IT Professionals

Verizon Friendly Routers?

Matt Hartley — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:51:03 +0000

Today Bruce asks,

I am trying to find a wireless router I can plug a usb verizon wireless modem into. Any suggestions?

Understanding that I am going to speculate that when you say “Verizon”, you are refering to EVDO service as Verizon’s DSL and FiOS services work fine with most routers? If this is the case, I can certainly understand the advantage of what you are asking for. Being able to create your own hotspot whereever you happen to be would something I have looked into for myself more than once. And with that, here is what I have found during my online travels.

The KR2 Mobile Router- Have not found any reason thus far not to pursue this option. It appears to do anything you might want - USB to PCMCIA (via a daisy chain I suspect) this router would allow you to take your mobile broadband and share it with as many PCs as you might need it to.

The D-Link 3G Mobile Router- Unfortunately, I am only addressing this product as you may very well stumble upon it as I did. Do not buy this product as it is reported to be finicky about which EVDO devices it will indeed support with its firmware. Buyer be warned.

Hopefully this will get you started off on the right track!

Do you have an IT-related question? Perhaps you are just burnt out on writing on the walls with crayons? Whatever the comments may be, drop me a line, and you too can “Just Ask Matt!” Please address comments to the comments section above, my email address is for questions - thanks!

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Lockergnome — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:30:29 +0000

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Troubleshooting Encryption In Vista Part II

Diana Huggins — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 07:02:52 +0000

The problems with EFS can be greatly compounded if you are not looking for it as a possible culprit. When a user tries to access a file that has been encrypted by someone else, depending on the type of access attempted or the application being used, the user will generally get one of two messages: Access Denied or This File Appears To Be Corrupted.

If the Access Denied message appears, most end users assume that an admin has improperly locked them out, so they contact the help desk. If the person troubleshooting the problem just looks at the permissions on the file or folder, there’s no indication that a user has been denied access. Only bringing up the file’s advanced properties will reveal the problem. Many man-hours can be wasted pursuing other potential problems, such as group permission conflicts.

Of the two common messages users receive when they are not allowed to read the file due to EFS, the Access Denied message is the good one. Users receiving a message indicating that the file appears corrupted may go so far as to delete the file. Since EFS will not stop the deletion, users will be able to do so. If the person troubleshooting the situation is not looking for EFS as the potential problem, things can get far worse when the message This File Appears To Be Corrupted occurs. There are quite a few horror stories already being attributed to this scenario. Take the following example:

Two users working different shifts share the same Vista system. The user working the evening shift has a fair amount of downtime and uses it to explore different aspects of the system. Upon discovering the Encrypt Contents To Secure Data setting, he decides to activate this feature. "What’s wrong with securing the data?" he says to himself.

He has selected a file in a folder shared by both users, and the default EFS setting indicates that not only should the file be encrypted, but the parent folder as well. The user accepts this and clicks OK. Now every file created in this folder will be encrypted to the user who created it and unreadable by the other user. The user in the evening modifies these files without issue and believes everything is working fine.

When the daytime user tries to open a file in this folder, she receives a message indicating that the file’s data appears to be corrupted. She calls the help desk and indicates that there’s a problem. The files in this folder needs to be written to every day as part of their jobs, so the problem needs to be solved quickly. A help desk tech shows up and begins troubleshooting the problem. The tech tries deleting and restoring the file from the nightly backup, but unfortunately EFS files back up encrypted. So the restored file also comes up corrupted. The tech believes this signals a problem with the application used to edit the file. The tech reinstalls the application, but the problem persists.

Needing to solve the problem quickly, the tech decides to reload the operating system, since there is a backup of the data. The reload of the OS erases the keys used to encrypt the data, and it’s now completely unreadable!

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Bluesnarfing - Should We Worry?

Matt Hartley — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:13:15 +0000

Alright, I would be first to admit that a term like Bluesnarfing sounds like something coming back up after a hard night of partying. Yet in reality, it is significant enough that the United States’ own US-CERT has stated that this form of wireless data snooping is a serious threat.

Should we stop using Bluetooth headsets because of this? Please, give me a break. I am risk of a bigger threat by buying something off of the TV by using my credit card over a cordless phone. Look, the only real threat to using Bluetooth for most people is having your mobile phone’s battery being drained at an alarming rate!

