A blast of cold air compromises national security

It seems that researchers at Princeton have discovered you can hack into an encrypted hard drive by blasting the computer’s RAM with cold air. It seems that memory which has been treated with some cold air will retain data even after the power is removed from it.

In case you’re not familiar with RAM it is volatile memory meaning that when the power is removed it loses whatever is stored there. Unlike hard drives which store data using magnetism. It’s a bit more complex than that, but for our purposes that is all you need to know. So the long and short is that when you pull the plug on RAM the data on there is “released” (for lack of a better term). With a hard drive the plug being pulled results in no data loss. At least that is how it has always been up until this discovery.

The article about this discovery didn’t give exactly how long the RAM would retain old data after being hit with the cold air. Nor did it say at what temperature it would start to lose the data again. It did however note that your common compressed air can turned upside down and sprayed on the memory was enough to do the trick.

Don’t get to worried though. It’s not quite a simple as just spraying some cold air and getting your data from the RAM. You actually need something to read the “frozen” memory, and store the contents without heating it up and causing it to be overwritten. Not to mention the fact that it would require a running (or sleeping/hibernating) machine that someone could physically get access to, freeze the memory, and read the contents.

What does all this mean for computer security? Not much at all. Use common sense and if you’re going to leave your computer in an unsecured environment for any significant amount of time shut it off. After a few seconds the memory will be clear and you’ll have nothing to worry about. At least not in regards to this.

I do have one question though. Who thinks of these kind of things to try?

Posted in Technology and Computers | 3 Comments »

How to get a free computer

Day in and day out people ask me if I can get them a “cheap” computer. It’s taken a while, but I’ve figured out what they actually want is a FREE computer. I came to this conclusion because anytime you mentioned a really good deal on a computer that you have seen they start twitching and convulsing when you get the part about “and it only costs…” At that point I started finding free and very low cost computers for people and believe it or not it is easier than you might realize.

It should also be pointed out that this is about obtaining computer hardware. Computer software, including the Operating System is another matter altogether. It’s certainly available for free, but I’m not going to tell you that you can download almost every possible kind of software via bit torrent… Thanks for not asking!

Free or just really cheap

The first thing to determine is your budget. Free is a great goal, but sometimes it’s just not a realistic goal. For instance if you need something within a few hours you’ll be lucky to find a sale. On the other hand if you can wait for a few weeks or even a couple of months your chances of getting something free improve dramatically. Either way set a budget of the maximum amount you can/will spend on your new computer. Generally I set my budget to $25.00 and while not “free” compared to the cost of most computers $25.00 can’t often be beat.

Just to touch on a quick point. Most people would think something along the lines of a $25 computer being complete crap. More often than not that is not the case.

Sources

Once you’ve set a budget it’s time to find some sources.

Recycling Center

Get out your yellow pages and look for a community recycling center. In most towns it is illegal to just dump a computer in the trash. Which means most of them go to a recycling center. Call them up and ask if you can get some “spare parts” for your computer. Most of them will say yes come take whatever you want. I’ve walked off with 5 perfectly working computers and several computers good for spare parts in one trip. Usually when they say “take whatever you want” they mean it. They need to get rid of it to make room for more.

A few words of caution about community recycling centers. Sometimes they’ll charge you $5 or $10 to cover administrative costs. You should also be sure to take whatever you can. As I said before I walked off with 5 perfectly good computers, but I’ve also walked off with absolute junk. Obviously this method of securing a computer requires you to have some technical ability in the event you have to swap out parts and load software.

Craig’s List

If you’re not familiar with Craig’s List you’re missing out. One thing I’ve found effective is putting an ad in the “barter” section that looks something like this: Wanted free (or very cheap) later model computer. Willing to trade setup and 2 hours of instruction on your new computer if you’d like. As strange as it sounds it works and more often than not people just want you to get the computer off their hands and spend 5 minutes explaining to them how to something with their new computer.

If you also look in the “free” stuff section you’ll often find computers in there. One other good place I’ve found to look is in the community section (search for computers) and see what you come up with.

