TTC Shelbyville – Technical Blog

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

London Olympic Stadium holds 80,000 people. This blog was viewed about 270,000 times in 2011. If it were competing at London Olympic Stadium, it would take about 3 sold-out events for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Here’s a great site that guides newbies through step by step on using Ubuntu.  Ubuntu Genius guides newbies through the how-tos needed to start using this OS.  This website also offers great tips on using the popular Linux flavor.   Visit Ubuntu Genius.

An very interesting article on BoingBoing -

One of the most mind-blowing presentations at this year’s Chaos Communications Congress (28C3) was Ang Cui’s Print Me If You Dare, in which he explained how he reverse-engineered the firmware-update process for HPs hundreds of millions of printers…read more   There is also a video explanation..

~Dawn

Also see our article -
Is your printer safe? Millions of printers may be susceptible to being hacked

Also don’t forget, the forgotten piece of office equipment that may lead to data theft – your photocopier. (CBS Video)

Need to edit photos?  There are dozens of  0nline editing that don’t require registration. Always read to see if your photos are being deleted or used in marketing.
Befunky

Citrify

Fotoflexer

Lunapic

Picnik

Pixler

Pizap

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MSNBC’s Red Tape recently posted information about printers that have internet access could be remotely programmed (firmware) and information could be obtained from print jobs allowing that information to be forwarded to other computers.  Very interesting article. (November 2011)

HP has fixed firmware security for many printers (http://www.hp.com/cgi-bin/hpsupport/index.pl) Look for your printer and make sure you have the latest firmware (Normally listed below drivers).

This applies to all printers – keep the firmware up to date.  Often firmware adds more features and not just security features.

While we don’t support any malicious activity, it is very easy to find online printers by using Google.  Make sure you lock down your printer if it is a network printer.   You can set passwords on most printers’ web interface.  Many printers store documents in cache and this can be a real security problem regardless if the firmware hack existed or not.  This will lock down the updating of firmware for some printers.  Look for manufacturers to update firmware for these printers.

If you monitor your firewall or have a computer connected to your computer (you can use netstat -a at a command prompt and see IP addresses that may be connected to your computer), you can find out who owns the IP address by using IP Address Locator.

IP Address Locator is  much more.  It not only gives you information about your external IP, internal IP, ISP, country code and more but has many amazing tools to look up and validate email addresses, WhoIS, subnet mask calculator, ping, DNS, Decimal, IP ranges and more.

Excellent tool for techies.

~Dawn

Don’t worry, I didn’t know either…it is writing speed.  The higher the class the higher the speed.  Many devices will have a class rating but in general most cards are backward compatible.   So if you take a picture, the camera will write to the card at the cameras speed if the SD card matches the camera.   The speed of the transfer of data is based on the slowest device.  So if your camera writes at 2 MB/s and you have a Class 4 card, the data is saved to the card at 2 MB/s.   If you have a camera that writes at 6 MB/s and you have a Class 2 card the data will only transfer at 2 MB /s.

Class 2- 2 MB/s
Class 4- 4 MB/s
Class 6- 6 MB/s
Class 10- 10 MB/s

While there are various reasons for this to occur, some post Office 2007 Service Pack 2 updates seems to cause this error for certain configurations but it can also occur in Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2003.

Cannot open the Outlook window error | MSOutlook.info  (Shared by AddThis)

There are tons of ways to hack your router.   It doesn’t always mean upgrading your firmware (although this is the best way).

DD-WRT has so many options as a free firmware for dozens of routers that you can do so much more than the average manufacturer’s firmware. You can increase your router’s power, EoIP, VPN, VOIP, manage it as a Firewall, use as a repeater/bridge/AP, install Radius and dozens of other features.

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The Cisco E2500 along with several other Cisco routers allow you to put in a hidden webpage setting  that opens up several settings you can tweak- Here’s a post Dawn put up that describes her problem router and what she found -

I recently bought a Linksys E2500 router and wanted to tweak my network settings but was unable to find the settings for things like Beacon Interval, RTS and Fragmentation Threshold. I was a little frustrated and I’ll replace it. Well, for those interested, there is a hidden management page! Open Internet Explorer (or the browser of your choice), type the IP Address of your router into the address bar and add this to the end: /Wireless_Advanced.asp
and tweak away!

Here’s a few more that may and may not be available on your router-

/SysInfo.htm

/SysInfo1.htm

(either) /Site_Suvey.asp  or /Site_Survey.asp

/WL_ActiveTable.asp

/Cysaja.asp

(Oh, don’t tweak if you don’t have the information on HOW to tweak!!)

Screenshot for the /Wireless_Advanced.asp

Linksys/Cisco WRT  Routers – These routers are some of the most hackable routers on the market.  Dawn found an excellent site that shows comparison charts, hacks and how-to’s on these home routers.

I recently flashed my WRT54GS with DD-WRT firmware.  This firmware unlocks your router and allows you to tweak settings such as output power from 1mw to 251mw of power.  It allows for site surveys and has hundreds of hidden tweaks. One of the most impressive screens is the site survey that shows the connections and their connection strength.

Tutorial page for DD-WRT firmware

MyOpenRouter is  a one-stop resource for tools and a list of the latest firmware including dd-wrt, openwrt, tomato and others.

Emulators

D-Link

Linksys

Netgear

V22-DD-WRT interface

V23-DD-WRT interface

V24beta-DD-WRT interface

Recently Jared L. wanted to extend his wireless from his home to his shop.  He flashed his older WRT router and bridged it to his home router and now it goes over 360′ into the metal shop.   Here’s what you do to bridge it.  Thanks Jared.

Note: This 360′ mark was a test to see how the connection was after bridging… he was able to stream Youtube videos.

