Mike's Mostly Tech blog

Facebook news feed settings update

Facebook has changed its News Feed, so that by default, you can only see updates from people you’ve "recently interacted with." If you don’t change this and aren’t that active, then only a few of your friends will actually see your posts and vice versa.

YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO CHANGE IT AT THE BOTTOM OF YOUR HOME PAGE, CLICK EDIT OPTIONS AT BOTTOM AND ADD "ALL FRIENDS" TO MAKE THE CHANGE

So Here is how to do that:

To Search for ‘Options’ link at the bottom of the page. The best way to do this is to

Press Ctrl F (if you are on a Windows PC) or Command F (if you are on a Mac) this will open a ‘find’ dialog box. The box will be located in the upper right, upper left or lower left depending on your Browser.

Type in ‘Options’

You will find it at the bottom of the page. Click on it to bring up the options:

Open the drop down menu

Change and then save and you’re done.

Another OS X tool updated for Lion

The folks at Titanium’S Software have a new version of a great tool out for the latest version of OS X – Lion. The tool is called ‘Deeper’. It gives you quick access to a number of Mac OS system options and tools that are normally buried in different utilities and menus. You can find the Lion version and versions that work on older OS X systems here along with Onyx for all versions of OS X.

As I have written about before, Titanium makes some great software. I put Onyx, a multifunction utility for Mac OS X, on every Mac I work on or own. [Read more here]

The guys at Addictive tips have a super run down on how to use Deeper. You can read and should read about that here.

Also, all their software is FREEWARE!

Re-Installing Windows 7 if you don’t have original installation media.

Many people who purchased a computer with Windows 7 installed have found that nearly every manufacturer no longer provides you with the Operating System Media (DVDs). You will only be provided with a ‘restore to factory settings option’. Which will only work if the system ‘restore’ partition has not also been corrupted. And if like a recent case I had (you can read that here)you have ‘dual booted’ or otherwise changed your partitions configurations you may not be able to get to the ‘Factory Restore’ option. And if, when you purchased your system you didn’t immediately create the ‘restore media/DVD’s disc(s) you may be hosed if you have to re-install your your Windows 7 Operating system because it died, became corrupted or was otherwise compromised.
Well fear not!
As long as you have your installation Key – contained on your COA (Certificate of Authenticity) you can download and re-install your system! COA is that sicker put on by the manufacturer somewhere on your system.

If you cant read it or it has been rubbed off, you can also use one of these tools to find out your installation Keys. [You must use your legally obtained key on the same hardware by the way, or you are breaking the law!]

LicenseCrawler (Excellent tool by Martin Klinzmann!)
Download here

More information

Or you can try Aporah KeyFinder:

Or Majic JellyBean (I’ve used this one many times too)

[note – these applications will be flagged by 90+% of all virus scanners as a ‘key finder/logger’ IT IS A KEY FINDER OBVIOUSLY. So often you must disable you AV protection for the brief moment you download and use this. Get your key information. then Copy the information to paper and TURN YOUR AV SOFTWARE BACK ON!]

Windows 7 comes in various editions like Ultimate, Professional, Home Premium, Home Basic and Starter. Now there might be many cases when you would like to choose the edition during setup. But in reality they are pretty much the same except for one configuration file!

Here are the individual downloads:

Windows 7 Home Premium x86 SP1 (bootable) download

Windows 7 Home Premium x64 SP1 (bootable) download

Windows 7 Professional x86 SP1 (bootable) download

Windows 7 Professional x64 SP1 (bootable) download

Windows 7 Ultimate x86 SP1 (bootable) download

Windows 7 Ultimate X64 SP1 (bootable) download

BUT I recommend downloading the ‘Ultimate version’ (either 64bit or x86) and then deleting the configuration file that ‘tells’ the installation program which version it is. This way you will have ALL options available and then should be able to use YOUR LEGITIMATE installation Key.
I also recommend that you make a bootable USB installation. It will make things much quicker and easier in the long run. If you have multiple Windows 7 Systems (netbooks especially, as most don’t have DVD drives etc.) you can use the single USB with your valid installation keys on every one. [Again you must have valid/legal keys for each installation.]

Simplest way to make you installation ‘version free’ is to delete the file ‘ei.cfg’ from the sources directory of the installation media. Doing this step is what makes the USB memory stick allow you to install any version of Windows 7 as it no longer has a default version configured.

