PHi-Solutions: Tech Blog

Most of us in the market for a portable computer have, at one time or another asked: "Which is the most reliable laptop?"

SquareTrade analysed as many as 30,000 new laptops based on their warranty plans and number of claims, they’ve compiled the following Laptop & Netbook reliability comparison and survey (Adobe PDF), the highlights of the study include:

• Looking at the first 3 years of ownership, 31% of laptop owners reported a failure to SquareTrade. Two-thirds of this failure (20.4%) came from hardware malfunctions, and one-third (10.6%) was reported as accidental damage.
• Netbooks are projected to have a 20% higher failure rate from hardware malfunctions than more expensive laptop computers.
• ASUS, Toshiba and SONY were the top three most reliable manufacturers, with fewer than 17% having a hardware malfunction over 3 years.

HP didn't fare too well, coming last in the survey, however it doesn’t matter the brand of the laptop; after all 90% of the laptops in the world are manufactured by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (Taiwan) - they even make your supposed superior (and expensive) Apple MacBook.

So it looks like the survey proves what we kind of already knew anyway - "you get what you pay for!"

Original article posted at: http://www.geckoandfly.com

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Microsoft will open up the data specifications for the PST file format used by its popular Microsoft Outlook email software. In a blog entry, Microsoft group manager Paul Lorimer wrote that such a move will "allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice."

For those just raring for a look at it now, the promised documentation is unfortunately still in the "early stages." However, Microsoft promised that it will eventually be released under Microsoft's Open Specification Promise. According to Microsoft, this means that "anyone" will be able to freely implement the format on any platform without having to seek permission or to even inform the company.

Original article by Paul Mah over at FierceTech CIO

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'Ugly can of worms'

Author: Dan Goodin in San Francisco

Cybercriminals have laced about 2,000 legitimate websites with a potent malware cocktail that surreptitiously attacks people who browse to them, a security researcher warned Friday.

Unlike past outbreaks of the mass web attack known as Gumblar (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/14/viral_web_infection/), this round actually plants exploit code on the website servers themselves. Curiously, the directory and file name of the malicious payload is in most cases unique and identical to a legitimate file that existed on the website.

The trick makes it extremely difficult for webmasters and anti-malware programs to detect the threats.

"This is an ugly can of worms," said Mary Landesman, the ScanSafe security researcher who warned of the mass attack. "Any time you see a new technique evolve like this the concern is we'll be seeing much more of this in the future, and certainly it complicates the remediation of the compromised website."

Previously, Gumblar planted links in thousands of compromised websites that silently redirected users to a handful of servers that hosted the exploits. That method allowed white hats to foil the attack by shutting down one or two domains. With the malware embedded directly in the compromised websites, the take-down process is significantly more time consuming.

Also making matters hard for Landesman to get the sites cleaned up: Most of the websites belong to small businesses that cater to non-English speakers. Few of them have dedicated security employees, and even when representatives can be located, the person contacting them must speak multiple languages.

While the websites are relatively small, Gumblar architects have planted links in online discussion forums across the web that often cause RSS readers to automatically send users to the booby-trapped pages. Landesman suspects black-hat search engine optimization may also be causing the infected sites to be featured prominently in results returned by Google and others.

People who are unfortunate enough to visit the sites won't see anything unusual. But behind the scenes, a PHP script checks their version of Adobe Reader and Adobe Flash, and if either is out of date, hijacks their PCs using known vulnerabilities. If both of those programs are up to date, the script tests to see if the system is vulnerable to several bugs Microsoft has patched in the last few months.

Hijacked machines will be installed with a backdoor that gives the hijackers complete control. They are also equipped with malware that manipulates search results returned by Google.

It's unclear exactly how the sites are getting compromised. Landesman suspects FTP passwords for the sites have been lifted from administrators' computers using key-logging malware. ®

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/16/gumblar_mass_web_compromise/

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One thing which can be really annoying when you launch a command prompt utility from the Windows Start > Run prompt is that the command prompt window immediately closes after the process has run.

This means you cannot see any of the output produced and this may just contain error messages. You could save the output to a file, but then you would have to go and open the releveant file and this creates unecessary extra steps.

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Article By Paul Mah at FierceCIO TechWatch 

Microsoft will be going on a mega security update spree next Tuesday, with 13 security bulletins all lined up. What is significant about this update is that a large percentage--eight of them--were rated as "critical," as well as the sheer number of bulletins.

