Handler Shift on Wednesday

Looks like I am the Handler for the Internet Storm Center on Wednesday.  The day after 12 patches hit the intarwebz from (MSFT).   I don't do alot of postings (read: usually any) during the day when I am on shift, (because I am working!) and on Wednesdays there is usually so much email we have a hard time keeping up.  

Everyone writing in asking why the ISC rated something Critical, when it's not.  (BTW -- it takes alot for us to make a determination between Client and Server).  If you don't know what I am talking about, tune in tomorrow around noon EST.  You'll see.

 Subscribe in a reader

YHOO says No to MSFT

Nothing to see here.  (YHOO) says "Nope" to (MSFT).  

Now, (MSFT) has a couple options here.  It can say "Hey, wait, how about some more money?"  Which they possibly could do, but they already borrowing money to buy (YHOO) at their present offered price. 

Or they could offer the proposal to (YHOO)'s stockholders and go that way, but then you'd have to oust the board at (YHOO).  The same board that just rejected the deal.  Good luck.

 Subscribe in a reader

MSFT posts 3 part series on ActiveX killbits

Recently a few ActiveX exploits came out (and lots in the past) where the exploit could be mitigated by setting the "killbit" in your registry in Windows.   We've talked about it alot at the Internet Storm Center, the ability to possibly mitigate potential client side exploits by not allowed IE to process ActiveX controls.

There is alot of confusion about what this means on behalf of the user.  Well the (MSFT) Technet bloggers have put out a 3 part series about what this means.  It's worth a read.  Take a look here.

Or, don't use IE.  Probably safer that way.  I have an operating system I can suggest you switch to!

;)

 Subscribe in a reader

12 MSFT Bulletins next week

In what promises to be a long night for security researchers, next Tuesday, MSFT Tuesday (Black Tuesday -- the day before Reboot Wednesday), MSFT promises to have 12 (count em) security bulletins to put out.  7 of which are critical.  Looks 5 of the total 12 are for Office.  1 for Internet Explorer, and 2 for IIS.  (The IIS ones should be interesting).

I can't fault you (MSFT) guys though.  I've had 4 or 5 patches to install this week on my Mac machines (only 1 of which was a security update).

 Subscribe in a reader

Hot on the heels

On the heels of my discussion about why OS X and Linux are inherently more secure than Windows.   These guys over at Risesecurity.org have to go and root a Asus EEEPC.  Damn them.    

Running a vulnerable version of Samba.  Of course, it's easy to slam Asus and say "you should be patching your systems before you ship them".  Right?  Uh, right!  So wtf!?

 Subscribe in a reader

What are your distractions?

Part 3 of 3 of my self question series.  What are your distractions?

What makes your job harder?  Are you pressured to answer your Email as soon as you get it?  Are you pressured to complete a project given no milestones or end goal?  How many projects are you working on?  GTD says the most projects you can track in your head at a time is 7.  Do you have more than that?   Can you work on multiple projects at a time?  

Can you cut back anywhere?  Can you delegate any of your projects to other people?  Is it possible for you to get help on your projects from other people?  Why are you doing the project?  Because everyone else is incompetent?  Because it's your job?  Because you are being relied on more heavily then the other people in your department?

Can you focus on one thing at a time?  Is your mind Multithreaded or Single Threaded?

 Subscribe in a reader

12 MSFT Bulletins next week

In what promises to be a long night for security researchers, next Tuesday, MSFT Tuesday (Black Tuesday -- the day before Reboot Wednesday), MSFT promises to have 12 (count em) security bulletins to put out.  7 of which are critical.  Looks 5 of the total 12 are for Office.  1 for Internet Explorer, and 2 for IIS.  (The IIS ones should be interesting).

I can't fault you (MSFT) guys though.  I've had 4 or 5 patches to install this week on my Mac machines (only 1 of which was a security update).

 Subscribe in a reader

Hot on the heels

On the heels of my discussion about why OS X and Linux are inherently more secure than Windows.   These guys over at Risesecurity.org have to go and root a Asus EEEPC.  Damn them.    

Running a vulnerable version of Samba.  Of course, it's easy to slam Asus and say "you should be patching your systems before you ship them".  Right?  Uh, right!  So wtf!?

 Subscribe in a reader

Microsoft is Stupid, Apple is Not (I didn't make the title up)

Recently I read a story about how Mac users are stupid and that eventually viruses will kill us all and pillage our warez on the OS X platform.  

While there has been an increase of attacks on the mac platform, most still, are client side.  Attacks against Quicktime, attacks against Safari, Safari on the iPhone, etc..  But they are still client side.  Do I think this is any less of a threat?  No, because you will, no matter what, have dumb users that refuse to patch their machines, not-heed "workarounds" (like turning off rtsp for example), and what not. 

