This all depends on if they get the patchwaork dns server order extended. If they do then your infected pc will work fine. I hope they do not then these mahcines will cease to work and the infection will become obvious.
If your PC starts acting weird or totally goes offline on or after March 8th(for folks who keep their computers off) Please contact ECC for assistance.
Half of Fortune 500s, US Govt. Still Infected with DNSChanger Trojan — Krebs on Security.
Once again Microsoft engages in anti-competitive and blatantly monopolistic behavior. Note this happens right after they are freed of the DOJ anti-trust oversight. If you are going to buy any kind of mobile device make sure it does NOT run windows or you won’t every be able to run anything but windows in it.
With Windows 8 coming out later this year, there has already been controversy about whether computers that ship with Windows 8 will have the ability to run Linux, either as a replacement for Windows or in a dual-boot setup. As weve reported, a process called UEFI secure booting prevents the booting of operating systems not signed by a trusted Certificate Authority—and hardware makers must enable the secure boot technology to qualify for a Designed for Windows 8 logo.This would make it difficult, but not impossible, for Linux operating systems to be installed on Windows 8 computers. Hardware manufacturers can still give users the option of disabling secure boot and running any operating system they wish. However, it now appears that flexibility will only be available to Windows 8 systems running on Intel chips, and not ARM ones.A Computerworld blog post points to a recent Microsoft document laying out the Windows 8 hardware certification requirements for client and server systems. This document mandates flexibility on Intel systems: “On non-ARM systems, it is required to implement the ability to disable Secure Boot via firmware setup,” Microsoft writes on page 116 of the document. But the opposite is true for ARM systems running Windows 8. “On an ARM system, it is forbidden to enable Custom Mode. … Disabling Secure MUST NOT be possible on ARM systems,” Microsoft states.This may still leave open the possibility that makers of Linux distributions can provide a signed version of the operating system, so that it can be installed alongside Windows 8 on ARM systems. But the prohibition on disabling secure boot does place another obstacle in the way. Weve reached out to Microsoft to see if the company has any further comment.
via Microsoft mandating Secure Boot on ARM, making Linux installs difficult.
Subway itself wasn’t nailed but it franchisees were. Most franchise holders are SMB’s and many of them don’t think they are vulnerable due to their size. However criminals are banking on that thinking now to hijack everything from computers to POS systems(many of which are simply windows computers with POS overlays running on them). this means proper security for all of these systems are important. If you are a small business please contact ECC for a security audit if you have never had one done.
For thousands of customers of Subway restaurants around the US over the past few years, paying for their $5 footlong sub was a ticket to having their credit card data stolen. In a scheme dating back at least to 2008, a band of Romanian hackers is alleged to have stolen payment card data from the point-of-sale (POS) systems of hundreds of small businesses, including more than 150 Subway restaurant franchises and at least 50 other small retailers. And those retailers made it possible by practically leaving their cash drawers open to the Internet, letting the hackers ring up over $3 million in fraudulent charges.
In an indictment unsealed in the US District Court of New Hampshire on December 8, the hackers are alleged to have gathered the credit and debit card data from over 80,000 victims.
“This is the crime of the future,” said Dave Marcus, director of security research and communications at McAfee Labs in an interview with Ars. Instead of coming in with guns and robbing the till, he said, criminals can target small businesses, “root them from across the planet, and steal digitally.”
The tools used in the crime are widely available on the Internet for anyone willing to take the risks, and small businesses’ generally poor security practices and reliance on common, inexpensive software packages to run their operations makes them easy pickings for large-scale scams like this one, Marcus said.
While the scale of this particular ring may be significant, the methods used by the attackers were hardly sophisticated. According to the indictment, the systems attacked were discovered through a targeted port scan of blocks of IP addresses to detect systems with a specific type of remote desktop access software running on them. The software provided a ready-made back door for the hackers to gain entry to the POS systems—which is why remote access software is banned from systems that handle payment cards by the PCI Security Standards Council, which governs credit card and debit card payment systems security.
“With PCI compliance, those apps shouldn’t be on those systems,” said Konrad Fellmann, audit and compliance manager for SecureState, an IT security firm with a practice in retail security auditing, in an interview with Ars. But because small retailers who don’t store credit card data, they’re not required to have the same level of auditing as larger companies, Fellmann said.
via How hackers gave Subway a $30 million lesson in point-of-sale security.
Watch this folks. I talk about this over and over. a/v isn’t enough..it is only a start. Please start with these basics. Please contact ECC on how to minimize your exposure.
I got Hyper-v working finally here at my office. I now have one box hosting 3 virtual mahcines. VM 1 is my Astaro firewall. VM 2 is my main AD file/print/authentication server. VM 3 is my Astaro Command Center which aggregates status and updates from my astaro and my other client installs to me. This allows me to monitor all of my Astaro easily in one spot without having to constantly individually touch each machine. My power usage used to idle at nearly 130 watts. My idle power now hovers around 60 watts. I now average less than 90 watts which means nearly half of my power budget is now gone. The host machine is running server 2008 R2 enterprise with Hyper-v. It has three physical nics. It also mirrors all functions of the main server except for file serving.