I wrote about the simplest way(s) to do that (create Bootable USB) using Microsoft’s USB tool here. You can run “del F:\sources\ei.cfg” (replace ‘F’ with whatever drive you’re USB is) from the command prompt and you Windows 7 Bootable USB memory stick is ready to go.

You can now either boot from the USB memory stick or just run setup.exe from the drive to start the install process. Either way you will now prompted for the version of Windows 7 you want to install!

If you are going to burn the ISO directly to DVD then you can can also use a free tool "ei.cfg Removal Utility" to delete "ei.cfg" file so that you can choose the desired version at the time of installation.

OR you can use another free tool "Windows 7 ISO Image Edition Switcher" to modify "ei.cfg" file so that you can convert a specific Windows 7 edition setup ISO file (e.g. Windows 7 Ultimate) to another one (e.g. Windows 7 Professional).

I hope this helps for those who asked.

Problems connecting VPN. Error 609 and error 800 WAN Miniport

I just updated some of my home Virtual Machine software this weekend. Virtual Box and VMware.
Also last week there were numerous Windows, application and Browser(s) updates.
Somewhere along the line my ability to connect VPN stopped working.
The errors I was getting were:
"Error 800: Unable to establish the VPN connection. The VPN server may be un-reachable, or security parameters may not be configured properly for this connection."
and
"Error 609: A device type was specified that does not exit"
and
"VPN Connection Error 800: Unable to Establish Connection"

I searched long, deep and hard and found all kinds of information but none helped. Until I found one article that suggested my actual ‘devices’ and their listing in the ‘inf’ file(s) may have been removed. So I dug deeper and tried to find the entries for the PptMiniport. And found it. It was however missing on the machine that wasn’t working!

Seems that a bunch of entries in one of the very important ‘inf’ files got ‘wiped’ along with the devices!

So how to easily fix this.

This is how to do it:
Download devcon.exe from some Microsoft site HERE.

Open netrasa.inf in c:\windows\inf (c:\winnt\inf on win2k3) (I used notepad.exe to view the file – "open with")

In the DeviceID column, you can see the installable devices.
Look for the section [Msft.NTx86] You will probably see a bunch of the below listed devices missing – I did!

Open a command prompt (choose ‘Run as administrator’ if on Vista or Windows 7).
Navigate to whatever folder you extracted the devcon.exe file to – example c:\Devcon
Then:
Run these commands (one at a time/individually) to install the WAN Miniport (PPTP) and other devices:

devcon.exe install c:\windows\inf\netrasa.inf MS_PptpMiniport

devcon.exe install c:\windows\inf\netrasa.inf MS_L2tpMiniport

devcon.exe install c:\windows\inf\netrasa.inf MS_PtiMiniport

devcon.exe install c:\windows\inf\netrasa.inf MS_NdisWanIp

devcon.exe install c:\windows\inf\netrasa.inf MS_PppoeMiniport

The commands may take a while to complete.
Once done try and connect your VPN again and see if it works. You may have to reboot.
This was one heck of a bugger till I figured it out. I hope some others will benefit from this information.

Fix broken Dual boot machine–Linux and Vista/Windows 7

I you have a Windows machine and you’ve installed Linux (Ubuntu, Puppy or the like) and all of a sudden you can’t get into your Windows 7 or Vista Operating system you are not alone.

Many updates to both Linux and Windows seem to ‘bork’ the bootloaders of each. I just got done with a repair on a family members machine so I thought I put down what I did to fix the issue.

First and foremost I won’t say this anymore than once – HAVE YOUR SH$T BACKED UP REGULARLY! I have written so many articles on backups if, by now, you don’t have a back up and recovery solution you deserve to get f&^ked.

OK so let’s start. The system I was recovering was a Windows Vista installation that had recently had Ubuntu 11.04 installed ‘on top of/along side of’ the existing Windows installation – making for a ‘Dual Boot’ system.

After Ubuntu updated the Vista installation became un usable – the system would only boot into Ubuntu and would crash if trying to get into Vista.

You will need to boot with your Vista/Windows 7 installation disk. A repair disk will do. If you don’t have a Vista installation or repair disk you can check out here for information on how to create on. If you don’t have a Windows 7 installation or repair disk you can go here the process is simple.

Put you repair/installation disk in the drive and start your computer off of the DVD/CD. This often entails holding or hitting the ‘F12’ key and selecting the option to boot from the optical/dvd drive.

