My company, Networking Delaware, spends much of its time and energy trying, with various degrees of success, to protect our clients from attacks by everyone from established hackers to script kiddies. It is very disheartening to work to harden a network only to have it compromised by an uninformed employee clicking some tempting link in a phishing email.

To this end we were very happy to learn the following:

 Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, PayPal, Facebook, LinkedIn, Comcast and AOL along with seven other companies are backing a new initiative intended to dramatically reduce “phishing” emails.  This type of email attack is the most prevalent method hackers use today to breach security. It is as much of a Trojan Horse as contemporary Trojan malware is, and just as effective. For the hacker, it is safer and costs them less in time and energy than hacking directly at hardened systems with safeguards in place.

To achieve this protection, the firms have created DMARC.org, a working group of 15 companies that plans to promote a standard set of technologies that they say will lead to more secure email.

PayPal, for instance has been using these authentication technologies with Yahoo’s email service since 2007 and with Google’s gmail since 2008, and is now blocking about 200,000 fake emails per day

It is said it won’t cost a lot for companies to start using the standards, but it will require them to identify every server that sends email and ensure that the technologies are in use. The same holds true for third-party firms such as marketing agencies that send email on behalf of a company

The DMARC working group officially launches Today, January 31^st

While I see problems ahead for implementation, this is a good step in the right direction.

Here is my suggestion:

Have primary data on two mirrored drives. This is to avoid any data loss should a hard drive crash. With mirrored drives (RAID 1), if one drive crashes the other continues as if nothing ever happened.

Have that data backed up to a local backup drive. (Forget Tape… that’s yesterday’s technology. See our article at http://www.networkingdelaware.com/tape.html  ). This local backup is for several reasons…  hard drive controllers do go bad as do motherboards. If this causes the data on both mirrored drives to become corrupt, you will be ever so happy you had a local backup. Also, a local backup drive is the quickest, easiest and most convenient location from which to restore data… the more data you have to restore , the more important that you have it on a local backup source.

Finally, keep a copy somewhere else. If there is a fire, or flood, or tornado, or burglar, or vandal, or disgruntled employee or any of a hundred other reasons that everything just goes “poof”, your data is still available.  You can always buy a new computer but your data is always going to be many, many times more valuable then the equipment that houses it.

For these off-site backups I strongly suggest keeping your data in “The Cloud” using programs such as the very reasonably priced service called Backblaze (http://www.backblaze.com/partner/af2651 ).  Several reasons come to mind: In keeping with our redundancy concept, most”Cloud Backup” vendors save your data at geographically separated co-locations… this protects them from data loss and gives you additional protection as well.  Data can be restored from almost anywhere an Internet connection is available.  Your data is encrypted using military grade encryption; when the backup is created, as the backup is being transmitted and as your data is being stored, your data is always safe from prying eyes. Most will mail you a hard-drive populated with your data in case a bare-metal recovery is required.

So Backup your data… Don’t be a statistic… like the 70% of businesses that go out of business when data loss occurs.

From down in the trenches…  I’m Tom

The new frequencies lie somewhere within the 5 GHz band.  Why do I say “somewhere”?  Because this new “standard” uses a technology called DFS which stands for Dynamic Frequency Selection. In essence the channel can be automatically changed to avoid interference.  Sounds good huh? … well, maybe.

Does 5 GHz sound familiar to some of you?  That may be because it is also where all 12 channels of the three “Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure” (UNII) 5 GHz bands live. That’s also where my cordless phone calls home.  The U.S. military sometimes runs in 5 GHz as does weather radar and others. Starting to sound a little crowded?

So it falls to the equipment vendors to develop their offerings in such a way as to avoid these problems… well, maybe.

The vendor must get its products that use DFS, certified by the FCC for use in 5.25 to 5.35 GHz and 5.47 to 5.725 GHz ( painfully close to my 5.8 GHz phone system). If not, they have to block those channels, which means you won’t have access to the whole available block of frequencies.

You probably won’t want to run important applications on the UNII-2 bands because these are the areas where DFS channel changing may be an ongoing problem for your location. This is going to result in a lot of delays and an unreliable wireless network.  Some systems actually have to reboot after traffic has been switched to a different location in the electromagnetic spectrum.

So yeah… it’s going to be cool…. maybe.  Check things out carefully before you toss a lot of cash into any particular deployment strategy.

Good Luck and Good Networking.

From down in the trenches,  I’m Tom

I just read that Windows XP lost more than 11 percent of its market share from September to December 2011, dropping to an average of 46.5 percent in December.  It is estimated that Windows 7 will surpass XP installations sometime in April of 2012.  Is the reason for this because people honestly believe XP is old school? From my experience, I seriously doubt it. Most likely the driving force is Microsoft itself and their announcement that XP support will be ending soon.  ( April of 2014 qualifies as soon?) That should be enough to get corporate America looking at the next best OS, which without question is Windows 7, but assuming the Mayans are wrong and we are still here on the planet in 2014, I would wager there will still be a large group of XP users ( more than 10%)who would rather fight than switch.

