Archive for the ‘Spam’ Category

IP:2:Loc – Mapping where the scam e-mails are coming from

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

One of the Twitter people – @mrhomegadgets, I’m following pointed to a site that shows you where an IP address is located. The site has a Google map on the world and a text box called ip:2:loc where you type in any IP address on the internet. It immediately pops up a red push pin on the geographical location of the IP address. I typed in my IP address and it produced the map below. It also correctly listed my ISP and the physical location of the ISP.

IP:2:Loc image

You can try for yourself at http://ip2loc.jerodsanto.net/

Posted in Network Security, Spam, Tools & Utilities | No Comments »

VPN connection problem finally solved

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

We use Symantec Gateway Security 360R firewall appliances to protect the servers from malicious attacks, virus intrusions and to provide a way of establishing a secure connection for updates and investigating problems on the remote sites. Although the SGS 360R appliances are no longer sold by Symantec, they do have a limited amount of support.

For some reason, the Symantec Client VPN software stopped working on my main computer. I would attempt to launch the Client VPN and almost immediately would get an error.

“Error connecting tunnel . The server rejected the ISAKMP security association. Make sure that the Phase1 ID, shared key and IKE policy are correct. Terminating connect operation.”

ISAKMP (Internet Security Association and Key Management Protocol) is a protocol for establishing Security Associations (SA) and cryptographic keys in an Internet environment. Internet Key Exchange (IKE or IKEv2) is the protocol used to set up a security association (SA) in the IPsec protocol suite. IKE uses a Diffie-Hellman key exchange to set up a shared session secret, from which cryptographic keys are derived. Public key techniques or, alternatively, a pre-shared key, are used to mutually authenticate the communicating parties.

I tried reentering the Phase1 ID and the shared key and checked to ensure the IKE policy was correct. I checked the Symantec site for the error at Error: “Error connecting tunnel [appliance IP address]. The server rejected the ISAKMP security association . . .”. I uninstalled any software that was potentially blocking port 500. Port 500 is used by the Client VPN to make a connection. Nothing seemed to work.

I uninstalled the Client VPN software. I deleted any entries in the registry that Symantec may have left behind. I reinstalled the Client VPN software. Still it didn’t work. I deleted all of the IP connection addresses. I added them back in. Still it didn’t work. The same error kept popping up.

Finally in desperation, I asked Saint Anthony if he could help. Saint Anthony is the saint who helps to find things we’ve lost and, in this case, finds a solution to the problem. So before you knew it, the thought of deleting the user and password for the Client VPN came to me. This deleted not only the user, but all of the connections. I recreated the user and one by one added the IP connections. Sure enough, one by one they connected as they should. Problem solved after hours of frustration. Thanks Saint Anthony!!

Posted in Computer Integration, Network Security, Spam | No Comments »

Dealing with Microsoft Spam

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Usually I only use Mozilla FireFox version 3.0.x to do my browsing on the internet. It has a lot of good features that are not found in other browsers. I haven’t explored all of the browsers available, but Firefox suits my requirements. On occasion, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) is required, especially on some of the Microsoft websites that I go to. Some non-Microsoft websites seem to only support IE for viewing as well. When developing websites, testing using IE as one of the browsers ensures that your website looks good to the majority of internet users.

At some point over the last few weeks while patching Windows XP from the Microsoft update site, one of the “fixes” from Microsoft changed the home as well as start page in Internet Explorer 6. The page was an advertisement to upgrade to Internet Explorer 7.

I checked the homepage in IE to see if it was changed. Sure enough it pointed to Microsoft’s MSN advertisement for IE7. I changed the home page back to http://www.softwarestrategies.ca in the Tools>Internet Options>General Address Window. I closed IE6 and reopened it. Up came the MSN ad for IE7again. I checked the home page address and it was still http://www.softwarestrategies.ca. What gives, I thought. So I went to google to search for the solution.

The culprit is a registry entry called First Home Page. It contained the URL to the Microsoft IE7 ad. In order to fix it, I had to edit the registry. If you’re uncomfortable editing registry entries, get someone who is.

In Windows XP click on Start>Run. In the Open: window type regedit. Click OK. The registry window will pop up and should look similar to this:

Double click on HKEY_CURRENT_USER to open the next level to Software which should look similar to this:

Double click on Software to open the next level to Microsoft which should look similar to this:

Double click on Microsoft to open the next level to Internet Explorer which should look similar to this:

Double click on Internet Explorer to open the next level to Main which should look similar to this:

With Main displayed, click and highlight First Home Page in the right column which should look similar to this:

Right click on First Home Page, from the list, click on Modify. Another window should pop up similar to this:

Change the Value data: to your home (as well as start) page. In this case I changed it to http://www. softwarestrategies.ca.

Microsoft spam problem solved!!

    Posted in Network Security, Spam, Website | 1 Comment »