Recent Posts

301

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« Last post by Stoic Joker on July 14, 2017, 11:16 AM »

Researcher Claims Samsung's Tizen OS is Poorly Programmed; Contains 27,000 Bugs!

302

Living Room / Re: GoDaddy Blocking Access to Website

« Last post by Stoic Joker on June 28, 2017, 02:15 PM »

Update: Spoke to an incredibly nice young lady for about an hour that unfortunately didn't have a clue what the problem was, but was quite enthusiastic about setting about finding an answer. <- and I do mean that sincerely - She never touched "the flow chart" once!)

She went back and forth several times with their other internal staff who insisted that it wasn't possible ... But they did try finding "things to check" ... and finally "Assured" us that our companies IP Address was not being blocked by anything on their end ... Which is bullshit.

As a final proof of concept demonstration I added a rule in our edge router that forced all of the outbound web request traffic coming from my internal workstation only to one of our other public IP addresses (we have 16 total).

And surprise surprise the site loads just fine ... For. Me. Only... Everything else in the building still behind the old IP address is unable to access the site ... Because it has been -(bloody obviously)- blacklisted by something somewhere on their end.

Unfortunately by this point I was already off the phone - and so am back to being sunk - unless I get a callback from them after Emailing her the results of the aforementioned test.

*Sigh*

303

Living Room / Re: GoDaddy Blocking Access to Website

« Last post by Stoic Joker on June 28, 2017, 06:27 AM »

Sometimes the blacklisting tools are just there to temporarily block an ip for a few minutes -- you might just want to check it again in a bit.

-mouser (June 27, 2017, 07:00 PM)

That was my initial hope as well, but... This went down late Monday morning, and it still blocking us.

This is why I keep telling people I suck at optimism..

I'd say quit trying to figure it out, and contact them.

-wraith808 (June 27, 2017, 05:04 PM)

That's on tomorrow's to-do list. But it's compounded by the fact I'll be calling on behalf of the client, and will possible need to engineer my way past GD support identity verification ... Assuming they have any.

So I was hoping there was an alternate (configuration based) option that I could get at more easily ... Since I have CP access to the account.

Normally I'm quite good at the SE type stuff, but lately the office environment has turned into a constantly toxic epic shit-storm. So I - like most of the staff - spend most of my days stressed to the max because the owner has turned into the vitriolic red queen from Alice in Wonderland prowling the office looking for something/anything to scream at or about. *Shrug* It's really just too fucking hard to think straight in that type of atmosphere. But I'd like to get this client's project done before I completely shutdown and start focusing on looking for another job.

(Assuming you've seen the commercial) PW: Ihatemyjob1 

-Stoic Joker (June 27, 2017, 05:48 PM)

Sounds pretty bad.  Sorry I couldn't be more help; when I had a similar problem, one time it was the firewall on the server, so they had to correct it, and the other time it was the firewall in the company.  Have you checked that?

-wraith808 (June 27, 2017, 07:12 PM)

That pretty much was my Tuesday - vetting all our internal systems to ensure we weren't our own problem ... And we ain't.

*Shrug*  Fuck.

304

Living Room / Re: GoDaddy Blocking Access to Website

« Last post by Stoic Joker on June 27, 2017, 05:48 PM »

I'd say quit trying to figure it out, and contact them.

-wraith808 (June 27, 2017, 05:04 PM)

That's on tomorrow's to-do list. But it's compounded by the fact I'll be calling on behalf of the client, and will possible need to engineer my way past GD support identity verification ... Assuming they have any.

So I was hoping there was an alternate (configuration based) option that I could get at more easily ... Since I have CP access to the account.

Normally I'm quite good at the SE type stuff, but lately the office environment has turned into a constantly toxic epic shit-storm. So I - like most of the staff - spend most of my days stressed to the max because the owner has turned into the vitriolic red queen from Alice in Wonderland prowling the office looking for something/anything to scream at or about. *Shrug* It's really just too fucking hard to think straight in that type of atmosphere. But I'd like to get this client's project done before I completely shutdown and start focusing on looking for another job.

