How in the TECH

Verify your Windows security state with Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer

Adam Myers — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:03:22 +0000

Whether we all want to admit it or not, we are all systems administrators. It is each of ours responsibility to ensure that the computer under our direct control is secure – the anti-virus is up to date and all the latest software patches are applied. Whether you are a single computer user, the resident guru in the household, or the IT guy at your company the job remains the same, though scale clearly comes into play. With just a single computer it isn’t overly difficult to assess the current security state of your PC but things tend to fall through the cracks as the number of computers increase. How are you ever to scale accordingly?

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer is a free utility available by Microsoft the can lessen the effort necessary to ensure your Windows computers are in tip top shape, at least as it relates to security. The security analyzer can scan a local computer or a range of remote computers – defined either by IP addresses or Domains. Configurable scan options range from weak passwords, administrative vulnerabilities, IIS and SQL exploits, and general Windows security updates. Set your preferences on the single screen and click Start Scan.

The time it takes to complete the scan is directly related to the number of computers indicated. In my testing of a subnet range of 50 computers it took a couple minutes to complete; easily acceptable.

Upon completion the security assessment report will indicate any risks identified with respect to your selected scan options from the initial step. Risks are grouped by appropriate categories and it’s pretty simple to scan the report quickly and visually key in on problem PCs.

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer is compatible with all Microsoft operating systems since Windows 2000 including XP, Vista, and Windows 7 in both 32 and 64 bit architectures.

Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer

Using your GPU to crack RAR archive passwords

Adam Myers — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:00:58 +0000

The GPU, short for graphics processing unit, is found on high end video cards from Nvidia and AMD that offloads the processing of 3D graphics from the CPU. Being a highly specialized piece of silicon, it’s able to tackle particular tasks with more efficiency than a general CPU – like your Intel or AMD processor. While GPUs shine brightly in 3D processing, more identifiable but not limited to gaming, that’s not their sole claim to fame.

Both Nvidia and AMD publish APIs to their GPUs which allow developers a lot of freedom and flexibility to create amazing results. One such developer, Ivan Golubev, has harnessed the GPUs massive number crunching ability in a unique way. His free utility, RAR GPU Password Recovery, focuses the GPU on a single task – cracking passwords, specifically password-protected RAR archives. The brute-force approach can churn out results almost 20 times faster than a current generation Intel CPU. Here are the numbers from Ivan’s site:

~168 passwords per second on single core of Q6600 @ 2.4Ghz (crark’s result)
~325 passwords per second on 8600 GT
~3120 passwords per second on ATI HD4850
~2075 passwords per second on GTX260/192SP

RAR GPU Password Recovery is a command line utility that runs from the Windows Command Prompt. The software accepts parameters to further fine tune the brute-force attack.

igrargpu.exe [switch:param] filename.rar

The README contains descriptions on all accepted parameters as well as examples for particular recovery sessions. With support for AMD GPUs based on RV670, RV740+ and RV870 (3870, 4770, 4850, 4870, 4890, 5870, etc) and Nvidia GPUs based on 8600 GT, 8600 GTS, GTX260/192SP, GTX260/216SP, GTS250; you probably have all you need to recover that long forgotten password!

Simplify software installing with Ninite

Adam Myers — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:11:44 +0000

Probably the only negative to purchasing a new computer is installing the multitude of applications that you require in order to get things done – whatever that entails. Likewise, a fresh install of Windows exhibits the same annoyance. Having recently performed a clean install of Windows 7, I’ve faced the same problem.

Most PC users likely have a downloads folder that contains the installers for any and all applications they use – the installers are likely kept around just for this purpose actually. The irony however, most installers are tied to the particular version of the software available at the time of download. Sure you may have the Firefox installer already on your computer but it’s going to install an old version of the browser that will still need patched and updated. Sound familiar? Furthermore, let’s assume you have the latest installers on hand, you are still looking at executing each one individually, and to be safe, sequentially. The process is very much ok this is done, what’s next?

Windows users all over tend to install the same software, or the same types of software. You likely have a couple browsers, a media player, perhaps a few chat clients, a photo editor, and security software installed. Ninite Easy PC Setup and Multiple App Installer is a mouthful to say but an easy concept to digest. From the Ninite website a user is able to select applications from common categories and then generate a custom installer that will work in the background to download and install the selected applications. Some of the categories include: browsers, media players, image editors, utilities, or security. In literally a 30 seconds a user can tick off everything they wish to install and allow Ninite to do the rest of the heavy lifting!

Ninite included just about every general application I require and even if yours isn’t listed, they do take suggestions for future inclusions. Lastly, the custom installer is intelligent enough to download the 64-bit versions when and where applicable – such as for iTunes.