Friends, neighbors, and family

This is pretty much self explanatory. People are always getting rid of their computers. Simply letting people know you are looking for one can reap a windfall in short order. Don’t be afraid to ask or make known what you’re looking for. At worst they say no, at best…?

Lessons I’ve learned

We live in a disposable society. Sucks for the environment, but is pretty damn sweet for us poor chumps who want computers (and lots of other free things). You simply need to know where to look and the questions to ask. Not to mention who to ask those questions of. But it has to start somewhere. The following are some of the lessons I can share with you.

• Be realistic in what you want for free. It’s not going to be top of the line unless you absolutely fall into a great deal
• Be patient. Like I mentioned before think in terms of weeks and months
• Be willing to travel. Sometimes you have to go out of your way
• Have some technical skills or have a friend who does. Free things don’t always work
• Check early, check often for deals on Craig’s List
• Be flexible. It’s better to get something that works than nothing at all because you refused to budge on what you believed to be good
• If possible get more than one. You can then turn around and freely give to another person and bless them with a new (to them at least) computer.

Good luck in locating a new computer!

Posted in Technology and Computers | 11 Comments »

K9 Web Protection: Content filtering

If you have teens and a computer then you’ve undoubtedly dealt with porn. Or perhaps you just “deal with porn”, but aren’t to successful. In either event you should try out a program called K9 Web Protection. It is a free content filter for your home (and office if you do it right) computer(s) made by a company called Blue Coat which specializes in “making the internet safe” for medium to large corporations.

The technology

Blue Coat employs a url filtering technology in both it’s commercial and free (K9 Web Protection) software that it acquired in 2004 with the purchase of Cerberian Inc out of Draper Utah. In a nutshell when installed on your computer it runs as a service in the background for all web browsers. When you request a web page the request is sent to the web host and then filtered through a proxy server run by Blue Coat. Depending on the rating of the page and how strict you’ve set up the K9 service on your computer you’ll either see the page you requested or be given an error page like the one pictured below.

As you can see from the picture there’s a drop down menu that will allow you to override the blocking. It allows for:

• Allow all pages on “domainname.com”
• Allow all content rated as “blah”
• Allow all categories

The allow all categories option can only be set for 15 minutes. The others can be permanent or 15 minutes. In order to override the block you’ll of course need to remember your password which is the same one you use when you install the program on your computer.

As far as load on your system goes if you have anything built within the last 4 years you’ll hardly notice it at all. That’s because unlike so many other services which do the same thing everything is run from your computer instead of the majority of the work being off loaded to a remote site.

Setting it up

K9 works fairly well straight out of box, but spending a little extra time to customize it isn’t a bad idea in most cases. When you first login (by clicking the yellow/gold shield icon) you’ll be taken to a page with three options.

• View internet activity - A log of internet activity recorded since K9 was installed
• Setup - Configuration settings
• Get Help - Help files and documentation. Web based

Select “setup”. You’ll notice you are immediately asked for your password. Enter it and proceed to customize to your hearts content. I’m not going to go over each and every configuration option, but needless to say there are many. For example you can lock down all web surfing during certain hours (under Time Restrictions), or if someone tries accessing a blocked category multiple times you can block all web surfing for a specific amount of time (under Blocking Effects)

Another option is blocking url keywords. For most people this would be a little overboard as it is a little overreaching in effect. For example on the site they say putting “sex” in would block both www.sex.com, and www.essex.com which could potentially cause some issues. But if you want it’s there. Just remember it blocks url keywords (the website address) but NOT pages that display those words in the content.

Once you have all the settings applied the way you like them start surfing the internet. If you come across pages you don’t want blocked remove them using the “Allow all pages on ‘domainname.com’” option from the drop-down menu. On the other hand if you see something that should be blocked you can add the site to “website exceptions” under the “always block” category.

If the site blocked is in the wrong categoy you can submit a request to have it reviewed. You’ll find this option on the same page as you see the options for temporarily or permanently removing the block from that page.

Issues to consider

It should go without saying, but don’t forget/lose your password. You can recover it via email if needed but if you change emails like I did it can take a long time to get your password reset. It took me over 6 weeks when I closed down the email account and changed my password. Two days later I couldn’t get in to change the settings and I couldn’t get in to the email to recover the password. Just a word of warning.

