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Maki & Brian
DeLaet
EduCyber founders
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In this Issue we look at some of the buzz around Microsoft and Vista, as well as look into some website security issues.
It’s out! Vista Service Pack 1 has been released. My notebook downloaded and installed it last night from the Windows Update. Since ancient history (at least dating back to Windows 2000) Microsoft users have learned to wait for the first Service Pack to come out before adopting or considering adopting the new OS. Well the time has come.
According to Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, the service pack will (amongst other things):
- Increase Vista’s stability
- Make zipping and unzipping faster
- Make Remote Desktop work faster and better
I’ve been running Vista on my Vista-ready Gateway laptop (duo-core processor) for many months and the thing that has bothered me the most has been how slow it responds. I’m looking forward to seeing if it will be more responsive with the service pack.
Google Dorks
The power of a good search engine can be scary. I love being
able to search for anything and everything at Google. I use it to help my in my business and to help my clients with their business. But if your intent is nefarious, you can do great evil with Google as well.
I found this article about Google Dorks on freakitude the other day. This article is more than a year old and explains how easy it is to search for key words that are a part of programs that haven’t been updated or patched. An example they talk about is phpmyadmin which is a tool that allows you to administer databases. Well if you do a Google search “Welcome to phpMyAdmin” AND ” Create new database” this can lead you to sites that let you log in and get to their databases.
I’ve dealt with clients before who might have the attitude of “so what?” We don’t have any critical data or we decided not to use an online database. That’s fine. But if so, then remove the program! Don’t leave it exposed for the whole world to see. If you do, someone will come along, set up their own database and use it to attack other sites, send out spam and all kinds of things that you wouldn’t want to have happen.
The example above of phpmyadmin is just one of the many security holes that can be found with a Google search. Last month information week published an article about a “Google Hacking Database Tool” that can help you identify problems and fix them before the hackers take a shot at them.
So if you manage your own web site, take the time to make sure you’ve got it secured.
I get quite a kick out of the viral nature of the Internet. One of the things I always tell people is to double-check before they hit send in their email. Well, someone pulled a fast one on someone with this hilarious video about Microsoft Vista and Service Pack 1.
It’s not clear whether Microsoft really intended this video for internal use or whether they “leaked” the video to YouTube to create a buzz about . . . well I guess about Microsoft. Its funny and its cheezy but it also gets the word out to people that Vista Service Pack 1 is out. If it is Microsoft poking fun at themselves, its very well done.
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© 2008 EduCyber, Inc. This newsletter is brought to you by EduCyber, Inc. EduNotes can be viewed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week online at http://www.educyber.com/edunotes/ . Visit us on the web at http://www.educyber.com or call us at (303) 268-2245. Permission is hereby granted to redistribute all or part of this newsletter as long as this entire copyright message is included.
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