Firekeeper - An IPS for Firefox

I came across and installed this tool from mozdev.com that protects Firefox (1.5 or higher) against common browser based attacks on malicious sites. You can create your own rules and block off anomalies if you know how to script the rules out.

The product is currently in Alpha (pre-beta, pre-release), so take all necessary precautions when using in production environments. The rules are taken off and simplified from Snort (http://www.snort.org), the open source Intrusion Detection System.

Check it out: http://firekeeper.mozdev.org

Debug Internet Explorer

When browsing the internet, your browser does a lot to make websites and pages look pretty to you. There's frames, pictures, html, java etc. loaded everywhere in these seemingly simple pages. But, there's more *interesting* information and source codes being loaded in the process of it to while and after your pages appear.

Sometimes, it would be useful to see what component (and their breakdowns) are loading for many reasons including troubleshooting, code debugging & reverse engineering and security snooping!

Download and check out DebugBar (http://www.debugbar.com) for Internet Explorer. Once you've loaded the software, click on View (Tools), Toolbars, click on Debugbar and you'll see a left side frame showing the technical breakdown of the website you loaded in your browser.

NOTE: Although the website doesn't explicitly mention support for Vista and IE7, i've tried and works well.

Microsoft OneCare destroys Outlook PST

If you run OneCare 1.5 and have a malware email sent to your Outlook email client, there's a large potential that the OneCare scheduled scanner will place your entire PST file under quarantine or other actions depending on what the administrator has set (which could include even deleting).

What's really disturbing is that this problem existed in version 1.0 and was fixed and now in version 1.5, the issue crops up again, and with its exposure of its products, it smaked off lots of innocent user's PST file.

There's a patch expected to be released Tuesday (today 13th).

The issue could also affect other email clients including Outlook Express, so do exclude email extension for scheduled scans for now till M$ fixes their boo boo (Again!!!)

Tellme Networks - Phone based google?

Imagine, just pickup the phone, dial a few numbers, then simple speak your search criteria and you get information just like how you would get by doing a search on Google, MSN or Yahoo.

Tellme Networks - The phone based google to search for information, people and businesses. Living here in KL, i wouldn't wanna try it but if you want, give it a shot. 1-800-555-TELL (8355).

Also, rumors have it that Microsoft is planning to buy these guys over. I guess the software giants see a potential in a solution of such, perhaps its time to pay a lil' attention,

Tellme....what the future (may) hold.

Link: www.tellme.com

Google Calendar vs. OpenXchange Calendar

Our CEO recently request me to do a write up, a comparison between the above products. So after about 2 hours of playing around with both calendaring solutions my conclusion in shortest form possible, Google is fancy and OpenXchange is sufficient.

Links:
OX: www.open-xchange.org
Google: www.google.com/calendar

Summary:

Both Google Calendar (GC) and OpenXchange’s Calendar (OX) has pretty much the same features from a shared calendaring point of view. Both products require an account with the basic email, where other users can share some or parts of the entire calendar. Both products are easy to use from their web consoles but OX offers a connector to use in your native Outlook.

From a business processes and functional point of view, both products can achieve almost similar functionalities but OX is an internal product thus the creation and maintenance of accounts can be managed by our local support and helpdesk

Google Calendaring features that got my eye.

1. Calendar sharing – Everyone with a Gmail account is entitled to use this feature through web or GoogleDesktop
2. You can create events inside your calendar and then share them by means of invitation, even if they don’t use Google (as Google implements iCal, a standards compliant calendaring which can integrate with popular email clients such as Outlook, Outlook Express and Mozilla Thunderbird.) However, the information in those email clients are static thus changes to the calendar would need another invite.
3. Natural language recognition – If you type “Meeting with BNM at 12.30” it will automatically create a related event with the related time/date in that natural sentence (using quick add function)
4. Ability to create events and invite guests with reminders, guest comments, RSVPs
5. Ability to publish calendars privately (so you can privately view your calendar without logging in) or publicly (so you could share with the world and have people either edit/manage events/entries)
6. Ability to create multiple calendars per user
7. Ability to search by time, location and natural search
8. Calendars are accessible through mobile phones
9. Ability to get invitations through SMS and emails.
10. Ability to integrate with Google Desktop which means we do not need to login to gmail
11. Ability to “take the calendar” to our own domain e.g. mcsb.com
12. Import and export existing calendars to Google
    

OpenXchange Calendaring

1. Calendar sharing – Everyone with our email system can use this feature through either web or Outlook (it’s a piece of software has a price to it)
2. You can create events inside your calendar and then share them by means of invitation, even if they don’t use Google (as Google implements iCal, a standards compliant calendaring which can integrate with popular email clients such as Outlook, Outlook Express and Mozilla Thunderbird.) However, the information in those email clients are static thus changes to the calendar would need another invite.
3. Ability to create events and invite guests with reminders and RSVPs
4. Ability to search calendars using natural search
5. Import and export existing calendars to OX
6. It’s our own email server which means we can do pretty much everything we want
7. New version includes RSS feeds
8. Ability to integrate with Project Management modules in their Groupware

Creative People Are "Crazy" ?

According to a study by Vilayanur Ramachandran, creative people technically have a defect in their brains making them able to cross wire different senses to create and innovate different responses.

So, if someone cuts of his own ear, he's not nuts, he was just creative!!! (but if someone does these days, its called plagiarism)

Checkout this interesting article: http://news.com.com/This+is+your+brain+on+TED/2100-11393_3-6166247.html?tag=st_lh

Blackberry 8100 DoS

Blackberry is a hugely implemented secure handheld based email client inside the RIM network. It can retrieve emails for you and notify you when you have new emails straight from your email server.

There's a Denial of Service potential in one of their devices, the 8100 Pearl (v4.2.0.51) which can be easily exploited. A fix is available, so if your organization uses BlackBerry and this particular device/model, please update to a patch.

More info: www.blackberry.com/security/news.jsp

Top 10 Tools

Data Recovery
Anti Virus-Tools
Firewall and IDS
Remote-Tools
Anti-Spyware
Deleter
Sniffers
Port Scanners
Security Scanners
Password Cracker
Wireless
Cryptography

Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Contacts Home (even if you click cancel)

Microsoft officially admits that the WGA program will "contact home" even if the user clicks on cancel. Nonetheless, the software giants claim, no private information is transmitted through this, further claiming, this is kind of a survey done for WGA user experience. There's been WGAs and WGA crackers, its a cute lil' battle that promotes newer grounds of security and newer grounds for anarchy :D

Anyway, be genuine..

Read more here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/09/ms_wga_phones_home/

Want Faster Streamyx? (Choose a faster streamyx connection)

If you're a Streamyx user like me (Streamyx is the xDSL service by TMNet) and face inconsistent performance with your link then you may want to try this little trick i discovered. This "trick" works with dynamic IP users only like myself. So, whenever you dial, you should get a live IP address from Streamyx. Normally, you would get the IP 60.x.x.x which is part of the IP chunk that TMnet bought. After several tests, i found that the IP 60.x is actually really much slower than the IP 218.x.x.x, also, IP range given to TMNet. You may get the IP 219.x.x.x which is also as slow as the 60.x.x.x IP set, in fact, 219, seem slower than all three!!!.

So, redial until you get 218.x.x.x. and see your streamyx fly :)

NOTE: My tests didn't see improvement in Torrent networks though, it made a huge difference with WWW from America (particularly) and its because the routing path is much lesser than that of the 60.x and 219.x....

So seize the opportunity before even this IP gets "clogged" too.

Happy surfin'