24 September 2004

Hurricane abuse

You guys are gonna get in trouble for hogging all the cool hurricanes this year...

Ireland Cracks Down on Internet Fraud

DUBLIN, Ireland - Ireland has become the first country on earth to cut off direct-dialed calls to entire nations in a bid to crack down on Internet-based fraud.

The crackdown, announced this week and due to come into force Oct. 4, will block calls to 13 locations - all but one all but one of them far-flung islands - to deter fraudsters from breaking into people's computers and hijacking their modems for profit. Continue Reading... EarthLink - Technology News

JPG vulnerability

First, go here and read the bad news:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms04-028.mspx

Next, go here, and grab the little tool:

http://isc.sans.org/gdiscan.php

Upon running the tool, you will get an output will look something like this:

Scanning...
C:\WINNT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\gdiplus.dll Version: 5.1.3102.1360
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Ink\gdiplus.dll Version: 5.1.3097.0 <-- Vulnerable version
Scan Complete.

If you have no red entries, yer good to go. Now here's the kicker--the scanner may find a copy somewhere that actually is the bad old version (see above sample). You may also notice after reading the Technet bulletin that Microsoft will only tell you which of their products are affected. So guess what....you have no way of knowing which app you have (or had) installed on your box put that copy of gdiplus.dll there. In the example above, I simply copied the good version over the bad version...nothing broke, but you can get away with that in Windows 2000....Windows XP File Protection may or may not like that action--your mileage may vary. AV software may put up a fuss, too.

Good luck.
Dean

20 September 2004

Open source patch releases

...and the best thing is, we didn't have to wait 'til the first Tuesday of the month to get it...

06 September 2004

We Survived!

That says it all! The house is fine... (thank you, Eric, for checking). Melody is on the way to work and will let us know how her house did when she gets home.

But we survived!! Still no power in Orlando, and no power or phone at home. We will stay here till we have one or the other AND the fuel supplies are renewed.

Four letter word is next... IVAN?!?!?!?

02 September 2004

Technology helps scientists map Floyd's fury

Technology helps scientists map Floyd's fury

Uh... just because a hurricane's eye hits land at one spot, doesn't mean the rest of the area is hunky dory. From this, it looks like all points NORTH of landfall are the real danger zones.

You will note, this is for Floyd -- the last storm we ran from.

Running is goooooood!

Storm Surge

Storm Surge

Let's talk about this! do we have a shallow slope off the coast or a steeper continental shelf?

Which side of the storm really pushes the water? Enquiring panicky minds want to know.