Ninite is an amazing time saver that worked flawlessly for my latest clean install.

Getting rid of the New Tab button in Firefox

Adam Myers — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:13:54 +0000

If you have a wide-screen monitor, and let’s be honest, most of us do, then this quick Firefox tip isn’t for you. However, if you are a minimalist, or more likely, a netbook user, then this tip could prove beneficial.

As a keyboard enthusiast, I tend to lean on all the known shortcuts in Windows and it’s respective applications. If you are a heavy Firefox user you likely already know that the new tab shortcut is CTRL+T. I probably use this shortcut more often than the copy/paste CTRL+C/CTRL+V combo actually! In the current release of Firefox, to the right of the right-most tab, Mozilla has included a button that initiates a new tab. Handy for those WIMPs – Windows Icon and Mouse Pointing – but a bit cluttered for us keyboard junkies. As iterated above, this is a minor thing when your screen real estate isn’t at a premium but on a netbook, 25 pixels or so makes a noticeable difference – especially when it’s not necessary for the full browsing experience.

Not surprisingly, there’s an app for that, or in this case, an extension for that. Download and install the Firefox extension Remote New Tab Button and relish in the potential possibilities of your reclaimed pixels!

Before

After

Prevent sites from appearing in Firefox Awesome Bar

Adam Myers — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:32:06 +0000

The location bar in Firefox 3 brought about a whole slew of functionality enhancements which quickly caused it to be dubbed the Awesome Bar. From the Awesome Bar you are able to search your bookmarks and browsing history by keyword, as well as searching Google or of course, typing and visiting a URL directly like any other browser. Searching your bookmarks and browser history is quite a powerful feature – now you are no longer required to remember the exact URL of the site you were at four days ago, if you forgot to bookmark it that is.

Unfortunately, the term awesome is purely subjective and that remains the case with Firefox’s sterioded location bar. While there exists some preferences as to how and what the Awesome Bar indexes and search, there is no direct method to exclude a specific site from ever appearing. I’ll leave it to an exercise for the reader as to why one may desire this level of flexibility.

NotAwesome is a Firefox add-on that selectively takes a little shine off the Awesome Bar. Specifically, as detailed above, NotAwesome provides the ability to exclude websites from the Awesome Bar on a case by case basis. There is one major catch however – the site needs to be one you’ve bookmarked. That stipulation exists because NotAwesome leverages the ability to tag bookmarks natively in Firefox. Bookmarks tagged as notawesome are then hidden from Awesome Bar searches. As a result, NotAwesome is not ideal for completely hiding your browsing tracks – you should be using a Private browsing session that is available to Firefox 3.5+.

Ensure your deleted files stay deleted with MooO Shredder

Adam Myers — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:21:35 +0000

Many users may be surprised to learn that a deleted file isn’t actually removed from the hard drive immediately. If you ever wondered why file deletion was so quick while file creation took some time – this is why. When a file is deleted in Windows, and most operating systems behave similarly, it isn’t removed, only the reference to the file is removed. It’s the same idea of looking up the word flabbergast in the index of a book – once that word is removed from the index it makes it much more difficult to find it’s usage throughout the book, but not impossible. Once the reference to the file is removed, the hard drive is free to use the files previously allocated space for future file writes. Until that space on the hard drive is overwritten, the file can be recovered. Not as easily as you may see on shows like CSI, but it is still possible with readily available software.

You can imagine why this may be a problem for some. When a file is deleted, we want it completely deleted; not just de-referenced! Thankfully, there’s an app for that! MooO File Shredder is a fantastic free Windows application that can be used to securely delete files. MooO contains 4 levels of paranoia as it relates to the actual deletion. With each level the number of in the deletion algorithm increases. At the most basic level, the file is overwritten with random data once while changing the file name, size, attributes, and time stamp once. At the most insane of levels, this process is repeated many times over – leaving the original data unrecoverable. Repeating a few of this steps up to 35 times is likely overkill for most anyone, but choices and options are rarely a bad thing.

The process is straightforward and simple. With MooO open and the appropriate algorithm selected from the Method drop-down, just drag and drop the file(s) you wish to shred into the application interface. MooO handles the rest of the heavy lifting for you.

Creating a bootable thumb drive from Windows installation DVD

Adam Myers — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:36:31 +0000

Microsoft was quite proud in their achievement that Windows 7 would be able to run on netbook-class hardware – something Vista truly struggled with. I have to agree with Microsoft’s boasting, as this was quite an accomplishment and the initial reports point to this as fact.

