/intlink]and spam people. The reason being is that contacts people have with each other are more likely to get through the spam filters to the person. The Email reads:

Dear friend:

What are u doing these days?I am going to recommend a Eshop to you.Yesterday I found a web of a large trading company from China,which is an agent of all the well-known digital product factories,and facing to both wholesalers,retailsalers,and personal customer all over the world. They export all kinds of digital products and offer really competitive and reasonable price and high quality goods for their clients,so i think you will make a big profit if you did business with them.And they promise they will provide the best after-sales-service.If you are interested to do business with them,in my opinion, you can make a trial order to test that.

Their Web address: www.cnuncn.com or www.nekcn.com

[Via Yahoo Answers]

In case someone has a question about this, please feel free to post to Forums and someone will answer it. It is a good idea to install [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Free Anti-virus and Firewall[/intlink] software to better protect your system.