TTC Shelbyville – Technical Blog

Us CDCheck to test your CDs.

D. Babian, GSAE

How much is too much?

• 200,ooo Pictures/MP3s in a Terabyte
• 204,800,000 Pictures/MP3s in a Petabyte
• 209,715,200,000 Pictures/MP3s in a Exabyte
• 214,748,364,800,000 Pictures/MP3s in a Zettabyte
• 219,902,325,555,200,000 Pictures/MP3s in Yottabyte (Yottabyte is one septillion)

*High quality 5+ mb photos – Your 4 GB SD card or flashdrive would hold 390 pictures

(Source: Backblaze via Geek Feed)

Active Hard Disk Monitor is an excellent way for you to monitor your hard drive and check the sensitive data on the drive.  With the ability to monitor temperatures, disk space, connect to remote computers (automatic Firewall Port opening software) and dozens of other pieces of information, Active Hard Disk Monitor is an excellent ‘must have’.

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Main Features:

• Hard Disk performance monitoring and control
• Based on Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (or S.M.A.R.T.)
• Able to scan and display bad sectors on a disk’s surface.
• Displays current S.M.A.R.T. attributes
• Can be launched automatically at Windows startup and monitor the HDD(s) in the background
• Provides standard hard disk information such as Serial/Model Number, Number of cylinders, and so on.
• Sends an email or a popup notification automatically if critical conditions appear.
• Includes System Tray icon temperature status
• Can generate event log and S.M.A.R.T reports
• The software has an easy to use user interface

Accident Sketch allows you to draw out an accident you were in.

Reliable login using Blink! can be done even though you are wearing glasses or during the day or night using Blink! by Luxand.  By using advanced techniques, this advanced face recognition technologies making logins automatic and quick.   Security is enhanced by taking pictures and logging who attempts to login, Blink! is a biometric technology using complex algorithms to enhance the security of your computer.

Download Blink! for Windows Vista / 7 32 bit.

Download from CNet

NovaBench Benchmarks your computer.  If you are building or testing a computer, NovaBench a 12 mb download allows your computer to be tested.  Benchmarking comes in hand when establishing a baseline with your computer and later adding memory or upgrading to a faster harddrive or CPU.

Test performed by NovaBench.

· Floating Point Test – Tests CPU’s floating point arithmetic speed
· Integer Test – Tests CPU’s integer arithmetic speed
· MD5 Hashing Speed – General CPU test
· 3D Graphics Test – Tests GPU with a heavily shader dependent 3D scene
· RAM Speed – Tests RAM read and write speed
· Disk Write Speed – Test write speed of primary or selected storage device

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SuperPi is a simple benchmarking utility to test your computer.

Network Meter made by MiTeC is a simple and easy to use program that allows you to select the interface adapter of your choice and and meter each session.

MiTeC offers a free network scanner that has several dozen features.  With capabilities to shutdown or remotely execute programs, MiTeC’s powerful features include:

• Network neighborhood
• Ping
• IP Address
• MAC Address (even across routers)
• MAC Vendor
• Device name
• Device domain/workgroup
• Logged user
• Operating system
• BIOS, Model and CPU
• System time and Up time
• Device description
• Type flags (SQL server, Domain controller etc.)
• Remote device date and time
• Listening TCP and UDP ports and SNMP services.
• Installed services on device
• Shared resources
• Sessions
• Open Files
• Running processes
• Terminal sessions
• Event Log
• Installed software
• SAM accounts
• WMI and SNMP Queries
• Powerful WhoIs client

The entire internet is a resource.  However because skills in leadership, work ethics and other talents are needed, Microsoft has an IT Manager Portal that combines resources and puts them at the fingertips of IT Managers.

Manager Challenges

Special Offers 

Advisory Council 

It is amazing how many resources that are available on the web to learn Microsoft products.  Almost every career today requires computer skills.  Sign up for free learning.

For Home Users-

Tennnessee through June – Elevate America offers free learning vouchers and testing vouchers – Elevate America for Tennessee
(Several Thousand vouchers are available)

U.S. Elevate America  – Other States

IT Professionals-

Virtual Labs for IT Professionals – Microsoft Virtual Labs

How about security training for IT Professionals ?  Free Microsoft’s Security Training Level One (Instructor Lead)

Security Training online (free)

Unreal to imagine Bots and Botnets exist.  This one hour video shows just how complex Bots and BotNets have grown.  With Bots being malicious applications and infected machines being BotNets (the collection of computers), the bot herder can allow the Bots to harvest your sensitive data.  Unreal.  Watch and Learn.

