TechnowledgeBase

Some wordpress themes downloaded from a popular site have been infected with adware/malware.

1. Click the link.
2. Read the page.
3. Check your themes.
4. Go back to sleep.

More details later.

Popularity: 20% [?]

A fellow helpful blogger over at Contents Magic has an excellent tip: Make a copy of your existing blog in a test system. Save yourself the heartache of breaking your blog with a single well-meaning tweak. TEST those tweaks in a separate system first. Otherwise, you might end up here at Technowledgebase, searching for answers on how to fix it!

Popularity: 17% [?]

Hot on the heels of the Are you a security wizard quiz, here’s yet another way to test your level of paranoia security awareness. This time, the area of awareness being tested is email phishing scams, and the tester is McAfee.

Check out the McAfee SiteAdvisor Phishing Quiz to see how good you are at spotting fake websites that can will steal your information and cause you a whole world of hurt if you’re not careful. There are also a couple of questions about email scams thrown in for good measure.

The real value of the quiz comes at the end, where you are given the correct answers with details on how you could have spotted the fakes. Study those details.

My opinion of the quiz?
…pretty tough, actually. The first thing I check when I’m inspecting a suspicious site is the URL address, and I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting trouble just based on that alone. But some of the questions didn’t have the URL visible, so you had to actually READ the page’s content to figure out if it was real or fake. Out of those must-read questions, most were easy to spot if you knew what to look for, but one or two were actually pretty convincing fakes. A couple of email questions will probably throw you if you don’t have a decent grasp of net-geekery, paranoia, or both. I don’t know what McAfee would consider a “passing” score, but with question difficulties that range from “too easy” to “OMG, they got me!”, I’d say that an average score would be around 6. But remember, all it takes is ONE fake site to get past your paranoia-filter, and your identity is hosed. So nothing short of a perfect 10 out of 10 questions correct is really “passing”.

Oh… my score? 9/10 scams spotted.

I failed.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Some ISP’s have taken to altering web pages in transit… this means that what you see in your browser may NOT be what was actually sent from the server.

In other words, you are seeing what your ISP WANTS you to see rather than what the creator of the web page you’re viewing wants you to see. Right now, this foolishness is limited to inserting ads, but who knows where this slippery slope might lead. That’s not censorship, but it is some serious BS.

Don’t get me wrong… I don’t have a problem with advertising. But I DO have a problem with what essentially is a man in the middle attack perpetrated by ISPs.

So how can you tell if YOUR should be in the market for a new ISP?

Easy. The University of Washington is doing some research into the matter, and they have a tool that will test your ISP’s level of asshattery. Just visit the page and look at the results.

Popularity: 16% [?]

You have a named instance of SQL2005 and need to find its port number. Maybe you’re trying to connect to it with Java and JTDS or maybe you’ve got something else going on. Whatever the reason, you need that number. Here’s how to get it.
Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 30% [?]

You already know how to run SQL queries on a database using ADO and VbScript, but what about stored procedures? The reasons why you might want to use a stored procedure vs. a SQL query is beyond the scope of this article. The decision has been made, and now you just have to make it work. Let’s get started:

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 32% [?]

I’m not going to go into what a java archive (JAR) file is. You already know what it is and why you’d want to make one, or else you would never have found your way to this page. You just want to know how to make one executable, so that when people double-click on it, it executes just like a regular non-Java program. Okay: Here’s how:
Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 19% [?]

My FTP client of choice these days is a nicely-featured freebie named Filezilla. I’ve used it for a year with no problems.

But suddenly my anti-virus software (Norton) started alerting me that it has found adware on my computer. First it found Adware.Cpush in the Filezilla uninstaller. It analyzed the program and subsequently quarantined it… then a day later it did the same for some other Filezilla component. Then another. Then it told me that one of the Filezilla-related entries in my registry was infected with Adware.Cpush. And then another one.

If this keeps up, Norton will eventually quarantine one of the files that Filezilla needs in order to function. At that point, I will need to remove either Norton or Filezilla, and since this is a work computer, I don’t think the boss will take too kindly to me uninstalling the antivirus software so that I can upload files with an open source FTP client. Fortunately I have other computers I can use that don’t have the Norton “problem” so it’s not a big deal. For me.

For those who’re getting the “Adware.Cpush” message from Norton and came here wondering WTF, rest assured that Filezilla is NOT adware. You are witnessing what is called a False Positive. Perhaps updating your virus definitions will solve the problem. Perhaps not. But realize that updating your virus definitions is what CAUSED the problem in the first damn place. I can’t even try because I’m traveling at the moment, but trust me, your problem is Norton, not Filezilla. Remember that when it comes time to make a choice on which application to keep.

Popularity: 17% [?]

The Problem:
At my day job, we use Microsoft Visio 2002 for… whatever the hell people use Visio for. A client emails a Visio file to me, but when I try to open it, instead of a nice pretty diagram, I get this:

Upgrade information? No thanks. I don’t want to upgrade, I want to view the friggin document! My next logical step is to go to Microsoft.com and download the latest Visio viewer. That happens to be the Visio 2007 viewer. I install it, but I am STILL presented with error/upgrade bullsh-t messages when I try to view my document. When I try to open the file with my web browser (more on that at the bottom of the post), I get “Page Cannot Be Displayed”

WTF?

The Cause:
Microsoft. Nuff said.

Oh, you want more? Okay: If you have Visio 2002 installed, then the Visio 2007 Viewer just doesn’t f’ing work. How ‘bout that?

The Solution:
UNINSTALL the Visio 2007 viewer. (I would suggest uninstalling ALL your Microsoft apps, but somebody might get mad at me. Even though it would save you headaches in the long run). Okay, now that the 2007 viewer is out of there… install the Visio 2003 viewer. Huh?

You mean, you have to install the Visio 2003 Viewer so you can view a Visio 2007 file on a computer with Visio 2002?

That… Does Not… Make… Sense…

This is Microsoft; It’s not supposed to make sense. Just do it.

NOW you can view your document.

I should point out that the Visio viewer is implemented as an ActiveX component, which means it uses Internet Explorer to display the content. In my case, I had to drag my visio file onto an IE window to get it to work. Double-clicking on the file in Outlook still tries to open the file in Visio 2002, which produces the upgrade message. So now you have to open your Visio 2007 files with IE… with the Visio 2003 viewer installed.

There IS no logic left in the world, because this crap has just neutralized all of it. As long as Microsoft is in business, I will never run out of content for this site.

Popularity: 23% [?]