Atomic City At Tampa Bay (Tech Corner)

I have created a maintenance plan that most non-computer people can follow. My friends in Tampa are smothered in pop-ups, sneakware, spyware, key loggers, and other assorted crap flying around on the Internet. The online barnacles attach to an XP machine and start to impede computing throughput within weeks of placing a new OS install on the Internet. Over the last two years, I have developed a system that prevents most of this pollution from getting a foothold on your machine providing that you do not cruise any porn sites on the Internet. Many of the new spyware hybrids now being developed there cannot be removed by conventional means. I believe the key to a clean machine centers around weekly maintenance of the server or PC. All of this activity is useless without the proper software tools for both prevention and PC clean-up. On my next post, I will cover the procedures, tools, & links for doing the plan on a weekly basis.

Mikel

Cable & DSL Home Gateways: Hosting WEB, FTP & Telenet nodes from your home system can be a challenge if your ISP has assigned you a dynamic IP address. Many times if you request a static IP, the ISP assumes you are trying to go commercial & they want to charge you for the attempt. With the advancement in home router technology & hardware in general, the expense element of the home gateway is no longer a factor. I have located two magazine articles in "The Hacker Quarterly" that give clear instructions on how to set-up a system using your existing cable/DSL residential account:

'How To Set Up A Free Web Server At Home' By Khoder bin Hakkin From "The Hacker Quarterly" Fall 2002

'Fun With Hosting On Your Cable/DSL' By Toby Richards From "The Hacker Quarterly" Spring 2003

I am now in the process of building a residential gateway for myself & if you send me an E-mail I will forward the articles above in electronic format. Be very careful about leaving copyrighted material out on an open WEB or FTP server. The Thought Police have been know to seek out & punish people engaged in all types of Internet data distribution in addition to the now infamous peer-to-peer networks. This type of residential gateway is also ideal for the new private encrypted networks like WASTE.

Memory Recovery & Defrag: This is a new area for me, but I have found a product that is very good at this task. Remember the old RamPage shareware? Unfortunately this program is not shareware, but it works better than the old software. This program is suitable for Windows XP Pro only as it appears to be unstable with Windows 2000. To locate MemTurbo II, use the following link or send me an E-Mail:

http://www.memturbo.com/

The "ram scrub" function of this software is excellent for urgent memory recovery to continue processing on your PC. Enjoy!

Troll Disk From Norway: Did you ever need to recover the ADMIN password from a NT4.0/Win2000/WinXP machine? No way to do anything with that PC/Server box, but put a new operating system on it? I have been there a hundred times in the last ten years. This offline NT password editor has been under development for several years & it now provides a excellent tool to recover those pesky lost passwords. Norway has some of the finest IT people on the planet & Petter Nordahl-Hagen is one of the best of that group. Here is the link for the primary site:

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Here is a link for an extended instruction site on server password recovery:

http://www.jms1.net/nt-unlock.html

Microsoft can't really be happy about this type of activity, but to be fair, they have not been very helpful in the area of password recovery. Is there any machine anywhere that is really secure? I don't think that is possible in this day. All we can do is try to stay up with the tide of innovation.

High Speed Access To File Explorer Destinations: This freeware program is called FastFolder & has the ability to map/direct the user to 8 specific addresses. Against the advice of the author, I use it to point to drives that are mapped(not direct PC access). If your drive map goes bad & you unknowingly send the program to an invalid drive, a reboot might be in order. Lazy hackers like me still do it from the tool tray! I have been using this freeware for about six months with excellent results. Bernie Madigan happens to reside near Sidney & he builds dog kennels for a living. Here is the link:


http://www.dogkennels.net/fastfolder/

PrintScreen & Screen Capture Utility: There are a gazillion of these utility programs around & most are freeware. My favorite is H@rdcopy from Siegfried Weckmann in Braunweiler, Germany. He has been improving this program since 1983 & I am impressed with even the freeware version. His website explains the basic operation of the software. I have been using some version of this program since 1995.

