COMPUTER PROs SIG NOTES
Date of
meeting:
SIG leader:
Harry Elver
Location:
El Parador Restaurant
COMPUTER
SECURITY
Dave Bilgray stated that Intel is purchasing McAfee at a large
premium. He suggested that Intel might
put some part of McAfee's antivirus program in their chip. For additional
hypotheses about why Intel is purchasing McAfee, see
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Intel-McAfee-Merger-Plugs-Network-Security-Hole-696433/
and
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/why-did-intel-buy-mcafee-for-77-billion/9347
Web of
Trust at http://www.mywot.com was mentioned
as a community-based Web site rating system.
You get red, orange or green dots depending on what other participants
think of the safety of the site.
One
attendee stated his company just installed an Iboss
Web Filter which is manufactuered by Phantom Technologies. It costs $175 on the
router plus $250 a year subscription. It
is the cheapest system he knows of for a school.
Another
attendee stated that he just installed a SonicWall Content Management Security Appliance for a
client.
Jon Griebel said the NY Times article went on for two pages
about OpenDNS as if it was a new thing. This article is located at
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/technology/personaltech/19pogue.html
He also
said Combofix is the only reliable software for finding rootkits, but you must read the detailed logs to detect the
(former) presence of a rootkit.
Peter
Ireland and Daniel stated that after running Combofix,
you must usually run the fix "Autoplay"/"Autostart" for DVD/CD
drives.
Jon Griebel said that the Russian hackers in 2010 and 2009 were getting $1
million a week from ransonware. Harry Elver indicated
that paying for ransomware/extortionware was a good
use for a one-use credit card. Peter Ireland stated that if you use a credit card to pay
for ransomware/extortionware, you can phone the
credit card company to reverse the charge. Harry Elver
reported that clients are usually too embarrassed to call.
Peter
Ireland asked if anyone had a preference between "AVG" and "Microsoft
Security Essentials" ("MSE").
Jon Griebel said "MSE" often slows
down "Windows XP" running on older machines. Francis related that "Microsoft
Update" gives the updates for MSE top priority and these updates sometimes
cause dramatic slowdowns during the startup of some "Windows XP"
computers. Harry Elver
and others stated that automatic "Microsoft updates" for "MSE"
had no problems with newer machines.
Peter
Ireland asked if the Microsoft "Malicious Software Removal Tool"
should also be installed (if another antivirus/anti-malware software is already installed). Everyone agreed
that it should be, as it is a normal Microsoft update it is intended by
Microsoft to complement other antivirus/anti-malware
programs.
Harry Elver talked of a small Thinkpad
where he cleaned off an infection, but nothing was shown on the Windows desktop. If he looked in the various
"Desktop" folders, everything was there. But the desktop that was display was empty
and "Windows Search" was not working properly. Peter Ireland’s co-worker Daniel said to
right-click on the desktop, check on the Arrange by.
Sherry Goncharski mentioned that Comcast was changing it's cable modem customers from McAfee to Norton Security
Suite, which is a version of Norton with some special Comcast additions. She stated that it was confusing some of her clients.
See http://security.comcast.net/norton/resi/?cid=NET_33_246
Peter
Ireland stated that "PayPal" stopped
offering their one-use credit card. One
attendee stated that he gets one-use credit numbers from Discover and most
credit unions offer Discover cards. He
stated that, with Discover, you can generate as many numbers as you want. Then you
put in the desired expiration date and check “cancel after use”.
Peter
Ireland asked about third party certificates for "Exchange Server". A client had a self-signed Microsoft
certificate for one year that just died.
He worked for six hours to get one installed and gave up and called the
Microsoft tech, expecting to pay $250.
The tech gave him one more command-line switch to use and didn’t charge
him.
Members
mentioned a recent update was a root Microsoft certificate update.
See
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931125
Peter
Ireland said the cost of a Verisign certificate is
$1,000 and GoDaddy charges $100 for their equivalent
service. He stated that before issuing
or renewing a certificate, Verisign actually calls
the company and talks to a real person and asks for their Dunn & Bradstreet
number, etc.