So I just read that Morse code was invented sometimes this month more than a hundred and fifty years ago.  Maybe it was truly the birth of the internet.  Sending an electronic signal over wire using a series of electrical ‘taps’ was one of the first forms of electrical communication.  Today when you clicked on your web browser and your operating system opened an application known as your browser thus activating your system driver to activate your network card at which time your browser issued a request for your homepage using the OSI model through TCP/IP over the internet by way of routers to web servers hosted on WordPress by way of DNS servers (ttcshelbyville.wordpress.com). (simplified) … so thank you Samuel F. B. Morse.

Morse Code translator Want to hear what it sounds like?  Copy the Title of this blog, visit the website, hit translate and click play.   So What is the dah dah dah-di-dah-dit di-di-dit?  TTCS – initials for Tennessee Technology Center at Shelbyville.

Goosh a program written Stefan Grothkopp is a unix like shell that can search the web.  Unsure what to type, hit ‘h’ or type ‘help’.   Now type web search whatyouarelookingfor now hit enter.

here’s a screen shot of Goosh

Goosh goosh.org 0.5.0-beta #1 Mon, 23 Jun 08 12:32:53 UTC Google/Ajax

Welcome to goosh.org – the unofficial google shell.

This google-interface behaves similar to a unix-shell.
You type commands and the results are shown on this page.

goosh is powered by google.

goosh is written by Stefan Grothkopp <grothkopp@gmail.com>
it is NOT an official google product!
goosh is open source under the Artistic License/GPL.

Enter help or h for a list of commands.

New Threat For Wireless Networks: Typhoid Adware – wireless security/Security – DarkReading.

Imagine going into a wireless hotspot and getting infected with Adware that is like no other.  Read this article from DarkReading and think of how dangerous the internet can be if you are not ready.

A lot of discussion is always heard when ‘we’ talking about our tweaks for networking.

We have found with several networks and not just our own that disabling LLMNR (Link-Local Multicast Name Resolution)  improves network speed.

Information on LLMNR -

Link-local Multicast Name Resolution (LLMNR) is a new protocol that provides an additional method to resolve the names of neighboring computers. LLMNR is especially useful for networks that do not have a Domain Name System (DNS) server. LLMNR uses a simple exchange of request and reply messages to resolve computer names to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) or IP version 4 (IPv4) addresses…more

If you use LLMNR and have a local DNS server and have network discovery on, LLMNR can work.  If you want to check to see, A LLMNR data pack is sent via a dynamic UDP port. The destination port is UDP 5355.  Therefore you can see or should see these packets if you monitor your network with Wireshark, Packetyzer , Microsoft’s Monitor or other analyzers.

Many users are reporting resolution problems and LLMNR can be disabled.  Performance increases are seen in many networks especially with SQL servers.

However, you can disable LLMNR if you are having name resolution problems with computers by -

Modify Group Policy – Go to Search – Type GPEdit.msc – Enter – Navigate to the following and make sure Enabled is checked -

Computer Configuration\Administrative Templates\Network\DNS Client
\Turn off Multicast Name Resolution = Enabled

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To further optimize your network and speeds, you can also experiment with trying these settings at an elevated prompt -

netsh int tcp set heuristics disabled
netsh int tcp set heuristics disabled
netsh int tcp set global rss=enabled
netsh int tcp set global chimney=enabled
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal
(netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=highlyrestricted ) This will set the autotuninglevel to “Allow the receive window to grow beyond its default value, but do so very conservatively” and my be a better option than the ‘normal setting.

netsh int tcp set global congestionprovider=ctcp
netsh int tcp set global ecncapability=disabled
netsh int tcp set global timestamps=disabled

To return to your default settings, go to a command prompt as an administrator and type -

netsh int tcp set heuristics default
netsh int tcp set global rss=default
netsh int tcp set global chimney=default
netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal
netsh int tcp set global congestionprovider=default
netsh int tcp set global ecncapability=default
netsh int tcp set global timestamps=default

So what is heuristics?  Windows Vista/7 has the ability to automatically change its own TCP Window auto-tuning behavior.