Here is the link:

http://www.hardcopy.de/hardcopy/english/index.htm

Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 Has Arrived

The Direct Link Is:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/downloads/servicepacks/sp4/default.asp


Please TEST before you deploy this type of upgrade! Depending on your configuration, everything can & will go bad.

XM Satellite Radio: The Ultimate Hack?

My Source: "XM The Flawed Future Of Satellite Radio" By Acidus (Georgia Tech Yak Society) Published In 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, Spring 2003

Acidus does a great job with a technical overview of how the XM people deliver their satellite radio product. Unfortunately, the U.S. A. only gave XM 12.5 MHZ of bandwidth for over 100 channels of entertainment. The key to his article revolves around the narrow bandwidth problem. Activation & cancellation signals can only be sent through the system for a limited time. Your XM radio must be operating for it to be activated or shut down via satellite. Acidus estimated that the signal to cancel a particular radio's service was only broadcast for no more than 360 hours if that long. If your XM boombox were shut-off before a service cancellation request were entered & the device was left off for 30 days, your radio would never receive the shut-off signal for all time in the future. There would be no reason for XM to ever send the cancellation signal again for that radio unless the former subscriber requested it.


The article is worth a read to get the full picture of where the service is going.

STOPPING CREDIT REPORTING ORGS FROM SELLING YOUR PERSONAL DATA: Yes, there is a way to stop the madness. Here is a "lift" from a major tech newsletter:

I recently received an email forwarded by a friend, who received the notice from his accountant, of all people. The email claimed that on July 1, credit bureaus will be allowed to disseminate your personal information unless you call them to opt out. Little did the personal finance professional know that this has been floating around the Internet for over two years, and continues to fool plenty of unsuspecting consumers. This one is more a case of misinterpretation or downright malicious intent to harass credit bureaus, though it does have at least some factual basis:

Credit bureaus can, however, create lists containing the names, addresses, and phone numbers of consumers with good credit and sell them to telemarketers and direct-mail marketers. (Names, addresses, and phone numbers are not considered "non-public personal information" because they may be obtained from a variety of publicly-accessible sources, such as phone directories.) Consumers may call the 1-888-5OPTOUT number to request that all four major credit bureaus not include their information on these marketing lists. There is no deadline for this process -- consumers may call the number at any time.

After calling the toll-free number & doing the questions, I received a confirmation letter that must be executed, signed & returned to Seattle, Washington. After this letter is received, the magic begins for Equifax, Experian, Innovis & Trans Union Credit Bureaus. If your town is served by an independent credit bureau like Tampa (Merchant's), Special notification must be sent to them to enable a complete shutdown. Your spouse or "significant other" must also do this process to enable a full termination.

If You Are Out On Your Bike Tonight, Wear Something Bright!

SPYWARE UPDATE: I have searched far & wide for software that will effectively strip spyware out of my browser & system registry for free. One of my tech newsletters put me onto SpyBot Search & Destroy 1.2 from the depths of Germany. It is not a perfect tool, but right now it is one of the most effective stealth killers on the market. Did I mention that it is German & free? The software is simple to operate & somewhat intuitive in functionality. I don't understand what the author means by IMMUNIZE & this product being German, I really don't want to know. I have used this program in conjunction with Windows 2000 Pro & Windows XP Pro. Here is the link to obtain the software:

http://security.kolla.de/index.php?lang=en&page=start

As Always: Use At your Own Risk!!

Peace & Love To All

The Windows Pocket PC OS has now become Windows Mobile. For those of us packing hardware that will run this OS(like the Viewsonic V37), this link is very handy:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/default.mspx

Here is another of my favorites for Pocket PC information & help:

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/


MAY YOUR VISION OF THE FUTURE BE AS WARPED AS MINE

Welcome to my tech log. I hope you like the info & format. Most of this log will discuss freeware solutions within the Windows 2000, XP Pro & 2003 Server world. Get back to me via E-mail for the details.