Installing this software does not make you popular. After several days of searching all over the place for some way to get past this security feature I could find none. A person could use a proxy server and get around it, but I highly doubt most people would have the time, knowledge, or patience to mess with a proxy setup just to circumvent this little gem. Beyond that you can block “Proxy avoidance” sites.

Stopping the service via the task manager (or any other method for that matter) will not allow you to access restricted sites. In fact if you stop the service you won’t be able to access any websites. If you (or your kid) does disable it you can restart it via services.msc under Blue Coat K9 Web Protection, rebooting your computer, or starting it via the command line using net start webfilter. You will NOT need a password to restart the service, but you’ll need the service running to access the internet.

K9 keeps a handy dandy little log of all internet activity since it was installed. Not just the bad activity, but all of it. You can see the log under “View Internet Activity”. You might want to occasionally clean the log file out.

There you have it, K9 Web Protection which is one of the most reliable, and robust online content filtering systems I have come across. And to top that off it is FREE!

Posted in Technology and Computers | 11 Comments »

Keep your computer Quick and Nimble

I could go on and on for hours about all kinds of things to do to clean up your computer from viruses, spyware, trojans, and whatever other “nasty” habit is creeping around the internet. I could, but I won’t. Instead I’ll tell you what to do once you’ve got your computer up and running the way it should be to help prevent future occurrences.

The game plan

It is always best to start doing these things immediately following a complete operating system reinstall, but that doesn’t mean they are useless doing it later. The goal is simple. To prevent an unwanted piece of software from infecting your computer and causing damage to your system. The game plan is to catch them before they can cause damage OR stop them from causing more damage.

The tools

The tools are all free to download. You need to take the time to figure out how to use them properly or they won’t do you any good at all. Of course you should be able to use all of them after about 15-20 minutes of “practice”. In otherwords you really don’t have much of an excuse for not using them.

Web Browser

Download Firefox and use it whenever possible. Internet Explorer has improved greatly compared to what it was and if this were 5 years ago it would be just fine. But it’s not 5 years ago, and “compared to what it was” isn’t really a compliment, because it was absolute shit and now it’s just a bad smelling fart. Bad is bad. Firefox is good. Get firefox.

Anti-virus

I recommend sticking with the tried and true. Personally I use Avast Home, but AVG, and ClamWin are great tools as well. Here’s a quick hint (because I see just the opposite happen every day) not only do you need to install an anti-virus solution, but you also from time to time need to:

• (A) Use it
• (B) Update it
• (C) Upgrade it

If you don’t do all three of those things get rid of it because it’s not doing you any good and is stealing valuable resources from the viruses on your computer that could make good use of them.

Anti-spyware

Go with the tried and true standards. Spybot S&D and Adaware SE. Once again just like the anti-virus software you need to keep this updated and use it. The pretty little icon on your desktop doesn’t do anything if you don’t double click on it. Try running both of these at least once per week.

System Monitoring

Grab yourself the latest and greatet copy of Win Patrol from BillP studios. It slices, it dices, it scrubs the cat clean. Actually it doesn’t do anything. It just sits there. Monitoring your computer. Until it sees something out of the ordinary at which time it pops up a little confirmation window. The window says something like “Blah new startup program. Do you wish to allow?” (Click no unless you know what it is and is there because of something you purposefully did. hint, hint)

Sex and violence

Rein in the pervs and the psychos on your computer using a free web filtering service called K9 Web Protection. And if you like pervs and psychos on your monitor you can always temporarily disable it.

Hidden in plain sight

Last but not least is our firewall. A lot of people say that a NAT’d firewall is enough (routers USUALLY have NAT’d firewalls built into them), but for as cheap (free) as a great firewall (Comodo) is and as little resources as they take up on todays computers there’s really no excuse not to have one. So get one. And use it. All the time

Executing the plan

I hope you’ve eaten your Wheaties today kids, because we’re about to get our briches muddy. Are you ready? Good, here we go…

1. Download the software
2. Install the software
3. Run the anti-spyware programs (both of them, but one at a time) immediately.
4. Run a full system virus scan. By full system I mean everything. Now might be a good time to grab dinner…
5. Continue to run both the anti-virus and the anti-spyware solutions at least once per week
6. Make sure whenever you connect to the internet you are using Firefox unless absolutely necessary to use Internet Explorer. That by itself is probably the biggest defense you have against malicious software. So use it.