Other driving forces (again Microsoft) is the dead end for XP users who prefer Internet Explorer. Since IE9 won’t run on XP its users are forced to use an alternate browser or upgrade to Win 7.

I do Like XP and always have, but in my personal opinion, Windows 7 is the best operating system Microsoft has developed to date.  From what I hear about Windows 8, it is trying to be all things to all people and that just won’t fly with serious users and corporate I.T. departments. Vista? Bah ! The modern incarnation of Windows ME!  A waste of electrons.

Stick with XP for as long as you want. Networking Delaware (http://www.networkingdelaware.com ) will support you for as long as possible.  When Microsoft stops releasing security updates it will behoove you and I to retire XP for good, but until that day… stand fast if you like XP… don’t be bullied!

Glad I wasn’t there…

From down in the trenches, I am Tom from Networking Delaware

To me, this lack of concern for public safety shows that GFI’s policy is, as always ”me first!”.  In true GFI fashion,  they somehow try to  rationalize their decision by saying mostcustomers do not want to receive this very valuable free service, but instead would prefer to purchase GFI’s (originally SunBelt Software’s) Vipre Premium product for their web filtering.

Well, it’s their product and we just need a “work-around”, so here are my suggestions:

1) Web of Trust (WOT) provides about the same function but in a different way. Go to http://www.mywot.com and download their plug-in(s) or your web browser(s).

2) Change your DNS server settings to OpenDNS:   208.67.220.220 and 208.67.222.222

These two changes will give you the same protection without relying on the commercial sector.

Below is the message that is displayed when you enter a non-existent website or an infected website while using ClearCloud DNS:

“Effective September 1, 2011, GFI’s ClearCloud DNS service will be discontinued and no longer available for consumer use. While we have many loyal ClearCloud DNS users, we have found that most customers prefer the more robust web filtering solution available as a feature in our VIPRE Premiumproduct. We would like to thank all of the beta testers for their valuable feedback throughout this last 12 month evaluation period. To discontinue using the ClearCloud DNS service, you will need to reconfigure your network connection. If this is not done prior to September 1, 2011, your Internet connectivity will be interrupted. Learn how to remove ClearCloud DNS from your computer by clicking here.”

I recently saw ” There Back !” in reference to some advertised deals on TV.  Also I have recently seen “…to good to pass up.”  These are not simple typos but a prime example of a lack of edumaction.

4/27/10

Last week McAfee released a buggy update that deleted a critical system file which caused computers to shut down.

McAfee recently sent out a press release saying that they will cover the repair bills for the machines effected:
For customers who have incurred costs to repair PCs as a result of the security update, McAfee will reimburse them for reasonable expenses, such as a visit by a tech support specialist (such as Networking Delaware).

Details of this program, including instructions on how to submit a reimbursement request, will be posted on McAfee’s Web site within a few days. Check back often.

The press release went on to say; “Additionally, because we value our loyal customers, home or home office users whose PCs were rendered inoperable or severely impaired as a result of the security update will receive a free two-year extension of their current McAfee subscription product at no charge” .

If you were effected by this, here are the steps you can take to get the machine back up and running:

Step 1 - Locate a local toll free support number for your country. A qualified technician will diagnose your computer’s current status and determine the fastest way to get you up and running again.

Step 2 - If the technician can’t get your system up and running over the phone, we’ll get you the software to get your system up and running again. We can get you the software in one of two methods. You can either download the software fix from a working PC, or we will express deliver a CD to you.

A U.S.-based Web site, Songlyrices.com was compromised by attackers, and was redirecting visitors to a Russian server feeding the Java attack as well as other exploits.

Now that users have started reporting that they are being infected by the drive-by Java attacks, Oracle has changed its mind and issued a patch.  If you haven’t already patched this vulnerability you can download Java software at http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp

Here are the patches Microsoft says will be released:

Bulletin 1: Critical (Remote Code Execution) – Affects Windows
Bulletin 2: Critical (Remote Code Execution) – Affects Windows
Bulletin 3: Critical (Remote Code Execution) – Affects Windows
Bulletin 4: Critical (Remote Code Execution) – Affects Windows
Bulletin 5: Critical (Remote Code Execution) – Affects Windows
Bulletin 6: Important (Elevation of Privilege) – Affects Windows
Bulletin 7: Important (Remote Code Execution) – Affects Windows
Bulletin 8: Important (Remote Code Execution) – Affects Office
Bulletin 9: Important (Denial of Service) – Affects Windows & Exchange
Bulletin 10: Important (Remote Code Execution) – Affects Office
Bulletin 11: Moderate (Spoofing) – Affects Windows

To learn more about these patches, visit the Microsoft Security Bulletin page.