So do you believe that Bluetooth is a real threat to your phone’s security? Are you storing your address, social security number or other critical data on it? Hit the comments and share your thoughts.

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Is Your DNS Server Safe? Major Security Hole Needs To Be Patched Right Now!

Greg Hughes — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:50:58 +0000

DNS has a hole in it. Bad guys are working on exploits right now. Patches are available right now. Anyone responsible for a DNS server needs to exercise that responsibility. Right now.

Dan Kaminsky found a security hole in DNS recently, the details of which he was keeping quiet so providers could fix and release patches and DNS server owners could get those patches deployed, in order to avoid security breaches on the Internet. His intent was to release the gory details in a couple weeks at the Black Hat conference.

But the other day word of the details inadvertently leaked out, and so now everyone responsible for a DNS system must — and I do mean must — drop what they’re doing and make sure their systems are patched and safe. Failure to do so puts Internet users at risk of site fraud and hijacking.

DNS is a system that translates names you can remember (like www.greghughes.net) to especially non-memorable numerical addresses the Internet can route (such as 208.109.238.146). It’s the Internet’s phone book, so to speak.

The security hole allows malicious people to spoof a Web site using the actual, legitimate domain name. In other words, bad guys could hijack a DNS server, and if it happens to be one your computer relies upon, you could type in a legitimate address like www.google.com or www.yourbank.com, but the Web page would be a malicious one — a fake. The recently-released patches plug the hole and prevent this misuse (although it doesn’t really change the underlying protocol).

Aaron Massey wrote a very good post describing the issue and its various details. He also links to Halvar Flake, a talented reverse-engineering guy who thought the threat through and pretty much guessed it right on his blog. After Halvar’s guess, another security blog that had specific knowledge of the threat details confirmed Flake’s hypothesis. As a result, the threat was disclosed.

Luckily, the various creators of the DNS systems used all over the Internet released patches about two weeks ago. The real question is, have you patched your servers? This is a critical flaw — it needs to be patched immediately.

If you want to know whether the DNS server your computer relies upon is vulnerable or not, you can use the DNS Checker in the sidebar of Kaminsky’s blog (as long as it remains there).

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Troubleshooting Encryption In Vista Part I

Diana Huggins — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:00:26 +0000

Vista includes two encryption technologies: Encrypting File System (EFS) and BitLocker Drive Encryption. As with most technology, once you implement either encryption technology, you might encounter some common problems. In this series of articles, we will take a look at some of the common issues that can arise with both technologies.

If you cannot enable BitLocker Drive Encryption on your computer, you need to check if your motherboard is TPM compliant. This is not so much as a problem but more of a configuration issues. Without a TMP, BitLocker will not be enabled by default and you will see a message indicating that a TPM was not found.

You can still take advantage of BitLocker without a TPM compliant motherboard. The workaround is to get an external USB key to store the encrypted keys. Each time you boot the computer, you will need to insert the USB key into the USB port.

On the topic of configuration issues, if your hard disk is not configured properly (refer to the Lockergnome article called ‘Planning For Encryption In Vista’), you will receive the following message:

The drive configuration is unsuitable for BitLocker Drive Encryption. To use BitLocker, please re-partition your hard drive according to the BitLocker requirements.

To use BitLocker, your hard disk needs at least two partitions. The first partition contains startup information and the second contains the operating system and user data. You can download and run the BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool to prepare your hard drive.

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Why Was It Removed?

Matt Hartley — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:05:32 +0000

As I was combing over this today, I could not help but wonder why some of the items were removed at all? Take DXDiag for instance. This is a tool that nearly every gamer out there is aware of and has likely used to diagnose issues with DirectX. Why was it cut - get this, it is not “cross platform friendly”. Yup, however according to this, cross platform with regard to Microsoft’s gaming platforms - Xbox and Windows.

So by this logic, because it will not work on Xbox…then it must be eliminated from Windows! Wait, huh?

2) APIs that are eliminated because no cross-platform counterpart exists

DxDiag gets cut. There is no real equivalent on Xbox 360 today. MDX1.1 will continue to support a managed wrapper for DxDiag. Do you have any concerns here? If so, let us know.