Spread the news

Yes keeping your computer running well really is that simple. It doesn’t take rocket science it simply takes using the tools that are easily and freely available. So tell your family, tell your friends. Hell call Al Gore maybe you’ll get to hear about the one time at band camp when he invented to internet. Either way tell people how easy it is. Or don’t. And don’t use the tools (or similar ones) I’ve shown you. Instead just keep the Geek Squads number handy and give them a ring anytime there’s a problem. After all how much easier is it to write them a check for $300.00 instead of spending 15 minutes taking care of business?

Is there other software I should check out?

Of course there is. In fact a while back I wrote an article about software you should have. A few were included in this article some were not.

One thing not included in that article, ok two things, is a program called Belarc Advisor which you should run when everything is up and working fine. It gives a complete list of everything your computer has both hardware and software. Always nice to have “just in case”. The other is Driveimage XML which will allow you to clone your hard drive (like Norton Ghost) for recovery purposes.

There you have it my quick and easy way to keep the Geeks at bay and your wallet fat(ter). Try it, after a few times of saving your own ass you’ll actually feel a sense of accomplishment. And then you’ll think back to the days when you had to call up your kid and have them come over to turn on the computer and you’ll wonder how you ever managed. But don’t worry, you’re not alone, a whole lot of us have been wondering for a long time how you ever managed.

Posted in Technology and Computers | 8 Comments »

Are you ready to be a beta tester?

Our friends at Mozilla are at it again having just release Firefox 3 beta 2 in time for the Christmas season and they need your help testing it! There are risks involved with beta testing anything, but with the proper care those risks can be greatly reduced.

Preparations

Beta releases of software is notorius for its bugginess. Sometimes. Othertimes it seems to run better than the final releases ever do. Point is that with beta software you’ll be getting mixed bag should you choose to try it out. Beta is generally reserved for those who know what they’re doing and are will to take the risks associated with it. If you do decide to try out the beta version of FF3 (or any other software) take the following precautions.

• Create a list of EVERYTHING on your computer using a program like Belarc
• Backup everything of value on your computer to removable media
• Make a clone of your current setup using something like Norton Ghost or the free utility, DriveImage XML
• Locate and install a program such as System Mechanic (free trial) which will keep track of changes you’ve made to your computer
• Make 100% certain you can reinstall from scratch just in case everything goes to hell and your image is corrupt
• Familiarize yourself with online support resources and how to use them. This has the potential save you a great deal of pain and aggravation.
• Last but not least TEST EVERYTHING OUT TO MAKE SURE IT WORKS. Make sure your clone image is valid, your backed up data is really accessible. Test, test, test!

Testing

There are two types of beta testing that are generally used.

1. Public beta in which anyone and everyone is as general rule welcome to participate
2. Private beta wherein only a limited number of people are allowed into the testing

In order to be effective beta testing requires active participation. So how exactly do you participate? It’s really not that hard, but sometimes people make it out to be more difficult than it needs to be. I think the word testing in Beta testing throws people for a loop. Lets take a look at how to be an effective beta tester.

• Keep track of the details so you can repeat if necessary and instruct others how to do the same thing
• Don’t make changes to fast. Let things settle in for a little while before you change something else
• Keep a manual log of changes you’ve made. If you install a program write down what program and when
• Participate in forums, chats, and other online activities involving the beta testers for the product you are working on
• Submit bugs or other issues with whatever you are testing to the proper people. Generally they’ll have some sort of bug tracking system in place. Use it!

Above all else remember to be patient. Most of the time beta goes by without any real incidents, but when there is an issue you need to be as patient as possible

I hope these tips proved helpful to you when it comes to beta testing.

Posted in Technology and Computers | 2 Comments »