To understand the significance here, the 13 bulletins for next week's Patch Tuesday will trump previous records achieved in February 2007, and again in October 2008. According to reports, the upcoming update is inclusive of two previously known critical Windows bulletins--including a serious flaw in Microsoft's Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. An older problem with the FTP service in Microsoft IIS will also be rectified.

A total of 34 vulnerabilities will be addressed in all, for products such as Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, and SQL Server, among others.

One point to note for security administrators and IT managers for the upcoming Patch Tuesday will be the need to perform a restart, an important fact to know where servers are concerned. In a blog entry, Jerry Bryant of the Microsoft Security Response Center team wrote, "Most of these updates require a restart so please factor that into your deployment planning."

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We found this searching the net - does this sound like the issue you called in with?

Microsoft Knowledge Base Article
This article contents is Microsoft Copyrighted material.
©2005-©2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

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Article ID: 975695 - Last Review: September 30, 2009 - Revision: 2.1

SYMPTOM:
When you try to back up a virtual machine on a Windows Server 2008-based computer that has multiple virtual hard disks attached, the backup fails, and Hyper-V Writer error "0x800423f4" is generated Additionally, the following error message may be logged in the System log:

The number of volumes reverted does not match the number of volumes in the snapshot set for virtual machine '<VM name>' (Virtual machine ID <VM GUID>).

CAUSE:
This problem occurs when one of the virtual hard disks that are attached to the virtual machine was created by using the option to copy the contents of a physical disk. In this scenario, the new virtual hard disk contains the same disk signature as the physical disk in the parent partition. During a backup process that involves Hyper-V VSS Writer, the virtual hard disks are mounted in the parent partition. This process fails for the affected virtual machines because of the disk signature collision. Therefore, you encounter the problem that is described in the "Symptoms" section.

RESOLUTION:
To resolve this problem, manually bring the virtual hard disk online before you use the disk in a virtual machine. This step gives the disk a different disk signature.

Note: The virtual machine must be turned off.

In Windows Server 2008 or in Windows Server 2008 R2, mount the virtual hard disk by using Disk Management. To do this, follow these steps:
Click Start, click Run, type diskmgmt.msc, and then click OK.
Click Action, and then click Attach VHD.
Navigate to the affected virtual hard disk, and then click OK.

Note The virtual hard disk will be marked as Offline.
Right-click the disk, and then click Online.
After the disk has been brought online, right-click the disk number, and then click Detach VHD.

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Hope this helps! As we say, we came accross this via a good old Google search - perhaps you can work with Martin to resolve this as he has a subscription to MS TechNet and his company looks after your servers. 

Have a good weekend!

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If your hard drive is filling up, you can recover quite a bit of space by compressing files that you do not use often, or by compressing all the files in selected folders or an entire hard disk. Windows XP Pro and Home Editions support file compression natively. There are a few things to consider before compressing files, however.

• You must have your drive volume (i. e., C:) formatted with the NTFS file system.

• Compression is not supported on FAT16 or FAT32 volumes.

• It will take longer for programs and data files to open and close; not much longer but the delay will be noticeable. That’s because Windows must decompress a file when you access it and recompress it when you close the file.

• You cannot encrypt a compressed file on a NTFS volume.

• You must be logged in with Administrator privileges to enable compression.

To compress an entire drive volume, follow these steps:

Click Start, then My Computer.

Right-click the volume you want to compress, and then click Properties.

On the General tab, click to select the “Compress Volume to save disk space” check box, and then click OK.

In the “Confirm Attribute Changes” which follows, click the option "Compress all folders and subfolders."

Compress volume

Compressing the entire volume will take a long time if you have a lot of data on the volume. Once a volume is compressed, all files you add to it are compressed automatically.

When compression is done, you may notice that file names are now blue, indicating they are compressed. If compressed file names are not a new color and you would like them to be, follow this procedure:

Click Start, then Control Panel, then Folder Options

Click Appearance and Themes, then click Folder Options.

On the View tab, click to select the “Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color” check box.

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To compress a folder and its contents, or a single file or selected group of files:

Select the item(s) you want to compress.

Right-click the item(s) and select Properties.

On the General tab, click Advanced.

Check the “Compress contents to save disk space” box.

Click OK

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You can use the default Windows XP tool but again, for something different, the guys over at PCMech recommend the open source tool TruCrypt.

This is a very cool tool and we are currently testing it here in the office on a few of our laptops - check it out here: http://www.truecrypt.org

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