Pre-Halloween Mishmash

Here’s a few Items of Interest for you.

* World’s first bitcoin ATM opens in Vancouver

“Bitcoiniacs’s kiosk dispenses digital currency from Waves Coffee House” Read more..

* Weaponized Antivirus: When Good Software Does Bad Things

“The 8th International Conference on Malicious and Unwanted Software is aimed at bringing forward the latest scholarly research in security, in an atmosphere that allows direct and candid interaction between all attendees. This year’s conference (Malware 2013 for short) launched with a keynote by Dennis Batchelder, director of Microsoft Malware Protection Center, pointing out the hard problems that face the antimalware industry.” Read more..

[note: this one’s kinda important to know.. ]

* 6 Ridiculous Science Myths You Learned in Kindergarten

“Right around the time we learn to start questioning the ways of this wonderful world around us, our parents start packing us onto school buses every morning, because who the hell has time for all those obnoxious questions? Let the professionals address the budding curiosity of our children; we’ve got America’s Next Top Model to watch. Teachers are better equipped to deal with those questions anyway, right? Right!” Read more..

* Here’s something scary .. Boo!

* Also scary.. Adobe Confesses to Bigger Password Hack

“Early this month, digital media solutions provider Adobe reported a security breach which compromised password information and credit card data for around 3 million customers…” Read more..

BTW Blackberry’s BBM is now available for iGadgets and android devices.

And in case I don’t speak with you before then, please have a safe and a happy Halloween.

Today’s quote: “There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.” ~ Stephen Hawking

(Now that’s scary..!)

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

---

>> Folks, don’t miss an article! To get Tech – for Everyone articles delivered to your e-mail Inbox, click here, or to subscribe in your RSS reader, click here. <<

---

All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Facebook Password Reset

Loyal readers will know what this is…

.. and how the paperclip will automatically put me on the Global Suckers List should I get curious and open the e-mail.
But in case you don’t know, this is a classic “phishing” attack. It is cybercrime. Click here and learn what “phishing” is.

(BTW, I have never had a Facebook account… But the mastermind behind this is hoping you do. Responding would give the criminal full access to my account.)

Gmail vulnerable to password cracking

Best Prevention — A Muscular* Password

Vicente Aguilera Diaz posted a warning on Insecure.org that there currently is a weakness in Google’s extremely popular (free) Gmail that allows hackers to use automated scripts to guess passwords.

“An existing abuse of functionality in the “Check for mail using POP3” capability permits automated attacks to the password data of the accounts of the Gmail users evading the security measures adopted by Google. The abuse of this functionality permits an attacker to do thousands of authentication requests during a day over one user account, so if the user is using a weak password is a matter of time to guess to have access to the mail account.”

The solution is to use an un-guess-able password.

Gmail is Google’s free webmail service, and arguably it is the best such service out there. It comes with built-in Google search technology and over 7,300 megabytes of storage (and growing every day). You can keep all your important messages, files and pictures forever, use search to quickly and easily find anything you’re looking for, and make sense of it all with a new way of viewing messages as part of conversations. It is excellent at filtering spam.

Tip of the day: Please read A Word About Words — Passwords, That Is. It is a short article that describes what makes a good, strong password; why that’s important; and as a bonus, provides a link to a top-rated “password manager” tool.

Today’s free link: I learned of this recent alert on Windows Secrets.com

* strong

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

Share this post :

Create a hidden folder for your private stuff

Sometimes a little privacy is nice. Today I’m going to show you how to hide a folder so that other people who use your machine won’t be able to see it, or its contents.
I hope all of you had a pleasant and enjoyable holiday weekend.

Tip of the day: Create a hidden folder for your private files. The first thing to consider is where to place the folder. You want it to be someplace you’ll remember easily, and someplace sort of out of the way. Some folks will put it right on their desktop, and there is a certain elegance to the “hide in plain sight” approach, but I’m going to bury it a little… inside my My Video folder (inside My Documents).

Navigate to the My Video folder (My Documents >My Video) and open it. If you have not loaded any video onto your PC, this window will be blank (empty). Now create a new folder. Right-click on any part of the blank area and select “New” from the list of choices, and a new list of choices appear — select “folder”.

Now you will see a folder ready for a new name. I chose to name mine “stuff”, as it is fairly uninteresting and innocuous. If you want to make sure nobody is tempted to look in there, you could name it “efficiency reports 2005”, but you want to avoid an intriguing name, like “private”, “confidential”, “good stuff”, or “collection”.

Now we’re going to make the folder hidden: right-click on your new folder (“stuff” in my example) and select “Properties”. Down towards the bottom is a checkbox labeled “Hidden”. Check it, and click on the “Apply” button.