I read this article today entitled "Microsoft is Stupid, Apple is Not" about how Apple conscientiously made the decision awhile back to get rid of the Mac OS and switch to the Unix based (freebsd based for you purists, with a Mach kernel) OS X (or 10 if you like that) that we have now.  While in the meantime Windows has had to deal with legacy software and compatibility with old stuff.  I think it was a great decision, and that's what made me come back to the Mac platform (I used it when I was in high school, OS 7-8 timeframe.  My school was very Mac centric, except for Keyboarding class, and we all know, if you've read my blog for awhile, how keyboarding class turned out.)  I think both articles are worth a read.   I also think that Linux is in the same boat as OS X is in this case.  Security through obscurity?  Maybe.  But I tend to think that the OS itself is more secure.

What do I think?  I think eventually there will be a bigger threat against the Mac Platform, I think it will continue to be mostly client side, I think that occasionally there will be "remote server side" attacks (such as the mDNSResponder exploit against Bonjour), I don't think we'll ever have the big "worm" problems that Windows has been plagued with in the past with Blaster and Code Red and such.  I think Trojans will play a role.  I think Malware and Spyware MIGHT play a roll, but I doubt it.  

I think OS X is inherently "out of the box" more secure than Windows.  (What open ports are on OSX by default?  5353?)  I think OS X's bsd underpinnings will help keep the stack and the permissions of separate users, and the privilege separation that you must have in order to install or modify any "system" settings will keep alot of stuff at bay.  However, you must take into account the "stupid user" factor.  And unfortunately..  that can be high.

 Subscribe in a reader

QuickTime 7.4.1

From Apple's website:

"A heap buffer overflow exists in QuickTime's handling of HTTP responses when RTSP tunneling is enabled. By enticing a user to visit a maliciously crafted webpage, an attacker may cause an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue through improved bounds checking."

It's about ~50 Mb.  I suggest you go ahead and update.  (This is in addition to the iLife and iWeb updates from this week.  Go ahead Apple, update away)

 Subscribe in a reader

QuickTime 7.4.1

From Apple's website:

"A heap buffer overflow exists in QuickTime's handling of HTTP responses when RTSP tunneling is enabled. By enticing a user to visit a maliciously crafted webpage, an attacker may cause an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue through improved bounds checking."

It's about ~50 Mb.  I suggest you go ahead and update.  (This is in addition to the iLife and iWeb updates from this week.  Go ahead Apple, update away)

 Subscribe in a reader

Why were you hired?

In my recent quest to make all things more efficient, I ask the question in the topic.  Why were you hired?  Seriously, sit down, look at your job, look at your job description.  What are you supposed to be doing, now, take that, and compare it with what you are actually spending your time doing these days.

You were hired for a reason, let's remember what that reason was and focus on it.   Were you hired to sit on conference calls?  Were you hired to check your email every five minutes?  Can you get away with checking your email every 15 minutes?  How about 30.  How about twice a day?

How can you get further in your job?  What can you study that will make you better at it?  If you are an IDS analyst, have you studied perl?  TCP/IP?  Snort?  Intrusion theory, pen testing, exploits, reverse shells, shellcode, malware?  Think about these things.  What can you do as part of your daily job to make your job better and be better at it.  Are you inundated with stupid projects?

I just post this in hopes that you'll do a self reflection.  Everyone needs to do this every once in awhile.  Stop, and think about if you are still on task.

 Subscribe in a reader

Using your tools to focus

Recently I've put up a couple posts talking about refocusing on Getting things Done and making sure you are working as efficiently as you can in life.  I've focused on vim, mutt, and Mail.app.  

But what about the other apps?  Outlook being the primary one?  Basically my point in the posts was to get you thinking about what tools you use and what tools can make you more efficient in your life.  Are you using those tools to their fullest potential?  Are you using your to-do system in Outlook?  With yourself?  Are you using it with other people?  How about the calendar?  The Journal feature?  The Note system?  Are you using those?

How do you use your tools.  Can you use them better.  That's what I want to inspire you to think about.  Now, some of you will go, and you will say "hey, Joel has a thought here, let me try and use the to-do's"  But how many of you will reform the way you work around it?  

I challenge you to do so.

The other part of this post is a question for my readers.  Thunderbird.  By show of hands, how many of you use Thunderbird?  Probably alot of you judging by the statistics on my web page hits. (mostly firefox.)  Now, out of those people, how many of you use any GTD plugins for Thunderbird?  Care to share what they are?

 Subscribe in a reader

Apple to buy Yahoo?

According to this article, which, of course cites no sources..  states that Yahoo is comparing a few different offers.  Even admiring one from (aapl).

Money Quote:

"It is believed he would be particularly open to a rescue bid from Steve Jobs' Apple Corp, having openly expressed his admiration for the firm in the past. "

 Subscribe in a reader

Apple to buy Yahoo?

According to this article, which, of course cites no sources..  states that Yahoo is comparing a few different offers.  Even admiring one from (aapl).

Money Quote:

"It is believed he would be particularly open to a rescue bid from Steve Jobs' Apple Corp, having openly expressed his admiration for the firm in the past. "

 Subscribe in a reader

Mail.app in Leopard, GTD, and how I made things a bit more efficient.

I was using (and still do) use Mutt to read my email when I am remote and don't have access to a descent connection.  (Which seems to happen alot to me lately for some reason).  So what I do is ssh back home and run mutt in screen.  Great.  Works fine.  You also may remember from a previous post about how I keep my Next Actions list in Vim on a separate screen.

