IT Awesomeness

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Online Privacy Tools

Linux Tails

Tails is a live operating system, that you can start on almost any computer from a DVD, USB stick, or SD card. It aims at preserving your privacy and anonymity, and helps you to:

use the Internet anonymously and circumvent censorship;
all connections to the Internet are forced to go through the Tor network;
leave no trace on the computer you are using unless you ask it explicitly;
use state-of-the-art cryptographic tools to encrypt your files, emails and instant messaging.

https://tails.boum.org/

TOR

What is Tor?

Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security.

https://www.torproject.org/

ProtonMail

Free secure email. Servers not in the US.

https://protonmail.ch

Truecrypt

Open source file and space encryption software

Currently unavailable due to unresolved security issues discovered.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

windows 7 automatic updates wont run, error 8024800A

If you can no longer run automatic updates, and it comes up with an error message 8024800A Windows Update encountered an unknown error follow the steps below to correct -

start cmd (START > RUN > CMD, run as Administrator) and copy and paste the following lines:

REG DELETE "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate" /v SusClientId /f
REG DELETE "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate" /v SusClientIdValidation /f

net stop wuauserv

move %windir%\windowsupdate.log %windir%\windowsupdate.old.log
move %windir%\SoftwareDistribution %windir%\SoftwareDistribution.old

regsvr32 /s atl.dll
regsvr32 /s wucltui.dll
regsvr32 /s wups.dll
regsvr32 /s wuaueng.dll
regsvr32 /s wuapi.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml3.dll
regsvr32 /s mssip32.dll
regsvr32 /s initpki.dll
regsvr32 /s softpub.dll

net start wuauserv

wuauclt /resetauthorization /detectnow

Sunday, December 8, 2013

How to fix - Setup cannot find ProPlus.WW\ProPsWW2.cab

When you receive the error "Setup cannot find ProPlus.WW\ProPsWW2.cab" it might mean the MD5 checksum the install was expecting and the one on the actual file do not match. Here's how I fixed the issue.

First let me explain in simple terms what the MD5 is. MD5 is an algorithm that is used to verify data integrity. If anything in the file changes the MD5 will also change so it's a way for the program to check the integrity of the file.

The MD5 file is kept in the setup file of the proplus.ww folder. Open it with notepad and find the section that looks similar to the following **the numbers after "MD5 =" is what you need to be concerned with. Also remember that your numbers may differ. **

</LocalCache>

Next you will need to download and install an MD5 checker. I'll leave the process of how to use the MD5 to you to learn but it's pretty simple.

Next run the MD5 checker on the file/s that produce the errors during install. *there may be more than one*

Now there are 2 ways to work around this - If the MD5 on the checker did not match the MD5 in the file it probably means the file is corrupted so your best bet is to download the software again or get another disk.

Another less recommended way is to copy/paste the MD5 from the checker into the file (remember to make a backup of your setup file before) then save it and run the install again. This fools the installation process into verifying that your installation files are all OK.

Good luck!!

Sunday, June 16, 2013

Debian - Apt-get : NO_PUBKEY / GPG error

Issue
When updating the Debian based system, apt-get may display an error message like:

W: GPG error: ftp://ftp.debian.org/ testing Release:       
The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 010908312D230C5F      

W: There is no public key available for the following key IDs:      
010908312D230C5F

This is a new feature of the apt-get system that guarantees the authenticity of servers for updating Debian.

Solution

Simply type the following commands, taking care to replace the number below with that of the key that was displayed in the error message:

gpg --keyserver pgpkeys.mit.edu --recv-key  010908312D230C5F      
gpg -a --export 010908312D230C5F | sudo apt-key add -

I copied this solution from

http://en.kioskea.net/faq/809-debian-apt-get-no-pubkey-gpg-error

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Connection contains real IP of NATed address

I was receiving this error in Checkpoint firewall log when using the Cisco IP communicator on the VPN Client pc. The symptons were that although I could hear the other party, I could place calls but the other party could not hear me. I resolved the issue by adding a NAT rule in Checkpoint as follows

Original Packet
source=any
destination= (ip address or range of vpn client)
Translated Packet
Source = original
destination= original
service= original

Print Spooler is preventing hibernation or standby

All of a sudden I began getting the following message

The service 'Print Spooler' is preventing the machine from entering hibernation. Try stopping this service and try again

This also applies to

The service 'Print Spooler' is preventing the machine from entering standby. Try stopping this service and try again

First I stopped the print spooler service

Then I went to the C:\WINDOWS\System32\spool\PRINTERS folder and deleted all files in there.