Open source firmware can result in a ‘bricked’ router.  You must read the instructions.  Here’s a revival guide for some linksys routers.

Ryan’s mod (DD-WRT) to keep his new E3000 cool.

Hey, on the way to work this morning i picked up a E3000 from Wal-mart. I flashed it with DD-WRT, and did some mods on it.  I put a CPU fan on it, and also put some feet under neath to give it some more clearance for the air to flow, here are some pics

Don’t forget you can manage your router with Router Commander.

WikiSky has one of the most detailed sky maps on the web.  WikiSky generates a map using an online database with positions and information on objects in space.  SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) is available on many objects and can be seen by clicking the SDSS button in the top left corner.  SDSS provides ‘real’ pictures  of objects in the sky.  Currently SDSS has mapped 25% of the objects in the sky.

~Dawn

The CompTIA Cloud Essentials exam covers:

• Configuration of networks, including archive, backup, and restoration technologies
• Business continuity and storage administration
• System integration and application workload
• Basic troubleshooting and connectivity

CompTIA Cloud Essentials.

TTC Shelbyville’s CIT Program

I have noticed a remarkable increase in website load times with Google’s Chrome by disabling three services found under the Tools – Options – Under the Hood Settings.

The three settings provide networking options that may slow your performance.  Try Chrome without each of these by unchecking them.  You may find your settings and performance to be different.

Predict network actions to improve page load performance

Use a web service to help resolve navigational errors.

Use a prediction service to help complete searches and Url’s typed in Address bar.

Want to play with fire?  Open a new tab and type chrome://flags/.   Here’s Google’s warning to you!

WARNING These experimental features may change, break, or disappear at any time. We make absolutely no guarantees about what may happen if you turn one of these experiments on, and your browser may even spontaneously combust. Jokes aside, your browser may delete all your data, or your security and privacy could be compromised in unexpected ways. Any experiments you enable will be enabled for all users of this browser. Please proceed with caution.

Google’s tutorial on flags

What flag is popular among users?  GPU compositing on all pages – What does it do? Uses GPU accelerated compositing on all pages, not just those that include GPU-accelerated layers.

As you know the Google cars, trucks and vans are busy racing around the world mapping out street views and even where wireless devices are.   A recent Google blog tells you how to keep your wireless access point from being mapped out by the internet giant.   According to Google, rename your SSID (what your wireless is named with the _nomap added to the end of the name.   So if you are a home user with “Linksys” as your SSID, you would change it to “Linksys_nomap”.

And remember to lock down your wireless network for security.  Here’s how from PCWorld - credit to Bill Mullins’ Tech Thoughts (November 14, 2011)

Rick once again has found another excellent website that allows you to launch Sysinternals from the web.   Sysinternals has several - File and Disk Utilities, Networking Utilities, Process Utilities, Security Utilities, System Information Utilities and
Miscellaneous Utilities.  Go over and check out his review.

What is Sysinternals?  ”Windows Sysinternals is a part of the Microsoft Technet web site which offers technical resources and utilities to manage, diagnose, troubleshoot and monitor a Microsoft Windows environment..” Source Wikipedia

The latest generation of desk-jockey’s admitted in a recent CISCO study that they frequently ignore and/or circumvent the information technology (IT) policies of their employers, heightening corporate risk.

The ISCO Connected World Technology Report surveyed some 2,800 college students and young professionals in 14 of the world’s fastest growing economies. The report found that two thirds of young employees worldwide admitted to breaking a number of IT policies with regularity, with many saying they didn’t believe they were doing anything wrong…Read more….Generation Y Won’t Listen To IT.

A recent forensics examination shows how much information is left behind after smartphones are tossed in the discard pile

Old Smartphones Leave Tons Of Data For Digital Dumpster Divers – Dark Reading.

A recent exploration made by a digital forensics company into a handful of phones found in the smartphone secondary market showed how easy it is to glean information from old or lost phones, even if a factory reset has been committed. 

Though the second half of the year has been comparably calmer than the first half’s excitement over database breaches at RSA, Sony, and Epsilon, the breach numbers continued to roll in — especially at healthcare organizations, which made up a disproportionate number of exposed records. Here are some of the biggest breaches that went down in the second half of the year, along with a few database security lessons learned. Five Big Database Breaches Of 2011′s Second Half – Dark Reading.

Part of our curriculum is reviewing blogs such as Bill Mullins and other popular tech blogs.    Rhett Turner a current student  mentions Bill quite often in class when Bill reviews of software are posted on his site.   A recent review of Ultra Virus Killer on Bill’s site showed how this program uses many programs to help remove malware and viruses.   The combination of many powerful malicious software removal  programs makes Ultra Virus Killer a software to add to your collection.

What should you do after you install Windows 7 SP 1 and it has ran well for about a week or so?

Open a command prompt as an administrator. (Go to search, type CMD, hold Ctrl-Shift and hit enter)

type the following -

DISM /online /cleanup-Image /spsuperseded

This will remove files needed to uninstall (backed up files) SP 1.

You can also open the disk cleanup tool and check the Service Pack Backup Files and run disk cleanup.

Here’s a view of Rhett’s (student) hard drive before and after.

Microsoft has one of the best cloud storage solutions on the web.   Skydrive which is free allows for over 25gb of file storage.   Skydrive also has the ability to create Microsoft documents such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote on the fly.

If you want an easy way to navigate your Skydive using Windows Explorer, then SDExplorer is an excellent option.  SDExplorer has an Advanced Edition as well as a free Edition.   SDExplorer requires you to login using your Skydrive credentials and maps to your drive in the cloud.    See a list of the Free vs. Advanced Editions here.