Archive for October, 2006

Auto shutdown computers at schedule time

Tuesday, October 31st, 2006

GoldSolution Software announces the release of PC Auto Shutdown,
a handy utility for the Windows operating system that help you
shutdown, power off, reboot, hibernate, suspend or log off
computers at schedule time you specifies. A typical PC left on
for 24 hours each day can use £60 or more of energy per
year. Turned off at night and weekends, the same units will only
use around £15 of energy per year. Power outages have
happened in the US from New York to Detroit and Toronto to
Ottawa in Canada. The UK suffered power outages in London and
Birmingham within the space of a week. PC Auto Shutdown will
help you save precious electricity and shut down computers at
schedule time. It runs silently in the background until the
scheduled time is satisfied. At which point the user is given an
optional warning notifying them of the shutdown. What’s more, it
can clean up recycle bin, temporary files, IE cache, IE cookies,
IE history, IE auto- complete entries and recent document list
to improve system performance and protect your privacy. PC Auto
Shutdown is the right choice for computers auto-shudown. It is
both affordable to every computer user and a real value. System
Requirements PC Auto Shutdown will run under Windows 98, Me, NT,
2000, XP and 2003 on an Intel-based 586 PC or greater. The
program requires 16 MB of RAM and 1 MB disk space to install.
Price and Availability PC Auto Shutdown is available now. The
price for single user license is $29.95 USD. A trial version is
available from the GoldSolution Software web site at:
http://www.drivermagician.com/autoshutdown/ ### EVALUATION
COPIES ARE AVAILABLE ON REQUEST

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Security Process

Monday, October 30th, 2006

What is ARBIL?

Asset and Risk Based INFOSEC lifecycle.

To implement a comprehensive security plan in I.T. and
strategies for risk management.

What is CIA?

Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability

Confidentiality- making sure your data is available to only
those allowed.

Integrity- making sure your data has not been altered in any
way. Think bank transactions or chemical formulas.

Availability- making sure your data is available. Hackers often
use denial of services attacks to bring down your servers or
networks by overloading them with packets.

Hackers use attack trees to determine every possible entrance
into your networks. This can be through modems connected to your
network, routers, switches, and application vulnerabilities,
almost anything connected to your internet.

Make it difficult to determine your OS, which hackers use for
Banner Grabbing. This is a simple fix that many systems
administrators leave.

Change your banner to display a security warning.

Many people have difficulty understanding security processes
alone implementing solutions.

What is SMIRA? Simple methodology for INFOSEC based risk
assessment.

Risk management is the practice and process of identifying
threats and vulnerabilities to assets. This helps making the
correct decisions to implement the necessary safeguards to help
your organization carry out its mission.

Organizations should look at threats, vulnerabilities, assets
and safeguards.

Risk Assessment

The goal is to have a list of your critical assets. Critical in
understanding mission, objectives and operations and what if
scenarios.

Then to implement safeguards to protect those assets.

Vulnerability Assessment

This is when you look for vulnerabilities in existing
applications and determine there severity. The vulnerabilities
will be rated. This includes physical security, web application
reviews, policy and procedure reviews, host assessments and OS
reviews, and vulnerability scans.

Threat Assessment

This is the process, of identifying existing and potential
threats to assets and environments. This will also be based on
severity.Where can threats come from? Disgruntled employees,
script kiddies, hackers, crackers, foreign governments, and your
competition. You can look for threat indicators in your server,
logs, CCTV, intrusion detection systems like SNORT.
http://www.snort.org

What can threats cause?

Loss of business Death Financial loss Corruption of data.
Inability to work, servers down or running slowly.
Confidentiality issues.

What are assets?

User IT Operations Staff Connectivity Documentation Security
Systems Third parties Paper Files Media, like disk, CD’s and USB
drives. File, Web, EMAIL, Storage, Application servers Anything
of value to the company.

Hackers like to get there hands on all information no matter how
unimportant it may seem it can be used to filter out more
information.

How do you protect yourself against threats and protect your
assets?

Have policies and procedures in place.

Employee awareness of security issues.

Software security in place

Hardware security in place.

Physical security.

Environmental Security. I.e. water level sensors.

Communication security- to protect your phone lines, and PBX
systems.

Personnel security.

There is a lot of software on the internet that allows even
technically challenged people to run scans on your systems to
try to crack them. Anybody that knows how to search Google can
easily find such tools. The way the Internet is evolving and
more and more people joining the Internet the security risks
increase.

Attackers gain information on your systems by doing Domain
Lookups with Whois. Port scans using many available tools to
find out what you’re running and then do internet searches to
find exploit code to crack your systems. Once they find out what
applications you’re running it’s only a matter of time before
they can crack your systems if you are not protected.

Attackers like to get information on your Domain Names, IP
addresses, then they will scan your network looking for live
hosts. This can be accomplished with tools like NMAP by Fyodor
http://www.nmap.com . By using a tool like NMAP you can send
UDP, ICMP, and TCP packets. This is done to identify host by
looking at responses.

At this point attackers find out what applications are being
used, or any information the host is willing to give out. The
more services you have running the more opportunities for
someone to remotely exploit your hosts. This can be very time
consuming for the attacker. The goal is to find out what OS
platforms are being run. Are they Unix, Microsoft Windows or
Apple Mac OS? From here it easy much easier for someone to look
for shellcode to use against your system.

Benjamin Hargis CEO

Phuture Networks

http://www.phuturenetworks.com

Free Computer Security Tips !! www.computersecurityadvice.com

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Wireless Security Basics

Sunday, October 29th, 2006

Wireless networks using 802.11 have made it simple to connect
multiple devices to your home network.This can also make your
data availiable anywhere, even outside your home.To set this up
all you need is a broadband connection connected to a wireless
router or a WAP Wireless Access Point. Your home computers
should have wireless access cards installed or if your using a
laptop a PCMCIA wireless card. Intel Centrino is great for
wireless, I personally use it. I like the fact that I did not
have to purchase additional hardware.

When you set up your wireless router or WAP your signal is
broadcast. This broadcast usually goes further than your home or
business. People like to drive around finding unsecured wireless
access points. This is known as Wardriving, some hackers even
mark spots on the sidewalk to let other hackers know your home
or business is offering free Internet service, or worse yet
access to your data.This is not to scare you but make you aware.

Diasble broadcasting so people cannot you your wireless network.

Your routers come with pre-configured system ID’s its called a
SSID or Service Set Identifier, its very simple to locate this
information on the Internet for default SSID’s I recommend
changing this to something hard to guess. Use alphanumeric’s to
make it even harder to guess.

Use encryption to protect your network. WEP or Wireless
Encryption Protocol is not secure, I have cracked my own network
with a Linux machine running Kismet. WEP’s keylength is only 40
bits, once you collect enough data from packets its only a
matter of time for a determined cracker.Instead use WPA which is
WI-Fi protected access. This is more secure.

Configure your router to block incoming outgoing traffic you do
not use. Consider blocking Port 23 Telnet and Even FTP.

Router manafacturers have default passwords which I find many
home users do not change. CHANGE THEM!

Invest in a software firewall and keep your system up to date.
In the month of October 2005 there have been several security
flaws listed by Microsoft. Keep Informed.

Benjamin Hargis CEO

Phuture Networks

Website http://www.phuturenetworks.com

Free Computer Secuirty Advice !!

http://www.computersecurityadvice.com

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