Ken Harthun

The good folks over at Secunia have a nice, free, web-based tool to scan your computer for certain common vulnerabilities. I’m surprised I didn’t pick up on this before, as I get the Secunia alert newsletter.:
Secunia Software Inspector6 December, 2006 - Secunia is proud to announce the availability of the Secunia Software Inspector. Detect and update [...]

Steve Gibson, author of the best disk recovery and maintenance utility on the planet, Spinrite, developer of the first anti-spyware program, OptOut, and recipient of the People’s Choice Podcast Awards in the Science/Technology category for his Security Now! podcast with Leo Laporte of Twit, wrote the first firewall “leak test.” It has been downloaded 6,715,096 [...]

A friend of mine came up to me the other day and said, “I love your computer maxims, but I don’t have anything to worry about–I have all of my passwords stored on an encrypted thumb drive.” Of course, my retort was, “That’s a good thing. Where do you keep your backups?”
“On my external USB [...]

CardSpace (formerly InfoCard) is Microsoft’s new digital identity meta-system that comes with Windows Vista by default. Now, if you have .NET Framework 3.0 on your PC, you have CardSpace; it’s a .NET 3.0 component. But you probably didn’t know that (I didn’t) unless you’re a .NET enthusiast. There was no fanfare about it.
I’m glad to see it, in a [...]

Depending on which vendor you use, may not be as protected as you think. According to this article on the ClamAV website, only three vendors prevailed:
On August 8th at LinuxWorld, network gateway vendor Untangle performed an all-out public test of different anti-virus vendors to see how they really compare.
In an antivirus “fight club” conducted in front [...]

The Zonbu unit is definitely *not* a toy that takes a Geek to set up. This is good news: A consumer can be confident in knowing that if she buys a Zonbu and follows the provided instructions, it’ll work right out of the box. I followed the instructions and it booted right up when connected [...]

Got it today. Unfortunately, I have a blown keyboard that is preventing my Dell and, I presume, the Zonbu unit from booting. (I SO wanted to play with this thing tonight!) Tomorrow, I’m going to give it a run for its money and if it’s everything I think it might be, I’m going viral with [...]

Matt Hartley’s article in Lockergnome’s IT Professionals talks about the Zonbu “green” computer. Well, I’m not so concerned about the green aspect as I am about the security aspect. Zonbu looks like the perfect PC for the computer-illiterate, i.e., the average user. They say it’s immune to most of the bad stuff out there:
There are [...]

A computer term you should be familiar with is sandbox. Software developers often run their untested code in a protected environment called a sandbox. If the software misbehaves, the sandbox is shut down and everything returns to normal, no harm done. It’s a great way to prevent viruses and other malware from infecting your machine while browsing the web. [...]

In Maxim #7, I said that data security is senior to physical security. While true, physical security is only slightly less important. Taking steps to prevent theft of your computer is common sense. Sure, encrypt your data to make it useless to a thief if he manages to steal your hardware, but make it as difficult as possible [...]

I know you depend on this blog for security related information, but I just can’t resist posting this. Sometimes we security wonks just have to let loose and have some fun. After all, being too serious about things ain’t healthy.
I’ve already posted a link on Ask the Geek, but here it is again: Jay Leno [...]

We frequently hear news of a laptop holding sensitive information having been stolen. Bad in itself, but the reports often note that the information was unencrypted. Doubly bad. Certainly, physical security is important — you want to do everything you can to prevent physical access to, or theft of, your computer — but data security [...]

From USA Today:
“STOCKHOLM (AP) — She is a latecomer to the information superhighway, but 75-year-old Sigbritt Lothberg is now cruising the Internet with a dizzying speed. Lothberg’s 40 gigabits-per-second fiber-optic connection in Karlstad is believed to be the fastest residential uplink in the world, Karlstad city officials said.
“In less than 2 seconds, Lothberg can download [...]

In an effort to thwart removal efforts, the criminals who produce malware such as WORM_SOHANAD.AF have taken to disabling Windows Task Manager and Registry Editor. The technique isn’t new, but its use is on the rise according to SANS NewsBites Vol. 9 No. 53:
BotVoice-A… disables the Windows registry editor which makes cleaning up the mess [...]

I get questions all the time from clients over at Ask the Geek about using a mail client’s message preview feature. Opinions vary, of course, but for this geek, it’s a bad idea. In order to preview a message, it has to be opened or rendered by the HTML engine. Think about how a PC [...]

It’s 2010, maybe sooner. A rogue nation has just declared war on your country. No one will be killed in this war, at least not directly. But people will die from starvation, disease, and in the general chaos caused by disruption in vital communications lines. The rogue nation’s primary weapon? Botnets capable of taking down [...]

After getting my Sunday dose of Windows Weekly from Leo and the folks at TWiT, I could hardly wait to check out Microsoft Surface. What an amazing demo! I want it. Of course, Surface is just Microsoft’s brand of multi-touch driven screen technology, a very cool demo of which, entitled Remapping the Universe, you’ll find here. This is [...]

I know Matt Hartley has had his own Network Nightmares!, but he ain’t the only one. (Thankfully, I have managed to solve the problem for my client.) Case in point:
A small manufacturing firm specializing in small jet engines & parts (I’d love to have one of their 450 hp turbines in my car!) called to say [...]

In my Fun Toy for Geeks post, I gave the impression that U3 technology is pretty cool. Opinions vary, as they usually do, but I have at least one major concern: U3 could be compromised and used to steal private information. All some hacker would have to do is hook into U3 so that it installs [...]

Not long ago, a fairly savvy fellow told me he backs up all of his critical data every night. I told him that was a smart thing to do and asked him if he was using CDs or an external hard drive.
“Oh, no. Nothing like that,” he replied. “I just make a copy of [...]