Archive for the ‘Network Security’ Category

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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 »

Major Web browsers fail password protection tests

Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

An article on the browsers we use to access password protected sites and material exposes weaknesses in their workings. Following is an except from the ZDNet article.

“That nifty password management feature in your favorite Web browser could be helping identity thieves pilfer your personal data.

That’s the biggest takeaway from the results of this test which shows that all the major Web browsers — including IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome — are vulnerable to a total of 20 vulnerabilities that could expose password-related information.  Among the problems are three in particular that, when combined, allow password thieves to take passwords without the user’s knowledge.  They are:

  1. The destination where passwords are sent is not checked.
  2. The location where passwords are requested is not checked.
  3. Invisible form elements can trigger password management.”

The full article with the test results can be found at Major Web browsers fail password protection tests

Posted in Network Security | No Comments »

Network drives randomly disconnect issue solved

Monday, December 15th, 2008

The network drives on one of our workstations would periodically disconnect and then for no reason reconnect. This would only occur on this particular workstation. If this workstation was rebooted, the map to the other network drives would sometimes disappear. Sometimes repairing the connection in the network connections window would get them back. Other times rebooting that workstation would fix the problem. We would get a “An error occurred while reconnecting N: to \\computer name\shared-drive. : The network path was not found. This connection has not been restored.” error.

Some back ground here. The workstation in question was running Windows XP Pro SP3 with all patches up to date. This issue also occurred with XP Pro SP2. We have a peer-to-peer network and do not use a domain. This had been going on for a long time; maybe months. It was more of an annoyance than a problem. Francis, one of our technical associates spent some time on this, but couldn’t resolve it.

Finally I did a Google search and came up with the solution at Microsft Knowledge Base 903267.  It basically suggests deleting 2 registry entries if they exist. They did. I deleted them and rebooted the workstation. The network drives automatically reconnected. Another one solved,

Posted in Computer Integration, Network Security, 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 »

WinAudit – a utility to audit your PC’s hardware and software

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

I came across a useful tool to help diagnose problems with Windows PCs. It’s a self contained, under 1MB, utility that shows all hardware and software details in a given computer. And it’s very fast in getting this detail. You can also run it from USB flash drive. When you’re in a client’s office and there is a problem with a computer, run this utility from your flash drive and you can get a quick picture of the status of the machine. It runs on all versions of Windows from 3.1 to Vista and everything in between.

You can pick from over 25 categories to audit. You can print the results or save it to a variety of formats such as PDF, comma delimited, html, XML, etc. There is also built-in help. This is software that is built the way all software should be built – compact and fast with a lot of features. In the past, I used SIW to help diagnose computer problems, but this program is SIW on steroids.

It’s available at Create a Report of Installed Hardware and Software with WinAudit

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

Keep Your USB Drive Close with a Clothes Pin

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

I saw this article on gizmodo.com. It’s at Keep Your USB Drive Close with a Clothes Pin

While this may be a novel way of keeping track of where your USB drive is, there are other alternatives. One of my USB drives is attached to my key chain. Another I got from a Microsoft event that contained highlights of the talks given that day. This was in lieu of a CD/DVD. It has a ribbon that is attached to the drive and  can be worn around your neck.

Interesting and fun ways to keep your USB drive safe.

Posted in Computer Integration, Fun stuff, Network Security | No Comments »

How to Secure Laptops from U.S. Government’s Prying Eyes

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

In a recent article, eweek.com reports that the U.S. government has recently been given full permission to check the contents of laptops and mobile devices belonging to travelers passing into the United States at border control checkpoints. According to my brother, John, they can do the same with your MP3 player if they suspect the music has been obtained illegally. This permission covers not only non-Americans but extends to American residents returning home from abroad.

The article states … On April 21, 2008, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals essentially gave the U.S. Government carte blanche permission to check any and every piece of data on laptops belonging to travelers passing into the United States at border control checkpoints.

There are three simple steps to take before crossing U.S. border points.

1. Make a full backup of the contents of your laptop. It’s also good practice to do regular backups of laptops just in case it’s stolen. Backup to a server or a portable hard drive that’s not taken on the trip.

2. Encrypt all sensitive and confidential data on the laptop. There are suites available such as Sybase Afaria, Credant, Trust Digital, PGP, RSA and Utimaco. It they are being used currently, now is the time to implement them.

3. Finally, inform every business traveler of the new rules, and make sure they understand that the new security regimen is not optional.