Hit Enter at the language selection prompt

then hit "R" to get to the repair section. You can then select the automatic boot repair tool, but it often will not do any good. Try that at least once. If it doesn’t work then select the command prompt (console)

and type in the following commands:

On Vista:
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
then hit enter
Then type in:
x:\boot\bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force
then hit enter (you may get error, just ignore for now)

On Windows 7:
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
Then hit enter
bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force
Then hit enter (again you may get error – just ignore)

Then type in:
BootRec.exe /FixBoot

DON”T EXIT THE COMMAND PROMPT YET!

Next type in:
attrib bcd -s -h -r C:\boot\BCD
Then hit enter

Next type in:
ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
Then hit enter

Then type in:
BootRec.exe /ScanOs
and Enter

Then type in:
bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd
And enter again

Type in:

Exit. and reboot your system.

HOPEFULLY you will be able to get back in.

If not be prepared to spend a few hours or more searching the web for solutions. Or better yet just restoring your system from a backup image Smile

Thoughts on Privacy, Anonymity and Security

One thing I deal with a great deal in the information/technology and security field are the very separate concepts of privacy, anonymity and personal security.

Do you think that anonymity and privacy are the same things? Wrong. Do you think that because you are anonymous your information is secure? Wrong There are differences that are important when we want to distinguish what methods you need to protect yourself from attackers and surveillance. Let’s define anonymity,privacy and security. First the definitions:

Anonymity typically refers to the state of an individual’s personal identity, or personally identifiable information; being publicly unknown. Or a condition in which an individual’s true identity is unknown. Read more here

Privacy is usually thought of a person’s right and or ability to control access to his or her personal information. Read more here.

Computer (and ‘information) security primarily means the collective processes and mechanisms by which sensitive and valuable information and services are protected from publication, tampering or collapse by unauthorized activities or untrustworthy individuals and unplanned events respectively. Read more here

So anonymity does not equal privacy or security. Let’s see two examples:

In the first example say you are using a proxy server, a VPN service or Tor to surf anonymously (these offer different levels of anonymity). Your true (or should I say ‘originating’) IP address and therefore your identity (computer/network wise) is hidden. Someone who watches the traffic between your computer and the network cannot see your true identity. However, he can see the traffic and therefore gain access to your personal information. In this case your anonymity is safe but your privacy is not. Worse still, your personal data can contain information to identify you so that both your anonymity and privacy are undermined.

In the second example you protect your data using both data encryption and a secure protocol such as SSL. You control who has access to your personal information. The actual packets of digital information are hidden/encrypted and the information therein cannot be accessed. However, if you don’t protect your anonymity an attacker will know who you are. This might help him in password and social engineering attacks or allow a law enforcement agency to force you to reveal your passwords and lose your privacy.

For true online safety, both privacy and anonymity must be secured.

There are literally thousands of more detailed articles available to you by doing a simple search on Google, Bing or Yahoo or whatever on “privacy vs anonymity”. There are guys who’ve written their PhD thesis’ on this subject, so there is obviously loads of information available if you want some greater depth than my simple explanations.

But I just wanted to remind you to do some of the simple things that can mean a great deal.

1st. And foremost get some kind of security software or suite (Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro, MalewareBytes, Eset, MS Security Essentials etc.) AND KEEP IT UPDATED AUTOMATICALLY!!.
2nd. Keep your Operating System updated.
3rd. Keep your browsers and especially the plug-ins (like Adobe Flash and Acrobat) updated.
4th. Use ‘HTTPS’ on ALL your important communications like email, Twitter, Facebook etc. For Facebook look here. You should also use something like ‘no script’ to ensure https connections.
5th. Clear out your internet cache every time you close your browser. You can set all the common browsers to do this automatically or use one of my favorite tools – CCleaner. There is even a Mac version which I wrote about recently.

It is nearly impossible to be truly anonymous and completely private. BUT you can have some security in both of these with a little diligence and common sense. Read some of my other posts on security for other more detailed information.

Please practice safe and secure computing.

Backups, system failures and peace of mind

Another week in the trenches. I had a primary server at our organization have a major failure. The SAS controller (which provides access to SAS type HDDs) died OR the motherboard to the server itself has an issue. Either way without another ‘like’ system that I can put the SAS card into to see if the issues is just the card or the motherboard I cannot access my drives – and they too may be very corrupted. The only machine I have capable of putting the card into is in production. And the cost of a replacement Dell Perc5i SAS card is nearly $200.00 US and could take days to get here. Plus I needed to have this system back up and running very quickly – the server in question runs all or our company financial, shipping and reporting software applications!