(Assuming you've seen the commercial) PW: Ihatemyjob1 

305

Living Room / GoDaddy Blocking Access to Website

« Last post by Stoic Joker on June 27, 2017, 03:42 PM »

Okay got a bit of a weird one here. We have a client that wanted some coding done to their website that is hosted on GoDaddy. I loaded the site in several browsers (IE/Edge/FF) to check its behavior ... And it loaded fine. Then I connected to the CP to get the FTP access information, connected via FTP, and downloaded the site (~160MB) to work on locally. After which the site will no longer load in a browser from within the building.

Now I say "From within the building" for a reason. None of the computers behind our companies IP address can access the client's website any longer...at all. I can get to the CP.. I can get to the FTP.. I can ping the domain name and get a response from the sites correct IP address... But it won't load in any web browser, on any machine, running any OS, from anywhere in the building ... However it will load just fine on my phone...if I get off of the companies wireless network.

So... WTF did I pissoff on GoDaddy's hosting system that caused it to (apparently...) blacklist the companies IP address??? There is an IP Blocklist option in the PC...but it doesn't list - us as blocked - anything useful.

So has anyone ever heard of or seen this kind of crazy assed shenanigans from a web host before?? I've got a gun-to-my-head deadline and really need to get past this..

Thanks in Advance,

Stoic Joker

306

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on June 16, 2017, 02:12 PM »

This might be useful: Print Management/Auditing software was the cause of the missing text issue.

After Ath's confirmation of my suspicions I did a bit more searching and found this discussion on the SpiceWorks forum talking about Printer management/auditing software being the cause of the missing text ... And indeed it was for us also. Specifically HP's JetAdvantage Print Scout service.

Now how many other of this type of software is/will/can cause problems I don't know ... But it's definitely something to look into.

307

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on June 16, 2017, 10:43 AM »

Did the Creators Update on one of the machines here, and now all of the Explorer shell text is missing. Desktop icons, menus, dialogs, all text is gone ... Other than that the machine appears to run fine. FireFox worked fine and had text.

SFC = no effect, DISM = no effect, and I tried clearing the font cache to no avail ... Any ideas?

308

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« Last post by Stoic Joker on June 14, 2017, 12:56 PM »

Version 1703 (OS Build 15063.413) here after the last blast of updates - That took an hour and a half to install.

309

Living Room / Re: Password Managers ... vs. Not

« Last post by Stoic Joker on June 06, 2017, 06:34 AM »

@MilesAhead - I hear ya man ... Some of this stuff - necessary as it may be - is just a flat-out royal pain-in-the-ass.

310

Living Room / Re: PSA: OneLogin Breached.

« Last post by Stoic Joker on June 02, 2017, 06:44 AM »

O_o ...Why would they even have the ability to decrypt someone's data on the server side in the first place ... Isn't that supposed to be a no-no?

311

General Software Discussion / Re: Still using Chrome? Enjoy being watched.

« Last post by Stoic Joker on June 01, 2017, 06:52 AM »

My point above being: A security flaw opening a webcam while I am sitting in a cubicle is way different than if I am sitting at home (may be that's just me though)

-rgdot (May 31, 2017, 01:37 PM)

Nah, I think they're the same.

-wraith808 (May 31, 2017, 02:07 PM)

Agreed. Be it a casual internal discussion in a cubical between coworkers or a C level office discussion, all information has value. And with the popularity of BYOD the two can get crossed up really fast. i.e. Why did the NSA ban Hasbro furbies from their offices? (same reason..)

312

General Software Discussion / Re: Massive vulnerability in Windows Defender leaves most Windows PCs vulnerable

« Last post by Stoic Joker on May 24, 2017, 06:37 AM »

Many thanks, Deozaan. I've now checked. The version number is way out of date, but apparently I succeeded in turning WD off when I installed Kaspersky and did not succeed in turning it back on when it kept nagging at me to do so. So Windows Defender is turned off. I'm assuming that means that it hasn't been scanning anything and won't be doing so, and thus it will not be vulnerable to the malware threat in question. If I'm wrong, I hope someone will let me know.

-cyberdiva (May 23, 2017, 07:48 AM)

The fact that you aren't running/updating it doesn't have relevancy in many cases with these kinds of vulnerability.  It might in this case, but I wouldn't depend on that.

-wraith808 (May 23, 2017, 07:28 PM)

Me either, if something that accessible is left outdated and dormant it would be way to tempting a target to get overlooked for long.