Yeah, I have “a concern”.I think I speak for a number of Windows users who might object to having their DirectX diagnostic ability being neutered. But that is just me.

Then there is one that I do understand it being phased out, yet had to DIG for its suggested replacement? SerialKeys. Yes, for those who need extra accessibility features with their Windows desktop, SerialKeys was a valued option and having it installed was a major boon to the platform. Unfortunately this is no longer the case. And as surprising as this may seem, I have no problem with this per se. I just wish the replacements: SKEYS and AAC Keys were more readily suggested for new Vista users. Seriously!

On the plus side, despite some people finding it to be annoying, Vista is inherently more secure than previous releases of Windows. And eliminating some of those dated little extras might very well spell less future exploits in the future? I am speculating, but it sure sounds plausible at least…

What say you? Are there any features you had with XP that you are finding lacking in Vista? Perhaps something was added with Vista that was lacking in XP? Whatever it may be, hit the comments and tell me about it.

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Touch Screen Computing - The Future?

Matt Hartley — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 17:00:24 +0000

I think at some point, we must realize that no matter how hard we rail against it, the keyboard will remain king on the desktop. Regardless of what kind of kind of cool touch screen options become available or even popular for that matter. At the end of the day, users all find themselves reaching for the all familiar keyboard.

PC gamers expect it, power users demand it and casual users of both the PC and yes, even the Mac, are simply so used to the keyboard’s familiarity that expecting even a slow migration to a touch screen on anything other than mobile devices is unlikely at best.

Perhaps it is some 21st century expectation that has us so bent on see touch screens becoming part of the technology world, I really could not say for sure. But one thing is for sure, short of bulletproof speech recognition software bundled with retraining our brains how we share thoughts with a computer, seeing touch screens becoming anything in the home of the casual user may in fact be the wishful thinking of dreamers.

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Troubleshooting User Network Performance Issues With SolarWinds

Chris Pirillo — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 07:03:12 +0000

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We all have networks of some kind. No matter whether you have two computers or 2000 on your network, you’ll need tools to manage it. This is why I love talking to Josh Stephens from SolarWinds. In the recent past, Josh and I got together to discuss Exchange Monitor. Today, we talked specifically about troubleshooting user performance on a network. I wanted to get his take on this, as I know it’s something he deals with on a daily basis.

According to Josh, networks today are more complex than they used to be. We’re using them for far more than we have in the past, and many of the things are bandwidth intensive. When he has to start narrowing down a problem, the first three rules of troubleshooting a network is check the cable, check the cable, check the cable. It sounds silly, but it happens much more often than you would think.

I asked Josh if turning on wireless actually impede the wired connections between computers on the network. Josh indicated that you can use some of the tools from SolarWinds to measure performance of your network both before and after you make any changes. If you’re having trouble with performance and you have wireless… check first to make sure if there’s a firmware update available for your access point. That can make a tremendous difference. There are many little things that could cause you to have issues with a wireless network, so using tools like SolarWinds has available can certainly help diagnose and manage it.

Another question that came up was wondering what Josh believed the greatest threat is to networks in the coming years. Josh tends to think that as far as things like viruses go, the network gear today is very well equipped to handle them. He doesn’t see threats like that as much of an issue. What he does feel that Network Admins should be aware of is the idea of having real-time collaborative conferencing. It’s really just barely starting to take off, and will likely grow very quickly. You need to stay a few steps ahead of the users you are providing support to.

I get a lot of people constantly asking me about tweaks. I wondered if many of the “popular” tweaks are actually valid. Josh stated there truly is a lot of things that can be tweaked in order to enhance your network performance. You definitely want to make sure you know what you’re doing before diving in to make major changes, and always back up everything you can before beginning.

The Engineer’s Toolset Engineer’s Toolset includes 49 powerful network management, monitoring and troubleshooting tools to easily and effectively manage your network. Some of the key features are:

Monitors and alerts on availability, bandwidth utilization, and health for hundreds of network devices
Provides robust network diagnostics for troubleshooting and quickly resolving complex network issues
Offers an array of network discovery tools that facilitate IP address management, port mapping and ping sweeps
Eases management of Cisco devices with tools for real-time NetFlow analysis, configuration management and router management

Please leave me your network optimization tips, so that everyone can learn. And be sure to check out everything SolarWinds has to offer.

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