Since I have all my ‘data’ backed up to a server drive every night I was secure in the knowledge that we at least had the financial databases and ‘files’ available. But how to get a system back into production? Disk Imaging to the rescue!! I had a fairly recent full system image, created with my favorite backup software – Acronis, available. Yay! Just need a place to restore it to.

Since my organization now has a VMware ESXi/vSphere SAN and cluster running I was easily able to create/import a new ‘Virtual Machine’ from the Acronis disk image very quickly and then just copy over the backed up data files from the night/early morning before. WORKED LIKE A CHARM! If I’d had an available server (Hardware wise) I could also have restored that image to it too.

I’m telling this to you to remind you – I believe in Images(Clones) for my backups, alone with periodic ‘file backups’. That way I’m protected against full drive failures/loses AND stupidity – accidentally erasing or overwriting files.
[Imaging or cloning is the procedure by which you create a backup that is identical to a bootable system either to another internal or external drive. This is the ultimate backup! Should your drive fail you can just ‘pop in’ your cloned drive or ‘restore’ that clone to a new drive and your are up and running.]

If you are not regularly creating full image backups you WILL be sorry! I have written numerous articles about cloning and back up.

PLEASE read here if you any kind of concern for you data.

For Mac images and cloning go here.

So of course this weekend I created two new images on separate drives for my home system(s). I can’t tell you the peace of mind you will get from knowing that the worst that could happen to your system is that you might lose a couple of days or a weeks worth of information. If your drive gets corrupted or fails or you get trashed by some virus, you could be back up and running within a very short period of time! No re-installing your Operating System and programs and ‘trying’ to find you data files. Just restore the image and BAM, you up!

What prompted me to start on this rant is that Apple has finally acknowledged it is having some major issues with some of the hard drives in some of their newer systems they have been selling. Looks like some of the drives just ‘fail’. OUCH! You can read about that here.

And although you can have your drive replaced – YOU WILL LOSE YOUR DATA! The Apple folk and/or kids the the ‘Genius’ bar will NOT re-install your system software or clone your drive for you!! Unless you have an image to restore you will have to re-install you System and applications. And unless you had at least some kind of backup to another drive (Time Machine type) your data (read pictures and music!) will be gone!

So folks, backup, backup and then backup again.

The cost of a couple of extra external drives and a little program setup is minuscule to the cost of losing you ‘digital life’. Right now Acronis has a special – only $29.00 US for their home product!! With Apple’s you can even get a way with out purchasing any software!

Be safe, be secure and gain some peace of mind.

Get your Cloud Data down to your machine

Here are some ways to get your ‘cloud data’ backed up locally.

I know most people look to the ‘cloud’ for their secondary backups (if they even have a primary one) but few people ponder what will happen if their information is lost or compromised in the cloud or the terms of service of the provider that holds that information changes to your detriment.

I am going to provide some information on how to get your data out of your web email, Facebook and some other services.

One thing I see quite often is that people cannot access their online/web mail service at an important time to find information or they lose or have deleted the information they need and have no way of retrieving it.

So let’s start with web mail services. Today most people have very important information stored in their email; from plane reservations, business communications all the way to payment receipts. So in my opinion this is the first and most important place to start.

Get your mail downloaded locally.
For GMail. [My personal favorite!]:
Before you do anything, you’ll need to enable POP3 and/or IMAP in Gmail, which will let you access your accounts on the desktop. To do this, head into Gmail’s Settings and go to the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. Scroll down to the IMAP section and enable IMAP. Then save your changes, and open up your desktop email client of choice to set it up using the following instructions.

I use Outlook 2007/2010.

If you don’t have Outlook you can also use Thunderbird (an open source application by the Mozilla folks)

There are also a number of other mail applications you can use to get your information – Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Outlook Express, LiveMail etc..

I like using the POP3 connections over IMAP for most of my connections.
POP mail service has been available MANY times when IMAP has NOT – for my Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo. If the ‘webmail’ is not available online because of a service interruption then IMAP will most certainly too. This is not usually the case with POP. HOWEVER there is a big caveat with POP – you must make sure in the advanced settings or your mail client that you choose "to leave a copy of the message on the server"!!

But IMAP does have its advantages too.
So pick what will provide you with the most features you feel you will need – I suspect that would be IMAP probably be best for most people.

To set up POP with Gmail look here, and find your client and follow the steps.
For IMAP go here. and find your client or device on the list and follow the instructions.

If you’d like to read further about the differences between IMAP and POP you can read this here.