313

T-Clock / Re: T-Clock 2.4.3 build 471 Display Properties throws error

« Last post by Stoic Joker on May 24, 2017, 06:27 AM »

... So the old Display Settings may very well just be gone...
____________________

-Stoic Joker (May 23, 2017, 11:24 AM)

Oh, good point. If they have been progressively decommissioning the old Control Panel, then you might well be proven right. Ha-ha and there I was gullibly presuming that they would probably fix it...   

-IainB (May 23, 2017, 06:12 PM)

And actually - come to think of it... - as precedents go, there's already a workaround in T-Clocks I had to do years ago when the sound control target changed (IIRC) somewhere in the Vista era. So this will probably just be one of those: if(not X) do Y;

Then there was that damn nifty system calendar in 10 that - got moved from where it had been for years... - I never could figure out how to launch back when. How the hell White Tiger found the damn thing I'm not sure...but he did shortly after taking over the project.

314

T-Clock / Re: T-Clock 2.4.3 build 471 Display Properties throws error

« Last post by Stoic Joker on May 23, 2017, 11:24 AM »

MS has been putting great effort into decommissioning the venerable old Control Panel in favor of the new Settings Center/Window/Utility/WTF ever their calling it ... So the old Display Settings may very well just be gone..

Hay, Speaking of gone ... Where's White Tiger??

315

Living Room / Re: Good News! US Supreme Court disallows jurisdiction shopping in patent disputes

« Last post by Stoic Joker on May 23, 2017, 06:42 AM »

Now that is good news!

316

Living Room / Re: [Breaking News] Cyber Attack cripples UK NHS.

« Last post by Stoic Joker on May 18, 2017, 09:30 AM »

And back to hardware for this one:

Since one of the MS "Patches" in response to this outbreak is actually to uninstall the (installed by default) SMB v1 protocol, it has become quite the theme around here for the week. The 'Punch Line' however is that several of the quite current systems we're running into are still make-or-break dependent on this decades old version of the protocol. SMB v2 came out with Vista in 2005, and they're now up to SMB v3 ... Yet devices made by major manufacturers, that are on the market today as brand new products, are still dependent on this antique protocol.

317

Living Room / Re: [Breaking News] Cyber Attack cripples UK NHS.

« Last post by Stoic Joker on May 17, 2017, 09:38 PM »

And why the focus on Microsoft, and not the driver software companies that force them to stay on older hardware?  Because MS is the known part of this equation?  It would seem that those are the more culpable parties, i.e. if they sell such hardware/software combinations, that the source to support them should be in escrow against time/support necessary.

-wraith808 (May 17, 2017, 06:39 PM)

Bingo! They're being asked to retrofit anti-lock brakes onto a Conestoga wagon because someone won't give up on using their horse.

If the support agreement is $1,000, and the new OS is only $300...the obvious question begged is - or at least should be - WTF is the holdup here?!?

Answer: antique proprietary hardware.

e.g. The problem lies with the hardware...not the OS.

I wasn't kidding about the $30,000 XP driven X-Ray machine earlier ... One of our clients really does have one. The manufacturer could easily update their (16-bit...) software for it ... But... Cha-Ching!!!!!! ...They don't want to.

And that ain't Microsoft's fault.

318

Living Room / Re: [Breaking News] Cyber Attack cripples UK NHS.

« Last post by Stoic Joker on May 16, 2017, 08:26 AM »

By that logic, if somebody likes driving a 1965 Chevy Impala, because it's cool. But they get into an accident, and are killed because the 1965 Impala didn't have ABS, Air Bags, or computerized stability control. Their death is Chevrolet's fault.

The XP era internet doesn't exist anymore. During the XP era - Service Pack 2 Specifically - over 70% of Windows code was deprecated due to security issues. Changes to the architecture were made that resulted in their being no direct upgrade path from XP to Vista. This kind of stuff can't be "patched".