What is RSS?  The receive-side scaling setting enables parallelized processing of received packets on multiple processor.

What is Chimney?  TCP chimney offloading enables Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 to offload all TCP processing for a connection to a network adapter.

What is autotuning?  Uses a fixed value for the tcp receive window. Limits it to 64KB (limited at 65535)

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Don’t forget that tweaking your MTU settings can make a difference.

(The MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) is the size of the largest datagram that can be sent over a network. If a datagram is larger than an MTU, the datagram must be fragmented into multiple smaller datagrams.)

So what do you set your MTU to?  Normally your MTU is set to 1500.   Every connection is different.  First log into your router if you have one and set it to 1492.  Retry the sites that are timing out.  If this did not work, you may need to set the MTU on your network card (in the operating system)

How to set the MTU in Vista and Windows 7 -

netsh interface ipv4 show subinterface

(to see the name of your network Interface – it is important to write down the MTU settings and network interface name at this time)

To set the MTU value to 1492, type the following command at a a command prompt (Note: You MUST substitute the name of your network connection  -

netsh interface ipv4 set subinterface “The Name of Your Connection” mtu=1492 store=persistent

Many users have reported an increase in download and internet speeds after adjusting their MTU to 1492.

So what are some sizes for MTU?

 Ethernet                   1500
 IEEE 802.3/802.2           1492
 PPPoE (WAN Miniport)       1480

This setting  may not be the optimal setting everyone.

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Link Aggregation

There is truly an advantage to adding multiple NIC cards to a computer.   It won’t speed up a single internet connection but it can help with loss of signal, detecting access points, transferring information to and  from computers.

When adding a second NIC card to a computer, you can highlight both by holding down the CTRL key and clicking on them and then right clicking to bridge the connections so they act as one…this can allow you to bridge a wireless network to a wired network or to aggregate more than one wired card.

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Of course making sure that bitorrents, and other network bandwidth hogs are not on your network will greatly increase the speed. Another tip to remember is that a quality network card also makes a huge difference.

Disabling LLMNR (Below)

Professional or Enterprise (Gpedit.msc)

Home Edition

Create a registry key as follows -

A few more tips….(Best tip – Step 6!)

Do you have a computer that responds slow on the network or hesitates?  Follow these steps and you will see a significant difference. (Because we have not shown how to disable advanced settings in your network card, simply go to your device manager and double click on your network card – disable TCP offload and any advanced settings such as proxy and other settings that may make the card hesitate)

1. Remove any add-ins on your Browsers that you don’t need
2. Remove Toolbars
3. Adjust your MTU Settings
4. Adjust your Network Speed
5. Disable LLMNR
6. Disable all advanced settings on your card

LiveView

Live View is a Java-based graphical forensics tool that creates a VMware virtual machine out of a raw (dd-style) disk image or physical disk. This allows the forensic examiner to “boot up” the image or disk and gain an interactive, user-level perspective of the environment, all without modifying the underlying image or disk. Because all changes made to the disk are written to a separate file, the examiner can instantly revert all of his or her changes back to the original pristine state of the disk. The end result is that one need not create extra “throw away” copies of the disk or image to create the virtual machine.

Live View is capable of booting

• Full disk raw images
• Bootable partition raw images

Physical Disks (attached via a USB or Firewire bridge)

• Specialized and closed image formats (using 3rd party image mounting software)

More Information Car

Containing the following operating systems

• Windows 2008, Vista, 2003, XP, 2000, NT, Me, 98
• Linux (limited support)

~Dawn Babian, GSAE

Spycar tries to modify your computer.  By sending a series of executables against your computer, SpyCar tries to modify your startup, change your homepage along with many other malicious attempts (not truly malicious).  This website helps prepare you against a world of malware, spyware and viruses.  Your antivirus software should react if the tools are making a change…

AVG’s response if you click and allow?

~ Dawn Babian, GSAE

Reclaim Privacy (ReclaimPrivacy.org) has a tool that will scan your Facebook Account.

A little confusing to use, here’s the easy way.   Go to step two and open as a new tab.  Now drag the button from the first tab (Scan for Privacy) and touch your FaceBook tab (you have to be logged in) that is now open with the ‘Scan for Privacy’ .

Instructions from their website -