Tag: Content

Offline Update 5.0, Clone of Autopatcher to Some!!

Paul

Offline updater 5.0 has been released a couple months ago and I just realized it now.  This is an excellent tool for IT professionals who want to keep all your Systems up-to-date with the last patches from Microsoft.  The systems it supports are Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 x64, And Windows Vista / Server 2008.(32 bit and 64 Bit updates).

ct-offline-update50

[ad#ad2-right]I find this a very useful program for people who have a multitude of problems, from not being able to get on the net to computer virus infections.  This is really good for big businesses that want to update a lot of systems in easy way without having to wait for downloads of updates to install.   You can take a DVD and update on the fly within Mins.   DVD being Cheap or buying them in bulk helps saves time and money for the company.   Less time spent downloading the updates and more time actually getting work done.  As with the Conflicker, Downadup, and to some the Conflickr Trojan, if you got infected with that little worm.  This would help install the updates that it prevented you from doing in the first place.  I also found that once you download do the update the files are kept on the hard drive so you no longer have to redownload them again.  You just update the updates every second Tuesday of the month and it downloads the newest patches and creates a whole new ISO for you to burn.

Q: How can I create the offline update CD images automate, for example via a “scheduled job”?
A: Create a new batch file in the “cmd”, eg “DownloadUpdatesAndCreateISOImage.cmd”. Add the desired calls of

“DownloadUpdates.cmd” and “CreateISOImage.cmd” with the necessary parameters in this new file. The file might for

example have the following contents:

@ echo off
call WXP download updates eng
call CreateISOImage WXP eng

Then set a “time-controlled contract” for the new script “DownloadUpdatesAndCreateISOImage.cmd” to your desired

time. For example, after each Microsoft Patchday create new images, select every second Wednesday of the month.

[Via The FAQ’s Documentation (Translated Via Google)]

As you can see you can have it do a script and be ready for you in the morning.  You then just take it out of the drive and install where you need to install the day after the updates are issued. On another Note if you have clients who use Windows office Xp, 2000, 2003, 2007 then this will also help:

ct-offline-update50-1

This is nice if you have clients who use the Microsoft Office Suites also.  Some Malware will often try to infect people’s systems through a office script or some other vector.   So this will also prevent infections or hackers from getting onto the system by updating this also.  You can have this added to each and every DVD ISO you make to include these as you update the patches also.

Download:

Viacom might be going to HULU

Paul

According to some of the news post people are worried about Viacom leaving Time Warner. Now Here’s where Viacom might be going digital. What do I mean Digital, I am talking about going to HULU. If Viacom doesn’t sign a deal with Time Warner, that would leave a space ope for someone else like Hulu.

So Viacom isn’t happy with Time Warner, or They want to go IPTV. Some of the Headlines I’m seeing are:

These are just a few that I am seeing pop up around the internet.  So what does that mean to the internet user?  Well On one of there show’s like Dora the Explorer on Nickelodeon will begin to stream some of the shows previews on Dec 29, 2009 for it’s next show.  When you go to Nickelodeon Site you get this:

nickplea

[ad#ad2-right]Although this just means they want as much money as possible this does give Hulu the chance to start streaming this type of content easier and probably be able to sign a contract with them without much of a fuss. After all Viacom wants to make money some how. So what can you do to get them to go to Hulu. Email Hulu and tell them and tell them you want Viacom to come to Hulu. If this happens so many things will happen with regards to online media.

Twitter Spam bots are hot to trot: http://gentai.com/revenge1

Paul

Ok so I was curious why I all of the sudden got people joining my list. each one I look at just to see who these people are have only one twitter message saying this from two different accounts:

twitbot3

and this one also

twitbots2

and once you click that link it takes you to this website and see what they want you to do:

twitterbots

These people are trying to get you to click on there links and [ad#ad2-left-1]get you give them email accounts.  This has been socially engineered to look like it is real.  I gave them a 10 min email account to see what they sent me.  It was a link to there porn site.  Wanting me to give them my credit card or checking account information and to join there site.  I don’t think so, not this old dog.   Anyways if you get this spam from a user you might just want to block these people.  Some of these people have followers.  Hmm I don’t know about these people.  I guess they want you to send an email to other people to spam them also.  How nice of them to social engineer this scheme so you can make your friends and family mad at you and probably not even talk to you.   So that is why it is good not to auto-follow people when they subscribe to your twitter account.   Some people have that set.  Some people just don’t learn. I am sure some people will like this site for other reasons but please don’t spam people with this little site. Please don’t put people on that list.

Scoble is Right and Arrington, and Loic are wrong about “authority”?

Paul

This weekend the blogosphere flared up over twitter having “authority” search functions.  I say this is totally not going to work because some factors.  I am not saying they have the right idea but I do see a really major downfall.   Loic wants to be able to search for content that has more “authority” and because he is looking for good content.   I understand where he is coming from because he wants to look for content for his Seesmic Company.   I can see he wants to find the best videos to offer to his users for his company.  I totally understand and really appreciate that he wants to work for his company.