There is no fixing these old systems, from a security standpoint they must be replaced. And the issue isn't so much MS who was stuck begging and pleading with the hardware folks - to share the security burden by updating their shit - during the 5 years it took to get Vista launched. Creative soundcards being among the worst direct hardware access foot dragging offenders. Certain common (yet then becoming dangerous) practices like direct hardware access by software had to be stopped. And the fact that some lazy manufacturer decided to keep doing it on a$30,000 X-Ray machine...just because that's the way they'd always been doing it ... Is not Microsoft's fault. Or anything they have a snowball's chance in hell of "fixing".

319

Living Room / Re: [Breaking News] Cyber Attack cripples UK NHS.

« Last post by Stoic Joker on May 14, 2017, 08:17 AM »

An OS that was released over 15 years ago, in an age where people pay for latest phones, latest consoles and other gadgets ... sorry but that's silly.

-rgdot (May 12, 2017, 04:33 PM)

Yes and no.

In general, I agree that it's silly to cling on to an operating system that's that old - but there might be good reasons for it at a hospital. They have special equipment that sometimes, unfortunately, need drivers that haven't been updated for modern systems.

-f0dder (May 13, 2017, 12:18 AM)

Many of our clients are medical, and this is indeed quite true. Also - just to make things worse - since these systems frequently manage to be just complex enough to offer/require a (remote) support agreement...Air Gaping is not an option.

320

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a new browser

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 06, 2017, 11:10 AM »

Ah! Okay... That's fine I don't use extensions. Just as long as it's not yet another horrific privacy issue, I'll plan on continuing to use it then.

Thanks guys, I'll be quiet now ... Carry on..

321

General Software Discussion / Re: Looking for a new browser

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 06, 2017, 06:27 AM »

My time with Firefox is nearly over (v57 is on the horizon)...

-highend01 (April 05, 2017, 09:54 AM)

Not to sidetrack...but remind me what's wrong with v57?

322

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: Page Countster - Email settings

« Last post by Stoic Joker on April 06, 2017, 06:26 AM »

Greetings
   The feature does not contain any authentication information, and therefore assumes that PC is being used with an internal mail server that can be relayed through.

It was one of those features that was added quickly with the intention of completing it later ... And then the project was shelved.

Stoic Joker

323

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Kapersky reports trojan in CH&S 2.41

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 31, 2017, 06:30 AM »

I would also suggest that the user dump whatever time-wasting false-positive AV they are using, in favour of MS Security Essentials. As a consequence, there would probably be very few of these unproductive discussion threads active any more.

-IainB (March 30, 2017, 08:35 PM)

While MSE is still my favorite, it's no angel. It FP'd on me a few weeks back on a copy of f0dder's FSekrit I'd been using for years on 5 different machines.

324

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Trend Micro Officescan

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 28, 2017, 11:27 AM »

Well of course when I tried to report the false positive they won't let me -- I have to fill in detailed information proving I own OfficeScan, etc.

These security services should be run out of town the way they handle this stuff..

-mouser (March 28, 2017, 09:37 AM)

Indeed the cure has become worse than the disease.


However it occurs to me that many companies their size have PR damage control types roaming all over the web to ensure everyone has nice things - and only nice things - to say about their overloads. That being said I would ponder aloud that if I as a singular individual chose - because of this - to stop recommending their product in any fashion...no one would - most likely - give a shit. However....

If I as a singular individual, who just so happened to be the IT director for one of the larger MSP's in central Florida decided to scrap all intentions of looking into using and recommending any Trend Micro products for any of our 5,000+ clients because of this obviously flagrant disregard for properly vetting their reputation system ... I wonder if maybe someone there might just feel the need to take pause to reflect on the value of integrity..

Because up until about 5 minutes ago I really had been thinking about exploring their enterprise AV ... But I'm over that now.

325

fSekrit / Re: LATEST VERSION: fSekrit 1.40 shrinkwrapped!

« Last post by Stoic Joker on March 24, 2017, 06:50 AM »

   Wasn't quite sure where to put this, but as of late Windows Defender has been False Positive-ing FSekrit on several (read all of my) machines. It's the same copy I've been using for years - so I know it's clean - but WD just started having a cow about it about a week ago.

   I don't know how many other AV suites are/will be FP'ing it, but FSkrit is my favorite and only password manager, so I'd hate to see it's reputation take a hit. It might be the shrinkwrap that it's tripping over...I don't know, I haven't had time to try exploring it. I just wanted to be sure it was noted as a False Positive.