Peter’s Soapbox

Thank you for calling Microsoft, my name is Manju

Actual phone conversation I just had:

MS: “Thank you for calling Microsoft, my name is Manju, may I have the first six numbers in the activation window?” Continue reading Thank you for calling Microsoft, my name is Manju…

Fake JetBlue Tickets Too

As reported this morning, apparently I wasn’t the only one who got malware delivered by a fake email from an airline.

How I Fixed Firefox 3’s Annoying Crashing Problem on Windows

It took a while, but I finally decided to read the error reports. When I did so, I found that nearly every one of Firefox’s crashes that I experienced was related to a specific extension. I dug around in the registry and the extensions folder, and found that it was none other than the Java plugin.

Living on the edge, I decided to just remove it. I uninstalled Java, then deleted references to the plugin in the registry and filesystem. Voila. Everything works and Firefox hasn’t crashed on me in over a week.

I Almost Got Phished!

Actually, I might have gotten phished, scammed, or trojaned - I really can’t tell. Anyway, I just returned from SANSFire 2008, and had the following email waiting for me in my inbox: Continue reading I Almost Got Phished!…

SANSFire 2008 - Audit 507, Day 5 - Windows

Day 5: Auditing Windows systems. Not really a lot of earth-shattering news here today. Having been exposed to Windows tools like MMC, Security Policies and Group Policies, and the Event Viewer for years now, I was in pretty familiar territory. There were some reminders (why LM hashes are bad, what to do about them if you still have them) and some new ideas (methods for baselining a system and taking periodic diffs to compare, moving forward), but no real “aha moments” for me. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I’ve had enough new stuff for now. At least today my brain did not feel like it was completely overflowing.

I also took a sneak peek at tomorrow’s book on auditing Unix. Familiar stuff there too. (*phew!*)