[ad#cricket-1-1]Now being that Arrington talked about this on Techcrunch, and agreeing with Loic over this.  I have to wonder why he wants to agree.  You see he is also into content and understand that if the “authority” for searches in twitter from his blog post means people will flock to his site and he gets more pageviews.  I say this is the wrong for him to agree because there is nothing going to stop people finding his content.   Also that would mean his blog post would have more “authority” then the common person who might not like this blog post and you wouldn’t see that until you get to the next page or even a few pages back.   So we have these two wanting more “authority” and more content.

Then we have Scoble and his blog post.  Now let’s talk about this from where scoble says it’s a bad idea.  Scoble talks about gaming the system, and if you think back to Digg killing all the high number of members because they were using scripts.  Here we are again with regards to twitter.  Now if we have authority people are going to game the system because no matter how hard we try it will be a competition.

We have botnets and we have bots on twitter.  It really isn’t hard to have a bot on twitter, and that is where we have a problem.  You see if we have “authority” and we want to game the system.  We just have bots with authority and by having other bots subscribe to each other.  There lies the problem.  People will easily be able to game te system and create even more trouble finding the content they are so dearly looking for.   Now I don’t usually get into the whole “he’s right and he wrong” disputes but this one has to be brought to people attentions.

I say this when did “Authority” stop people from talking about the really important stuff happening in the world.   We have people from Friendfeed talking about this and we have people from twitter talking about this als.  Loic and Arrington need to learn content isn’t hard to find, it will always be there.  You just have to open your eyes to see.   The way I see it, we have a coin and we have the good and bad.  We should just keep the bad out of there and keep the good stuff we already have.   This goes in the bad idea bin for the time.

Uncovering a Virus/Trojan

Paul

Getting done with the first part really got my juices flowing. I was shopping looking and thinking about this next article. I came up to only one option turning this into a 3-5 length post due to all the content that I will have.  So where did we leave off?  Oh that is right figuring out if you have a virus/Trojan.  The instant I made a post about this 12 hours later someone make a comment and here is what he said:
[ad#ad2-right]

Rene Van Belzen

I can’t wait to read part two of this article. I always wondered how you’d know you’re infected if a virus don’t want to be detected and no virus definitions are yet available, because the virus is so new.

Now the truth is anytime a Virus does something it usually leaves a footprint somewhere and somehow.   Even the hardest working hacker can’t plan for all possibilities and that is where we begin.   I have been helping people for a while with viruses and know that no matter how hard the virus tries to hide you can usually find it relatively quickly and easily do to virus check here are the ways I’ve done to figure out if they may or may not have a virus/Trojan.

Now if this is a client’s computer and you don’t want to be rude to the client, there are a few indications of user error and installing a virus.   This is relatively simple, all you do is do a quick inventory of all the start menu programs.  You’d want to look for any P2P file sharing program, If they have Firefox Installed, and if they are using Window Mail and not Thunderbird.   You see 80% to 90% of virus downloaded are installed by the End USER.  They either downloading a game and installing a virus with [ad#ad2-left]a game, or not protecting themselves by using Internet Explorer or Using Windows Mail.  That is usually my first step due to the fact, I’ve got to be diplomatic about finding out about security ways.  Also make sure they are up to date on there Window updates, unless they are using a really old system then you will have to work even harder.  Also you can suspect a virus if the client is talking about having problem with a program recently although this isn’t always true it sometimes is the case due to the fact hackers don’t have a big chance to test these viruses/Trojans out before they set them into the wild.  So there are always going to be unplanned problems associated with them.

After the first initial search of desktop, you should really know the likely hood of a possible virus getting on the system and later we will talk about counter measures to prevent virus attacks in the future.   There are a few places a hacker likes to put commands.   Hackers love to put in the Registry to run a program every time Windows starts.  It usually in:

  • HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

  • HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices\

Usually 50% to 70% of virus like to make sure the program to runs.  This is a flaw in Windows because hackers can edit this without much effort but there isn’t many places a hacker can go to make sure a program is set to run when you boot.   So this is also a benifit to finding those little programs.

Now just like the Regisitry, Hackers also like to put programs in a few areas on the hard drive.   This is also kinda hard to hide because most of the time these are consider important to the system but if you know what to look for you can pretty much figure out if it is truelly a system file.  These areas of the hard drive are:

  • C:\WINDOWS\System32[ad#ad2-right]

  • C:\WINDOWS

  • %programfiles%\common files\microsoft shared

  • %windir%\temp\

These are just a few but if you look hard enough it can be found most of the time.   Most of the time I use the registry to tell me where these programs are so I can do a further check of the program.  Some of this is not needed with some of the programs that I recommend but this is for those who want to be a through job and make sure the virus is gone.

On my next post we will talk about some good tools for the trade to help get rid of a virus/Trojan.  This little step here is used to  better help identify a virus and also give you chance to google each name on the list of registry and the hard drive  to see if you can identify the virus.