For Yahoo mail it is a little harder if you live in the U.S..
Yahoo wants you upgrade to a "Mail Plus" paid account to get POP and IMAP access directly. But you don’t have to! The best option is to use an application called YPOPs. I’ve used it in the past to get my Yahoo mail connected to Thunderbird and Outlook with out any issues.

If you have Window Live Mail or Apple Mail the client itself downloads your Hotmail/.Live or MacMail/MobileMe data to your machine by default. BUT remember this is an IMAP connection so if you delete something from you Live Mail client on the desktop it will be deleted on the server!

One important thin that may people miss is to get their CONTACT data out/backed-up from their mail clients. Something I also feel is very important.
For virtually all web mail clients that is as simple as going to the ‘Contact’ section and finding and choosing the ‘Export’ option. Those can then be exported into a format that virtually any Email client can import.
That should get you going with your mail.

Now to Picasa.
Simplest way is to install the latest version Mac or PC and then simply go up to the menu and use File ==> Import from Picasa Web Albums ==> Select All.
And Flickr
You can use Flickr’s Flash based web app here just click on the ‘start now’ and follow the instructions.
Or you can use the open source application Downloadr . Downloadr is a photo downloader for Microsoft Windows. It provides a simple interface to download large sized images from Flickr to your computer.

Now to Facebook.
If you have Yahoo you can easily download/copy all of your contact out. You can follow this tutorial here. One tip is that I would suggest setting up a ‘temporary’ Yahoo alias with NO contacts in it so that you do not end up with duplicates or mismatched merges. Then export those and import them into any application you choose.

Also Facebook now allows you to actually export YOUR data to a file! Following this VERY well written walk-through right here. I’ve done it and it works great! You may have to wait a while before you receive your ‘confirmation email’ and link but you will be able to get your stuff.

Finally there is an open source application Called MyCube Vault. MyCube Vault Backs Up Your Facebook and Google Data Regularly
Once installed, the app requires you to authorize it to each of the services you want to back up. From there you can tell the service where to store your backups and how often to save your data. If you’re concerned about downtime or just wary of keeping your data in the cloud, it’s worth a look.

I checked it out and it works well.
Windows version here

Mac version here

Well that is a long winded post and I hope some people will put it to use. Like backing up your local data don’t be the person who loses precious information because you were too lazy or couldn’t be bothered to learn something new.

Peace.

Mac Maintenance and HDD updates/upgrade

[Updated 06-26-2011]

I just spent a few days doing lots of maintenance on a few Mac’s.
Cleaning up, optimizing and replacing one HDD for a new larger one.
So I thought I’d share what I do with my Mac’s to keep them running happy and having my data safe should there be problems to those of you ‘Mac-ites’ out there.
1st. Let’s clean up.
I install and use Onyx on all my Macs and those I maintain. It makes maintenance a BREEZE.
With Onyx you can do just about everything you need to do on a regular basis to keep clutter down and errors away.
Get it here.

Check out the AppCleaner application to completely remove applications – often installs put files into many other directories than just the applications folder! A great tool for removing leftover ‘gunk’.

I was going to go into some of the other steps I do such as removing unnecessary start-up items and removing unused apps but it looks like the folks at LifeHacker.com have put together a very good article on just that.
So to save the time of me just re-stating what Gina Trapani, founder of LifeHacker, has already said just go here.
The folks at Tested.com also have a good in depth article on how to manually do nearly everything you can do in Onyx. But I find Onyx to be fantastic.
As always make sure you have a good backup before you start messing with system settings!

2nd. Let’s clone/copy.

For backups most know I believe in Images(Clones), alone with periodic ‘file backups’. That way I’m protected against full drive failures/loses AND stupidity – accidentally erasing or overwriting files. 🙂
Imaging or cloning is the procedure by which you create a backup that is identical to a bootable system either to another internal or external drive. This is the ultimate backup! Should your drive fail you can just ‘pop in’ your cloned drive or ‘restore’ that clone to a new drive and your are up and running.
Good description here

Now to backing up and/or updating of a hard drive. By cloning the drive to a new (or back up one) you are creating an exact bootable copy of the original.

This is actually a very simple process that can be done without any 3rd party software on OSX!
I’ll explain how to do that in a moment, but there are some 3rd party tools that make it a little easier for the novice

Whether you are installing a brand new larger hard rive like I just did or making a clone to and external drive the directions are the same. [except of course if it is just a back up clone you won’t be ‘changing the start up disk’]

For the two Easiest ways to Clone (and also backup – remember images rule!):
Use SuperDuper Mac Drive Cloner. Get it here,
The application is freeware/shareware. Meaning to use the clone function it’s free but to use the advance scheduling features you will have to purchase a license. The call is yours.
I have always found it very worthwhile to own and support great utility software.

