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Independence in a corporate age....

As a neutral provider of IT support and help we get to see IT life from all perspectives. We work with Linux, Mac, Windows, Novell, IBM, Acer, HP, Dell etc etc ... providing the best possible support and help for our customer - vendor neutral - best fit solutions. Along the way we get to talk to most of the IT vendors / providers in the process of trying t (read the entire post)...

I have decided to get out a roll of tin foil and start knitting myself a tinfoil hat - mostly to wear while sitting in my Faraday cage, with the window vibrators on, speaking via voice changer and using anonymous proxy to surf the net via my wireless internet access in an ever moving van. Oh yes - Pink Floyd's, 'The Wall', is screaming in the foreground to stop people overhearing what I say. So what pushed me (further?) over the edge you ask? Mozilla Firefox 3. Two days ago I decided to lo (read the entire post)...

Tonight I set down with a simple goal in mind - to fill out a couple of forms on line to see if my money and I can be seperated in the noble persuit of getting a bank loan to increase my business. Does my current business need a loan? No. But I am hoping to take some of the spare cash we have and put it to good use by purchasing a new (non IT geek type) business.

All good, right up to the point that I visited the online banking sites this great nation of ours boasts. Now - please not (read the entire post)...

Kinsten:

>write a sci-fi book, please =)

I thought about it but the only people who would read it would be other geeks and we all know that p2p is the best way to get books we like - no money in it for me though Sigh!!! I even had the art laid out ready to go:

Looks like a series of smileys but dont run it in linux command line :)


>Heard of a guy in America who wrote an article on
how to hack systems, but never actually hacked anyt (read the entire post)...

Some one once said depression is just suppressed rage so for me better angry than depressed.

To answer a comment or two:

[David]

>It's got to be better to them than the
alternative of people switching to truly free software like GNU/Linux.
If >you're sick of security software, cd keys, and product activation
sucking your life away, I'd highly encourage you >to give a Live CD from
one of the popular distributions a spin.

read the entire post)...

As someone who deals with virii / viruses / crapware every day I try to keep abreast of new developments.

Recently I ran into the work of Joanna Rutkowska who had created a 'Blue Pill' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Pill_(malware) ) rootkit as a sample of an undetectable rootkit / virus infection. While the papers referenced above are more than my decaffinated brain can handle before lunch the concept is beautiful, elegant in its approach and almost completely undetectable usi (read the entire post)...

Basically this is a rehash of a comment I wrote in repsonse to the review of Microsofts free security / av software. ( http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?ContentId=8005 ) I include it here as it has direct relevance to virus busting but also because i see this as a disaster in the making. I feel like the dude looking out to sea watching a tsunami approaching and knowing there is nothing I can do but grab my surf board and hope that the afterlife is better than this one.

To those (read the entire post)...

Ironically, soon after finishing my previous post around the idea of going down the whitelist route for hunting viruses (lists of known good software and programs so only unknowns will be checked for problems) I had the (dis)pleasure of runnig into one of the new style root kits.

As before the root kit had gotten into the system via Win Antivirus 2008 or a similar variant of that malware. The machine was dis-infected using smitfraud fix software and also SDFix software, the two quicke (read the entire post)...

My poor technician must have freaked out earlier today when his boss (me) suddenly burst into fits of hysterical laughter and couldn't stop giggling for at least 5 minutes.

The thing that provoked such mirth was a couple of lines from the Microsoft Help section. It read like a cross between Monty Pythons Cheese Skit and a programmers joke. The lines in question are bolded below.

SUMMARYThe
Internet Explorer icon might be missing after either you upgrade the
Inter (read the entire post)...

Over the past six years a lot of changes have happened in the world of virus removal and computer security. Basically with the advent of Microsofts most secure operating system ever (Windows XP) the world of virii / spyware / rootkits / exploits (collectively I'll refer to them as malware for this article) etc has exploded. Estimates of the number of new virus released each week are normally in the thousands, if not tens of thousands range. Add to that spyware, unwanted applications (e.g. WinAnt (read the entire post)...