JW Network Consulting » Consulting

Desktop Blog Editors

Jason — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 07:27:40 +0000

I’ve been grumbling to myself about writing blog posts using the web interface in WordPress for quite some time, but I’ve never really done much about it. Today I spent some time chatting with David Pratt, a colleague of mine, about our blogs. David runs the Data Management Wonk blog and I liked how his blog posts look when they are done. He sent me a link to David Risley’s site which discusses 8 different Desktop Blog Editors. After reading through it I decided to start testing out different applications.

Today’s posting is from Windows Live Writer. There are some things I like about this app. It’s fairly easy to use and it tries to be helpful in formatting and such. However, it only supports FTP for uploading images to my site. If only it would do SCP… It also does a funky import of the background and and some of the formatting from the site. It’s almost kinda cool, but the text is about 4 inches higher up than it will be when it goes live. I’d be better off without the background images by far.

So as far as the first app goes, I give it a B-. It’s ok. It’s easier and smoother to use than the WYSIWYG in WordPress, but the lack of alternative means to upload images and videos is a bummer.

Technorati Tags: desktop blog editors, writing

The Importance of Backups and the SMB

Jason — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 03:37:57 +0000

Today we had a really bad thing that happened, but it ended up not mattering at all. One of my clients was busy doing some work and accidentally deleted a directory with about 1 GB of data in it. I got a very worried email from them and if it could be restored. Fortunately, we had recently implemented a new backup system and it was running very well. I logged into the system, found the needed directory in the last backup to Mozy and kicked off the restore. 40 minutes later, they were back to using the files that had gone MIA.

Why did this not matter? Because we had good backups in place. The system syncs nightly to Mozy’s storage systems and I get daily updates on how things went. When I got the email telling me about the issue I knew right away where the data would be and how to get it back. No running around for tapes. No hoping that last job had actually worked.

In the past, backups could cost quite a bit. Tape drives, backup software and tapes don’t come cheap when you are a small or medium sized business (SMB). You could easily drop $5,000 or more on a single tape drive, some software and enough tapes to keep it going for a while. Then you have to switch tapes daily and all that other fun stuff. As a result a lot of SMBs don’t have the backups they need and we all need them. Accidents happen.

The good news is that backups don’t have to cost you a ton of capital. How much did this wonderful peace of mind cost my client? For this server, the grand total is less than $10 per month. How long did it take to setup? About 15 minutes. How long and expensive could it have been if the data was completely gone?

Technorati Tags: backups, business continuity, restore data

Speaking at the 2009 Utah Open Source Conference

Jason — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:53:32 +0000

Last month I sent the Utah Open Source Conference a proposal for a presentation on “Building an Open Source Security Tool Set“. Presentations are voted on by the registered attendees and the other folks who have submitted a presentation. When I was making my votes, I saw that there were a lot of great abstracts. In fact, there were a lot of abstracts period. Because of this, I really didn’t expect to get selected. Turns out I was wrong!

I received word on September 3rd that my presentation was accepted and that I will be speaking at the Utah Open Source Conference. The current time scheduled is on October 9th at 12:00 PM. Here is my description of the proposal.

If you want to build out a kit of commercial security tools, bring a big bank account to pay for it. Not only that, you’ll find that there are still gaps in your setup that need to be filled. What do you do if you have a finite budget (who doesn’t?) or have no budget? Does testing your security require a fat wallet? Fortunately, no.

In this presentation I’ll go over a number of open source security tools, what they do and where you can get them. Individual tools will be discussed as well as Live CDs which have a collection of the tools all together.

I’m very excited to have been selected to give this presentation. It should be a lot of fun and I hope it will be useful to those in attendance. I’m trying to have some goodies for the attendees, but I’m not sure how many I’ll need. We will see.

You can register for the conference using the UTOS 2009 banner on the right or you can use the link below. Hope to see you there!

http://register.utosc.com/utoscreg/

Technorati Tags: open source, security tool, speaking, tech conference

Spyware Removal – Pain followed by success

Jason — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 07:22:31 +0000

I was working on a PC for someone that had some real issues with spyware on his system. The main symptom that he found was that his computer would hang after boot up. The mouse could move around, but you couldn’t do anything with the Start Menu, desktop icons, or the keyboard. My task was to get the system responsive again and do my best to remove what was causing it.

At first things didn’t go well. I was able to work around the boot up problem by starting into Safe Mode. When I copied over the installer for Malwarebytes I found that the program wouldn’t execute. I used Autoruns from Sysinternals to see what was firing up on boot and removed several things that shouldn’t have been there. I rebooted into Windows normally and I could use the system again. However, IE started popping up and it was attempting to connect to a bogus URL. Better, but not great. I tried to run the install for Malwarebytes again. No luck. Back into safe mode, more clean up, back into normal mode and the desktop hangs again. Worse luck.

At this point none of the removal tools I have are working, removing things from startup aren’t working and I’m getting really frustrated. It was late, so I tried again the next day. I started looking at doing a repair installation of Windows XP to work around the issue, but due to problems with RAID card drivers the effort failed. I went back to looking for a way to deal with the system without the repair install.

The first sign of progress was when I renamed the installer for Malwarebytes. I executed the renamed file and the installer fired right up! Everything went fine until the actual executable for Malwarebytes started. Then the installer froze and had to be killed. I did some searching for the symptoms and found a tool called ComboFix. I did some quick research and the tool appeared to be legitimate. I booted into Safe Mode and renamed the exectable for ComboFix.exe to 1ComboFix.exe. Execution of the renamed file took off and it started scanning.

Fairly quickly it found some stuff that it deemed Rootkits. Joy. It listed them as:

c:\windows\system32\drivers\UACrjnkvrnp.sys
c:\windows\system32\UACqfuirjuv.dll
c:\windows\system32\UACtfbsky.dat
c:\windows\system32\UACwsnlkjjbj.dll
c:\windows\system32\UACalotomap.dll
c:\windows\system32\UACqhhmqhcl.dll
c:\windows\system32\UACogswwuya.log
c:\windows\system32\UACogixetrb.log
c:\windows\system32\UACbftmxewp.log
c:\windows\system32\UACpxtfqxqm.dll

It rebooted, removed the files and then came up in regular mode. It continued scanning and removed more files flagged as spyware. One more reboot and the process completed. I fired up the Malwarebytes installer and had no problems during install. I ran a full scan of the system and it found another 23 items. Most of these were registry entries, but some were actual files that looked pretty suspect. One more reboot to complete the scan was needed. The machine came up normally and cleanly. I ran another scan and it came up clean. I did several more reboots, started Internet Explorer, and ran several other programs. Everything looked great and the system was responding well. It looks like a happy ending for this computer.

Do I completely trust that everything was removed and the system is 100% clean again? No, I don’t. There was way too much installed on it to make me feel any confidence about that. However, ComboFix and Malwarebytes took a machine that couldn’t even finish start up and got it back up and running again. So while I have my reservations, I can at least have a better chance of giving a customer a reasonably responsive system and explain the risks as they now are. And I found a new tool that seems to have done a great job. That’s never a bad thing.

Technorati Tags: combofix, malwarebytes, spyware removal

New look for the web site!

Jason — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:56:06 +0000

Tonight the new look for the website went live! Major thanks to Denise Smith for her work on the graphics. Everything she’s done for the business has come out great looking. I’m really excited to have this done. I hope you all enjoy it as well.

Technorati Tags: new website