Or use Carbon Copy Cloner. Get that here. Read about it here. The latest version is fantastic. It’s now my go to OS X disk tool.

Now the no 3rd party software route.
You can do as I have done many times use OS X’s own clone/restore utility!

You insert the MacOS X 10.x install disk, boot from it, select Disk Utility from the Start menu, and choose the volume of the new Mac.
Then use the Restore tab, drag and drop the old drive as the source, and the new one as the target, and press the button.
Et voila!
After copying, just make sure that your new hdd (the clone) is set to be the start up disk.

You can then boot the new Mac with an exact clone of the old one.

Here’s how to use Disk Utility to clone and backup your hard drive in a little more detail using an install disk:
* Fire the Mac OS X disk that came along with your Mac.
To do this, insert the CD or DVD into your Mac, and hold down the C key while your Mac restarts.

[if that doesn’t work try these options:
# Restart your computer and immediately press the Option key. Icons for all available startup volumes will appear. Click the one you want to boot from, and then click the right arrow button to complete the startup process.
# Restart your computer and immediately press Cmd-Option-Shift-Delete. You must press all the keys at once. The computer will start to boot from the CD or DVD drive. If there isn’t a bootable disc inside the drive when you begin the reboot, the computer will attempt to boot from another partition or drive. ]

* Go ahead select your language. Don’t worry: You’re not installing Mac OS X again – this is just what you have to do to get to Disk Utility. When the menu bar appears, select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
* When Disk Utility opens, you’ll want to select your source. This is the hard drive you want to clone and/or backup. After you have a source, select the Destination. This is the hard drive you want to save the backup image to. * Click Restore and you’ll end up with a perfect copy of your hard drive.

Restart your computer and you’re good to go!

That’s it……

For backups there is also the included Time Machine application that ships with the latest versions of OS X. It is much improved from previous versions. It allows the user to restore the whole system, multiple files, or a single file. It works within iWork, iLife, and several other compatible programs, making it possible to restore individual objects (e.g.: photos, contacts, calendar events) without leaving the application. Time Machine is a backup utility, not an archival utility, it is not intended as offline storage. Time Machine captures the most recent state of your data on your disk. As snapshots age, they are prioritized progressively lower compared to your more recent ones.

Carbon Copy Cloner, SuperDuper and Time Machine are complimentary. Think of SuperDuper or CCC as your backup against catastrophe (drive-failure or theft) while your TM volume is a hedge against stupidity (deleting/overwriting important files, contacts, etc.).

One last utility that I’d like to mention is AppleJack.

AppleJack is a user friendly troubleshooting assistant for Mac OS X. With AppleJack you can troubleshoot a computer even if you can’t load the GUI, or don’t have a startup CD handy. AppleJack runs in Single User Mode and is menu-based for ease of use. Their main page is here.

The AppleJack download is here.

Peace and happy computing…..

Blacksheep add-on to protect against WiFi session Hijacking

This is a Firefox add-on everyone should use if you use public WiFi anywhere anytime.
It’s called ‘Blacksheep’.

Blacksheep will find and block ‘Firesheep’ – a highly popular new hacking tool used to ‘sniff out and steal your sensitive information on WiFi networks.

What Firesheep is:
Firesheep is the Firefox extension that makes it easier to steal logins and take over social media and email accounts after users log in from a WiFi hotspot or even their own unprotected network. It is designed to sniff out weak security and hijack web site credentials on open Wi-Fi networks. This technique is technically called ‘Session Hijacking’.

Session hijacking is nothing new. Web sites typically use SSL connections for initial login pages, but revert to non-encrypted traffic for all subsequent communication. As such, while a user’s username and password may be protected, once they are authenticated, any user on the same network can simply sniff network traffic, obtain a user’s session ID and then hijack their session for a given website. Although this has always been a serious risk, especially on insecure networks such as public WiFi hot spots, some degree of technical knowledge was required to accomplish the attack. Firesheep, opens such attacks to the masses as it turns session hijacking into a point and click exercise. Unless websites mandate SSL for all traffic on the site, session hijacking will always remain a threat.

Fortunately, BlackSheep can be used to let you know if someone is running Firesheep on the same network and protect you.

Read some more here.

and here

or just add the extension to Firefox by going here!

Be safe folks!