Full article is at How to Secure Laptops from U.S. Government’s Prying Eyes

Posted in Computer Integration, Network Security | No Comments »

Backups will save your business !!

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

Today, I went to see a client about cleaning up some loose ends. I had spent about 45 minutes and had one more item to resolve. I was looking forward to finishing and leaving to meet a colleague for lunch. Then one of the ladies entering information into our system said there was an error on her screen “file access denied”. I was looking at trying to resolve the issue when another person said they had a similar error. Then came a third and a fourth.  Every workstation accessing our application had a similar “file access denied” error.

In the past two weeks, one of the workstations had a virus. It was checked and virii were eliminated. The fellow responsible for the overall updates on the network and anti virus software suggested that one of the virii could have migrated to the server. He gave me a link to the latest virus definitions. We updated the anti virus program, ran the virus scan and after 90 minutes, the server came back clean.

Eventually, Mike, our senior programmer, determined that the index files in our application had become corrupted. All files are re indexed by the first user into the system on a given day.  The person who normally starts up the system was delayed getting in. By coincidence a new hire started up the system. Whether they rebooted their workstation thinking this start up re indexing looked wrong or by some other fluke, the indexes didn’t get unlocked properly.

So, Mike went to the previous day’s back up and copied all the indexes to the server, re indexed the files and within minutes everyone was up and running again. Lesson learned – make sure you have a good backup when things go wrong.

Posted in Computer Integration, Network Security | 1 Comment »

Planning is important in deploying software applications.

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

I spent the last three days doing work that I thought was someone else’s responsibility. Normally we’re responsible for installing one of our software applications on a network that has already been set up with servers, workstations and servers functioning properly with remote access to the head office.

When I arrived at the branch office on Tuesday, all the equipment was sitting piled in a corner. The final network hook ups had not been terminated. The electrician, who left 30 minutes before I arrived, thought that I was going to terminate the network cables. Although I could have done the final hook up, I didn’t bring my tools to do the job. My understanding, based on the head office personnel instructions, was that all of the network infrastructure was already in place. While we waited for the electrician, I went about physically locating all the equipment I could. Again not our responsibility. The electrician arrived about an hour after I arrived. He stayed and waited to make sure that all equipment was functioning on the network. After about 2 hours, we were able get down to the application.

Part of our agreement with the client was that head office and we would have remote access to each branch. This would allow them to get reports and make changes to data without traveling to the branch. It would also give us access to branch servers for software upgrades and trouble shooting support without having to be on site. Another person from head office was responsible for setting up the remote access. We didn’t have remote access.The branch was closing so I agreed to return the next day.

On Wednesday, I worked on the remote connection. Still no remote connection. So after talking to the individual responsible, we tried a few things and in the process crashed the modem to the internet. Tried a few other fixes that didn’t work. So I called Bell Business Internet. See the blog entry on resolving the crash modem at http://www.softwarestrategies.ca/blog/?cat=5 .

After getting the modem working, I went to install Ultra VNC

Posted in Computer Integration, Implementation, Network Security, Software Development | No Comments »

I want to speak to a Canadian for support

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

Today I was at a client site. There was a problem with setting up the Bell Sympatico modem to link to the internal network. No computer on the network could ’see’ the internet. So I called the Bell business internet number. Surprise, when I choose English as my language, I was talking to a women with a heavy east Indian accent. My immediate response was to ask where she was physically located. Her answer was a suburb of Bangalore in South India.

The last time I called Bell Sympatico and an east Indian tried to help me, I spent close to 3 hours on the phone. The problem was not solved until they finally put me through to a Canadian in Canada. This time, I didn’t have that luxury of time. I said that I wanted to speak to a Canadian in Canada. She said that she could put me in the French/English queue. In about 3 minutes, a fellow came on the line and started greeting me in french and how could he help. I responded in English. He switched to English. Within 10 minutes we had the problem solved and the internet visible on all computers on the network.

Apparently, if you choose the French option with Bell, you will get a Canadian located in Canada – most likely Montreal. I spent 8 months in India and have a great admiration for the people of India. However, the Indians located in India really do not have a sense of how business operates in Canada. Until I am proven otherwise, when I call Bell business internet from now on, I will choose the french option. Don’t know if this works outside normal 8:30am to 5:00pm business hours. Perhaps it may also work to your advantage.

Posted in General, Network Security | No Comments »

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