Welp, I found out two things:

1)  Mutt doesn't render images well, (read: at all) and it's a bit difficult to automate the opening of things via mailcap if you are remote.  Therefore, what good does it do me?  Well the advantage of mutt was the ability to use macros to automatically file things at a push of a button.  Mail.app doesn't have this functionality by default.  Then I watched Merlin Mann's presentation that I have posted on the blog as well, and he turned me onto a program called "Mail Act-On", a free plugin for Mail.app.

Essentially this program allows you to create "macros" for filing your email (or for doing ANYTHING to it, coloring it red, filing it in a folder, flagging it, whatever).  So, I said "hey, let's take a look at how we are doing things here".  Can we make this even more efficient, and better looking.  

I have been using Mail.app since I first started using a Mac and I love it.  It's a simple easy to use Mail client that did what I wanted it to do.  Just in Leopard, it got alot better.  The ability to have Notes and To-Do's, with the ability for To-Do's to sync with iCal was it for me.

So, I got rid of both Mutt (i'll still use it for the above purposes, like I said, but for everyday use, I am going to Mail.app) and my vim outliner next-action items list.

So what did I do?  Well, I created a Note in Notes for every context I have "@home", "@work", "@waiting", "@someday" you get the picture.  In each of these Notes in their appropriate context's I put my Projects.   But this time instead of indenting and using my "--", "?-" system, I just type what I need to do, highlight it, and click on "To-Do".  It makes a nice To-Do and I can set priorities, due dates, even drag these ToDo's into iCal for a specific date and time.

Seemless, much easier and less to maintain.  That's what it should be about.  Don't let your GTD solution run you, you need to be running it.

Bonus feature?  If an email comes in that needs a Todo created out of it, I highlight the text, click To-do, and it's in my system for tracking.  Very nice.

I did ask Apple for two things though their bug system tho.  The ability to Nest To-Do's, and the ability to sync Notes and To-Do's with my iPhone.

Now, alot of people ask me (I get alot of emails about my posts, I think people are afraid of using the comment system.  Which is fine, either way you want to do it, of course I encourage you to use the comment system so that everyone may benefit from your thoughts as well.  Plus it's a great place to put the URL of your blog) how I take my To-Do's with me.  Well, if I am going to the store, and I want the shopping list to go with me, I'll send an email to myself and let it sit in the inbox.  That way I just check my email on my iPhone and there's my list.  

This will all be fixed when Apple implements all the feature requests I have asked for. 

1. To-Do Syncing with Leopard and the iPhone 

2. Notes syncing with Leopard and the iPhone

3. To-Do, Contacts, and Calendar syncing with .Mac

4. Notes Syncing with Stickies (the other notes app in OSX)

5.  The ability to nest to-do's.  (arrange To-Do's by a project)

Hopefully Apple takes some ideas to heart and implements them.  However it won't be good until you can sync all that stuff OTA.  Wirelessly.  Even via Bluetooth would be awesome.  That way I don't have to find a cable, plug it in, yuck.  

I don't want to sync my songs that way, just my contacts, calendars, notes, and todo's!  It would take forever to sync songs and videos.  I don't care.  I just want the ability to be in my office (and my iPhone, which sits in the kitchen), and my wife and I are getting ready to walk out the door, and I can fire up iSync, click Sync, my iPhone syncs with my laptop, and I grab the thing and walk out the door.

 Subscribe in a reader

Getting Things Done (GTD), with David Allen himself.

In addition to my 43folders "Inbox Zero" post from earlier, I am going to post this video as well.  This is David Allen, the creator of GTD (Getting Things Done) of which Merlin Mann (43folders) based his work off of.  If you are interested in either, I suggest a look.

 Subscribe in a reader

Microsoft to buy Yahoo?

Apparently this morning all the news has been about (MSFT) proposing to buy (YHOO).  Seriously.  For 31 dollars a share.  Equally about 44 Billion.

What does this mean for (MSFT)?  Well the company will continue to get bigger and dominate the world.  What does it mean for the flailing (YHOO)?  Well, it means that the competition against (GOOG) just got stronger.  If you had to pick the biggest three search engines, it would be those three companies.  

Still no word on how (GOOG) is reacting to the news, that will be interesting if the deal even pans out.  Right now it's still a proposal.

 Subscribe in a reader

Microsoft to buy Yahoo?

Apparently this morning all the news has been about (MSFT) proposing to buy (YHOO).  Seriously.  For 31 dollars a share.  Equally about 44 Billion.

What does this mean for (MSFT)?  Well the company will continue to get bigger and dominate the world.  What does it mean for the flailing (YHOO)?  Well, it means that the competition against (GOOG) just got stronger.  If you had to pick the biggest three search engines, it would be those three companies.  

Still no word on how (GOOG) is reacting to the news, that will be interesting if the deal even pans out.  Right now it's still a proposal.

 Subscribe in a reader

Inbox Zero

Merlin Mann, who is the author of 43folders.com, presented this talk at Google about Inbox Zero.  Or processing your email.  I suggest a check out.

 Subscribe in a reader