If your netbook came pre-installed with Windows XP, or worse Vista, it might be beneficial to upgraded to Microsoft’s latest offering. As has been the case in every Windows release this decade, upgrading your install is a simple as plopping the upgrade CD/DVD in your drive and away you go. Simple, if you ignore the fact that your netbook came sans a DVD drive! Instead, your only option is to boot and install from a thumb drive. Unfortunately, getting the installation files from the Upgrade DVD to the USB thumb drive is not as simple as a copy paste.

WinToFlash is a free utility that facilitates the process of migrating the installation files from the DVD onto the USB thumb drive all while making the device bootable. Wizard driven and supporting all the recent versions of Windows – including Windows 7, WinToFlash is a snap to use – supply the path to the installation DVD, the path to your USB thumb drive, and click Run. That’s about as easy as any piece of software can possibly be.

Hiding “Libraries” in Windows 7 Explorer

Adam Myers — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:29:37 +0000

Libraries is one of the new features introduced in Windows 7 and typically you will either love it or hate it. Libraries can be thought of as virtual folders on your hard drive. Their contents are composed of specific data types, like music or documents, that are found throughout your entire hard drive. In previous Windows you may have your music files spread throughout multiple folders and drives – with libraries, once configured, you would have a single point of access to all your media.

Ever so slowly, Microsoft is transitioning away from the traditional C:\ and folder hierarchy organizational system. Windows 7 libraries is truly a window to what is to come. I have found that long-time PC users are resistant to this type of change – we, I’m including myself in this group, like to know exactly where our files are on the computer and manage them closer to the file system level rather than in a virtual realm like libraries. It’s a paradigm shift that in all actuality, we’ll likely just have to learn to accept sooner or later.

Unfortunately, Windows 7 pushes it’s Library concept front in center in Explorer whether you use it or not – the links to your libraries are always displayed. With a simple registry tweak, however, the Library listing can be hidden – which suits my minimalist perspective.

Launch regedit.exe from the Windows 7 search box.

Navigate the tree down to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\

Delete the key {031E4825-7B94-4dc3-B131-E946B44C8DD5} and reboot.

Checking Firefox bookmarks for dead links

Adam Myers — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:27:08 +0000

The idea of having hundreds of bookmarks in your browser of choice is slowly fading away. Sites that I frequent often and therefor candidates for bookmarking are now read via an RSS subscription in Google Reader. However, there are still a sizeable portion of Internet users who rely exclusively on the browser bookmark system and even though I’m a heavy RSS user, I still do bookmark sites on occasion.

With bookmarks still maintaining relevancy it is shocking to know that most browsers do not contain any sort of functionality to search and eradicate dead links, or sites that no longer exist after you’ve bookmarked them. Instead, the process generally follows the path of clicking on a bookmark made months ago, seeing the page is no longer accessible, and updating or deleting that bookmark. You only know a site doesn’t exist when you need it most. This is messy and generally not a great browsing experience, certainly not on platform that should be considered mature.

Check Places is a Firefox extension that can search for duplicate as well as dead bookmarks in your profile. Once installed, the Check Places link is access from within your Bookmarks dialog. It’s usage is straightforward, as you may expect. Check Places effectively hits every website in your bookmark list and determines, based on the received response, whether the site is valid. The entire process only took a minute or so on my testing of a 175 bookmarks. On the completion of the scan you are presented with the results and at that point you can decide how best to proceed – such as deleting all the dead entries.

Check Places is another example of a Firefox extension that should be included with the native browser.

Create a fresh system image after Windows 7 upgrade

Adam Myers — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:27:14 +0000

Everyone knows that proper computing practices involve backing up your computer and the important files on it. Unfortunately, those words of advice often fall on deaf ears for one reason or another – the only users who tend to maintain backups are those that have already lost precious files from an experienced computing disaster. It’s a shame but it is the reality we still live in.

Microsoft continues it’s attempt to hammer in the issue of PC backups in Windows 7. After your successful upgrade to their latest release, the Action Center contains 1 message – set up a backup! All versions of Windows 7 contain the functionality of creating a system image that allows for system recovery in the advent of a major crash. Previously, system imaging was only available in the business versions of Windows or from 3rd party utilities such as Norton Ghost.

From the Windows 7 Start Search, search for back up your computer and execute it.

On the left-hand menu click Create a system image.

This initiates the system image Wizard where you answer a few questions, including: where do you want to save the backup and what drives do you want include in the backup. Answer appropriately.

After confirming you answers Windows will begin creating the system image, complete with a progress bar that attempts to detail the time to completion.

With the image creation process complete, Windows will prompt you to create a System Repair Disc. The system repair disc is necessary in order to restore your freshly created image in the future, so it is very important to continue with the second wizard.

The wizard is very straight forward and will require a blank CD to write the information to.

This bootable CD is the gateway to recovery of your system in the future – keep it safe!