As for resource allocation here is the breakdown:
VM1: 4 vcpus, 2 gigs of ram(static), 3 virtual nics, 80 gigs of dynamic storage on RAID 1, 25% total system cpu ghz reserved with the ability to burst to 50% usage with medium priority.
VM2: 2 vcpus, 2 gigs ram(static), 1 virtual nic, 500 gigs of dynamic storage assigned on it’s own raid 1 array, 0% cpu reservation with burst to 25% cpu with medium priority.
VM3: 4 vcpus, 1 gig ram(static), 1 virtual nic, 120 gigs of dynamic RAID 1 storage, 0% cpu reservation with burst to 25%.
Right now the host machine spends most of it’s time at idle. Considering how little power this draws it will pay for itself in under 1 year.
I currently have two virtualization projects going. One is to convert 3 physical server to hyper-v and one is to convert 3 physical servers to KVM. Unfortunately p2v on a domain controller is not only not recommended, it doesn’t work well. Also there is no supported upgrade path from server foundation to anything but standard. I have foundation and enterprise. So I am firing up a new enterprise vm and then will manually mount the vhd from foundation backup to grab the files. It’ll be a permissions nightmare for a bit but i’m used to that..:) Once i get my AD domain migrated then it is time for Astaro. Then i decom two boxes saving myself 200 watts of continuous draw. The draw goes down to about 60 watts. Keep watching for the KVM conversion. That one is going to be easier.
Microsoft is pushing Windows 8 and the new Metro UI extremely hard. If you want to see Metro look at a Windows phone 7 equipped phone. Anybody developing for Windows xp-Win7 you best take Microsoft serious…MS wants Metro to be the new standard and they aren’t afraid to shove Win7 and below quickly into the garbage heap.
In a move that took many by surprise, Microsoft dropped support for new Windows Desktop Gadgets.
Once hailed (or at least marketed) as a key new feature in Windows Vista, Desktop Gadgets are going the way of the dodo. In their stead? Windows 8 Metro, of course.
Microsoft’s official death certificate for Windows Gadgets hawks, “With Windows Developer Preview, developers can create rich app experiences where customers focus on their important tasks. Apps are at the center of the Windows Developer Preview experience and are alive with activity and vibrant content. Users immerse themselves in your full-screen app while Windows gracefully gets out of the way.”
Well, yes, that’s certainly the case if you’re talking about the Metro tiled “Mr. Hyde” interface in Windows 8 Developer Preview. The old-fashioned “Dr. Jekyll” desktop view still supports Gadgets, at least in the current incarnation of Windows 8. To see for yourself, if you have a copy of the Developer Preview handy, right-click on an empty spot on the Windows 8 dekstop and choose Gadgets, then Get More Gadgets Online — precisely the same way one would get Gadgets in Windows 7. Except now you can’t submit more Gadgets for inclusion in the Microsoft-managed collection.
via The rise and fall of the Windows Desktop Gadget | Microsoft windows – InfoWorld.
This isn’t even a beta so if it breaks..burps..acts up..etc etc this is not the completed product. The core is basically done which is why developers are getting this. ECC’s testing of this begins immediately after I finish downloading the file. Watch this space for ongoing updates. I am going to install this on my core solo 1.6 ghz 2 gig ram laptop. If it runs ok on that it’ll run on anything that currently can run Vista.
While “clouds” on the internet are a terrible idea they do have their place INSIDE the building. I am currently building and researching exactly this type of internal cloud. In my shop I have two servers. At idle(which is where most of them spend their time) they draw nearly 135 watts from my electrical system. That’s nuts. I have ordered a new server that i am going to put both of my servers onto as virtualized machines. My idle power shold be cut at least in half. Here are the specs of the baseline host I am going to be building from:
Dell Poweredge T110
Ram: Upgraded to 8 gigabytes
Network: at least two network interfaces
Hard disk: 2 x 2 Tterabyte SATA drives
RAID: Linux softwar RAID 1 or H200 hardware raid card depending on client needs(i am going to use Linux software raid)
processor: Intel XEON x3430
Applications:
Windows server standard
Zimbra
Astaro
Untangle
others as determined by client needs.
Hypervisors Undergoing Evaluation:
1. Microsoft Hyper-V
2. KVM
3. Citrix XEN
Cost of hypervisor software: Zero
This is just the bare minimum that ECC will specify for business clients going forward. ECC is currently building the baseline for operational testing in house. Once testing is completed an announcement of release will follow. ECC will be migration all clients to this internal baseline cloud over time.