WINDOWS
OPERATING SYSTEMS
Harry Elver read that XP is now only 40 percent of the installed
base. He is now recommending "Windows
7" to his clients because it is more secure and Dell has told him he can’t
buy XP after October 1.
Jon Griebel said a client uses proprietary accounting software
that won’t be ready for Windows 7 for five years. Other attendees stated that "ProSeries", the professional version of Turbotax, is now on running on "Windows 7" and that
"Sage Software" is finally running on "Windows Vista" and
"Windows 7".
Harry was
asked if he recommends 32-bit or 64-bit Windows 7 and he urges 64-bit so that
they can use more that 4 Gigabytes of RAM since 64-bit operating systems can
use up to 128 Gigabytes of RAM.. Peter Ireland asked if Harry warned clients they would have to buy
a new printer after getting on the 64-bit versions of Windows 7.
This led
Jon Griebel to relate that you must be connected to
the internet to install drivers and he had a client with dialup. It took several hours before he finally moved
the computer to his office to complete the installation. The client was located where only dialup or
satellite Internet access was available.
Sherry Goncharski had a problem after installing a new hard drive
with XP. Everything worked except Mosy online back gave a blue screen with a message “Bad
Pool Header” 0000019. She knew that Partitiion Magic uses a non-standard master boot record
(MBR). She had used Acronis
Migrate Easy and assumed it might have a non-standard MBR. So she used the recovery console program “FixMBR” but it did not work. Members suggested she also run “FixBoot” and look at the crash dumps for a clue on what
driver or process to stop. The "Crash
Dump" log analysis program comes from Microsoft, who bought it from System
Internals.
Peter
Ireland recommended Experts Exchange to help solve problems. It costs $100 a year or $12.95 for 30 days. Harry Elver
mentioned that you can sometimes stump them by asking them a difficult
question.
Sherry Goncharski stated that many clients should use a "hosted
Exchange server" instead of setting one up. Peter Ireland agreed that an Internet-hosted Exchange
server is usually by far cheaper and easier that procuring and configuring one. It is especially cheaper if you have few
users. One attendee stated that his wife
had to have CRM software tied to an Exchange server in order to interoperate
with Outlook so he had to own an Exchange server because hosted Exchange
servers do not allow you to merge CRM software with them.
Peter
Ireland said that Google calendar integrates easily into Outlook. He recommended an Web-based
"Exchange" server e-mail access by Microsoft's "Outlook
Web Access" ("OWA").
Paul Scott stated that he did not like OWA because it does not identify
who said what. Sherry stated that she had
a client with "Microsoft Office Home and Student" which does not have
"Outlook" so she set them up to use "OWA" and it worked
well for them.
Sherry said
that the instructions for importing "Outlook Express" mail into
"Windows Live Mail" can be found at
Jon Griebel reported that he needed a certificate to hook a
wireless HP netbook to a router. He finally determined that you can turn this
feature off by going to the Authentication tab and check on
the box for require an IEEE certificate.
Members indicated that the certificate is for every SSID connection.
Harry Elver indicated he uses Windows for managing the
connection, but some after-market or Wi-FI cards put
their own utility on the system to manage the connection. Jon Griebel said to
go to the Connection screen and click on Let Windows manage this
connection. Then go to services and turn
on the Windows Minimal Connection WMZ. Sherry
Goncharski said she has been able to just uncheck it. Harry Elver said
that some Dell notebooks must some of Dell's wireless software modules
installed for their on-board Wi-Fi adapters to work.
Jon Griebel said he worked on a 2006 Acer "Aspire"
with
Sherry Goncharski said that the Chrome browser installs updates
without you doing anything, and a member indicated that you had to agree to
that in the beginning to get Chrome installed on a computer.
Peter
Ireland said he was working on an older server with a much too small of a "Pagefile.sys" swap file. Daniel Vance installed the server six years
ago and it was going down every two weeks and had problems with backing up and restores. Peter increased the swap file by 10 times and
this resolved the problem.