Now when you navigate back to the My Video folder you will not see your folder. If you do, it should be faded, or “dim”. This means you have your Folder Options set to “show hidden files and folders”. This is normally off, by default; but to undo this setting, look (up) to the Tools menu and click it, and select “Folder Options” (the bottom choice) and then the View tab.

Make sure the radio button “Do not show hidden files and folders” is selected, and then click on the “Apply to All Folders” button, or the “Apply” button if you only want to affect the My Video folder. Now the folder is invisible. To make it visible again, for when you want to use it, reverse the steps above to “Show hidden…”

Let us say you want to put a password “lock” on the folder to make it even more difficult for other users to look inside (should they locate it somehow). Right-click on the folder and select “Properties” again and click on the Sharing tab.

Place a check in the “Make this folder private” checkbox and click “Apply”. Now the folder is protected with your User Account’s logon password. If you have not implemented a User Account password, you missed my very second Tech–for Everyone article; to see it, click here, you will now be warned that there’s no User Account password.

answer “Yes”, and you’ll be taken to the User Accounts control panel.

Since you will have to enter this each time you log onto the PC, I suggest you follow the rules of a strong password (complex), as discussed in the article above (the link) and write it down someplace as well.

Now you have a secure — and private — place to keep your personal files. But wait, there’s more!

Today’s free link: Because of the fact that hidden files and folders can be found by someone with a little savvy (like you, now that you know the “Show hidden files” command) and the password protection will only apply to network shares and when the other user have their own User Accounts… if you are sharing your UA (User Account), you need a 3rd-party tool to hide and encrypt the folder(s) you want to keep private. True Crypt is the free solution I recommend.

Copyright 2007 © Tech Paul, All Rights Reserved.

Share this post :

Some basic security pointers–#1

Is your computer a zombie? You can never be too secure, and neither can your PC. These few steps will go a long way in keeping your private information away from prying eyes, and prevent your machine from being used as a “zombie” by tech-savvy evil doers. (Most owners of zombie PCs are totally unaware that their computers are being used in this way.)

Tip of the day: The two basic steps I will discuss today–password protecting your User Accounts (and requiring logging in), and renaming your Administrator Account–should be prefaced with a quick description of what is, exactly, a strong password.

Strong passwords should be “complex”. That means that they should contain both upper and lower-case letters, special characters (!@#$%^&*(){}[]) and numbers, and be at least eight characters long, and–most definately–not be a word (or name) found in the dictionary. Your passwords (notice the plural. It is not wise to use the same password for everything.) will be easier to remember if you make them into a ‘passphrase’. A equestrian might use a passphrase of 1Lu^h0rsez, for example.

Now that you have a good password, it’s time to require authentication to use your machine. Start by clicking on Start>Control Panel>User Accounts (or Start>Settings>Control Panel>User Accounts. Depending on your version and preference setting). Then click on “Change an account,” and then click on “Create a password for your account.” Enter your password, twice, and if you’ld like, a password “hint” that will remind you (but not clue in the whole world) of your new password. Click “Create password.”

Now, since knowing your User Name is half the battle, click on “Change the way users log on or off.” Deselect (by unchecking the check in the checkbox) “Use the Welcome screen.”

Unbeknownst to most folks, Windows has a hidden Administrator account (this becomes vitally important when troubleshooting failing systems, or when User accounts get “locked out”) named “Administrator”. Hackers are well aware of this, and it is their favorite method of gaining access (and control over) your machine; since they know the User name, all they have to do is guess the password–which by default, and unless you set one, there isn’t one! Remedy this in XP Professional by going to Control Panel>Administrative Tools (you must use Classic View) and clicking on Local Security Policy. Then in the left column click on the plus sign next to Local Policies, and then click the Security Options folder (If you receive a warning about Group Policy, just ignore it) and a series of policies will appear in the right pane. The 4th or 5th one from the top should be “Accounts: Rename administrator account”. Double click on it and a dialogue box will open. Enter a new name, and click Apply, and OK.

In XP Home, the method is to click Start>Run. In the Run dialogue type in “Control userpasswords2” [no quotes] and click OK. From the User Accounts dialogue box, select the Administrator Account and click Properties. Enter the new name in the User Name text box, and click OK.

(For other versions of Windows the methodology is similar, but I recommend Searching Microsoft’s website for the specific steps.)

The last step is to congratulate yourself, because you have just made your computer much, much harder for a determined cracker to penetrate, and practically eliminated access to the casual browser.

Today’s free link: Steve Gibson’s ShieldsUp! This free scan, offered by a true giant in the computer field, analyzes your computer for vulnerabilities coming from the Internet, and tells you how your private data may be visible to outsiders. This link will appeal to the more tech-savvy, and be an eye openning experience for those of you who have not learned about firewalls yet.

Copyright © 2007 Tech Paul. All rights reserved.

Share this post :