Although I am not aware of any customers running snort, this may be of use to other people reading this, but snort 2.4, with the Back Orifice processor enabled is vulnerable to attack as per the details at Sans
George does a good skit of what would happen when the techies from Compusa get in the ring with the techies from BestBuy to battle over a consumer’s tech support. With weapons such as rebates, price match flyers and even a blueshirted sales rep (i think) the action gets pretty intense. Well worth catching up on the In the Trenches podcast from a couple of weeks ago. The file is pretty large but contains a lot of other good techie stuff too.
1. If a computer freezes every 20 minutes, is it safe to upgrade the bios (which might solve the problem)? A tricky question and in my case, the answer is no. The computer crashed during the bios update and consequently was Columbus’ biggest doorstop. Fortunately I had made sure the machine was under warranty before I began but still had to endure a 45 minute phone call with Dell as they troubleshooted the call. The last 2 minutes went something like this
Dell: Sounds like you need a new motherboard.
Me: Yep
Dell: Sounds like you knew I was going to say that.
Me: Yep!
The engineer will be on site tomorrow to swap out the part although they asked if I wanted to do it. Very cheeky on their part seeing as though the company is paying for the warranty and the coverage – why do their job for them? That and the engineer can sit and wait whilst the lengthy diagnostics runs and I won’t.
2. If you use Lotus Notes as your mail client and synchronise your databases to the server, it doesn’t synchronise your address book (which doesn’t need a replica on the server either to confuse matters). Instead you go to Actions/Synchronise Address Book. Why you have to do this I don’t know *cough* you don’t have to do that in outlook you know – its all included in the synchronisation/offline capabilities *cough*. I’ve also not worked out how to get that command onto a toolbar so I have one click access rather than going to the menu to do it (or even better to automatically do it). I’ve also yet to work out what they synchronise journal does as I dont see an option for a journal in my notes client – this notes client lark is a steep learning curve.
3. If users complain they can’t see unread email in outlook, make sure that the messages view does NOT have the “Use Group” menu item selected otherwise it is possible to hide last weeks mail, including unread emails, in this one line within the view (and its too complicated for the users to go to the unread emails view)
I finally finished the install of Small Business server 2003 on the virtual server on the laptop this morning. It’s taken forever to do and this morning I had to go through the activation of the software. As the server doesn’t have internet connectivity (yet) I had to do it over the phone. The whole process was simple and straightforward with voice recognition guiding me through the process. After I had read out the 42 (i think) digit number it was time for it to read out the 42 digits. They were split into 7 groups of 6 digits and the funny thing was that it would ask you to say “Go On” at the end of each group if you were ready. I was starting to sound like Mrs Doyle – that annoying woman from the self assessment adverts on tv a couple of years ago – go on, go on, go on!
You have probably seen the ads on tv for Capital One – where they are training the telephone guys to say NO all the time – well I think 53rd Bank have also been watching this too many times.
After not giving me a credit card and then sending a letter saying they want to do everything in their power, I arranged to get a secured credit card – apparently all I needed was a savings account with $300 in it….but they neglected to tell me that I’d only get a $300 limit on the card – not much use if I’m putting work expenses on it!
I come home, feeling annoyed that I wasted my trip to the bank (and they farted around before finally paying attention) and went to pay a bill online – you know, the service that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – unless its Friday night and you have a bill to pay and the service is temporarily unavailable….or if you need to speak to customer service about online banking, then they are only open during business hours…grrrrr. I really need to change banks, one that provides a credit card, free checking, no atm charges and a decent online service – know any?
In the meantime I think I’ll be fighting for a refund of my cheque charges and a closure of my account.
Patch Management.org looks like a good resource of keeping up to date with the Windows updates and seeing if other people are adversely affected with the latest windows patches.
I must admit to being pretty cautious about all the patches that came out this week as they seem to affect major parts of the network, however it looks like there are exploits going around for some of the unpatched machines already
OABInteg and Troubleshooting may be useful tomorrow. Two weeks ago a user didn’t appear in a outlook address book on one machine but did on another machine and on the server. Hopefully these pages may help troubleshoot if I still have the problem tomorrow. (I’m hoping it will have solved itself over the past 2 weeks)
I’ve been receiving a lot of spam email from Pfizer (who make Benadryl in the US) after trying to find out where to get Benadryl in the US. They never responded to my email request, their telephone response was incorrect (“we don’t do it over here” is wrong) and now they’ve been sending me marketing emails with unsubscribe links that show how naff their database server is.
It wasn’t until I eventually found an email address for their privacy office AND complained to etrust that I got some action from them to investigate the problems. Apparently they “understand the frustration and would like to help you in
the most efficient way.”
I’ve suggested they do the following:-
- Monitor your privacy address so you would have taken action on the request (with forwarded email) I sent on the 2nd Octobe
- have working unsubscribe links in a newsletter.
- have contact information on your website so that people can contact you to get off if a and b don’t work
- Don’t send out emails with a fake/unread return email address
…with my new bank. After a nice start at the bank on Saturday to fill out all the paperwork to open an account I got a letter yesterday from them to say they won’t give me a credit card as I have no credit history. I’m not sure if they spotted the irony in that statement or not, but from my next experience today I doubt it.
Today I get a letter from the branch manager (I presume as they didn’t put an address on the letter) that welcomes me to the branch and that they are “thrilled to get the opportunity to serve you and will do everything in our power to meet your expectations. If there is a financial need that we haven’t filled….”
Now if I wasn’t busy at work I’d love to slap the letter on his desk and ask why my credit card application was refused – instead I’ll have to settle with a phone call or wait until Friday night or Saturday morning.