Then I restarted the print spooler service.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

My Favorite Software Programs

I have compiled a list of programs that I use on a day to day basis for general IT administration. (the descriptions below are mostly copied from Wikipedia)

PuTTY is a free and open source terminal emulator application which can act as a client for the SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw TCP computing protocols and as a serial console client.

** Step up from PuTTY is SecureCRT but it's not free :(

FileZilla is free and cross-platform FTP software, consisting of FileZilla Client and/or FileZilla Server.

Nmap (Network Mapper) is a security scanner used to discover hosts and services on a computer network, thus creating a "map" of the network. To accomplish its goal, Nmap sends specially crafted packets to the target host and then analyzes the responses.

Wireshark is a free and open-source packet analyzer. It is used for network troubleshooting, analysis, software and communications protocol development, and education.

WinMerge is a free software tool for file comparison and merging text-like files. It is useful for determining what has changed between versions, and then merging changes between versions.

Notepad++ is a text editor and source code editor for Windows. One advantage of Notepad++ over the built-in Windows text editor, Notepad, is tabbed editing, which allows working with multiple open files. And it's Free!

WinSCP (Windows Secure CoPy) is a free and open source SFTP, SCP, and FTP client for Microsoft Windows. Its main function is secure file transfer between a local and a remote computer. Beyond this, WinSCP offers basic file manager and file synchronization functionality. For secure transfers, it uses Secure Shell (SSH) and supports the SCP protocol in addition to SFTP.

Windows Grep is a tool for searching files for text strings that you specify. Although Windows and many other programs have file searching capabilities built-in, none can match the power and versatility of Windows Grep.

Angry IP Scanner (or simply ipscan) is an open-source and cross-platform network scanner designed to be fast and simple to use. It scans IP addresses and ports as well as NetBIOS information (computer name, workgroup name, and currently logged in Windows user), favorite IP address ranges, web server detection, customizable openers, etc.

Cain and Abel is a password recovery tool for Microsoft Windows. It can recover many kinds of passwords using methods such as network packet sniffing, cracking various password hashes by using methods such as dictionary attacks, brute force and cryptanalysis attacks. Cryptanalysis attacks are done via rainbow tables which can be generated with the winrtgen.exe program provided with Cain and Abel.

Microsoft Visio is a 2D-object drawing application. I use this program for drawing all types of diagrams.

Tftpd32 (or Tftpd64) is a free, opensource IPv6 ready application which includes DHCP, TFTP, DNS, SNTP and Syslog servers as well as a TFTP client.

TeamViewer is a proprietary computer software package for remote control, desktop sharing, online meetings, web conferencing and file transfer between computers. The software operates with the Microsoft Windows, OS X,^[1]^[2] Linux,^[3] iOS,^[4] Android,^[5] and Windows RT^[6] operating systems. It is possible to access a machine running TeamViewer with a web browser.^[7] While the main focus of the application is remote control of computers, collaboration and presentation features are included.

TightVNC is a cross-platform open source remote desktop software application that uses and extends VNC's RFB protocol to control another computer's screen remotely. It was created by Constantin Kaplinsky. His extensions provide for 'tight encoding', which improves performance over low bandwidth connections.

Dynamips is an emulator program that was written to emulate Cisco routers. Dynamips runs on Linux, Mac OS X or Windows and can emulate the hardware of the Cisco series routing platforms by directly booting an actual Cisco IOS software image into the emulator.

KeePass Password Safe is a free software password management utility for Microsoft Windows, with unofficial ports for Linux,Mac OS X, and a variety of other systems.

TrueCrypt is a freeware software application used for on-the-fly encryption (OTFE). It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file or encrypt a partition or (underMicrosoft Windows except Windows 2000) the entire storage device (pre-boot authentication). Switch to VeraCrypt

FrostWire is a free, open source BitTorrent client first released in September 2004, as a fork of LimeWire. It was initially very similar to LimeWire in appearance and functionality, but over time developers added more features, including BitTorrent support. In version 5, Gnutella support was dropped entirely, and FrostWire is only a BitTorrent client