PowerON Computer Services

Wireless Computer Networks: Wardriving

Kevin — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 19:14:32 +0000

Wireless networking has become an integral part of today’s society. It’s everywhere, from home and work, to the airport and your local Starbucks. Most average home users don’t understand how wireless networking works, and don’t care to.

Most don’t know the dangers of using a wireless network, and the consequences that can come of it. Wardriving is a concept that has been around since the introduction of wireless networking. If you have a wireless network, the odds are pretty good that your signal has been sniffed by a wardriver.

What is a wardriver?

A wardriver, in its broadest sense, is someone who drives around and searches for wireless signals. However, wardriving doesn’t just stop at searching for signals. It often means connecting to those signals. When a wardriver connects to your wireless signal, he is most likely going to use your Internet connection or steal your data.

Why would a wardriver want to use my Internet connection?

Often, people use open wireless signals to get free Internet access. There are risks involved with providing free Internet access, and you could be scrutinized by law enforcement if something illegal occurs on your Internet connection. It is common for pedophiles to steal wireless signals to distribute child pornography, and for hackers to use open wireless signals to distribute malware.

How can a wardriver steal my data?

If your network has file sharing enabled, your files might be accessible to any machine connected to your wireless network. If your signal isn’t encrypted, the data is being transmitted over the air in plain text, and a nearby wardriver can simply pluck that data right out of the air with a RF sniffer. This includes login and password data, and potentially other sensitive personal informaion.

This is all very scary. How do I protect myself?

The safest way to prevent wardriving is to avoid using wireless networks. However, this isn’t really an effective solution since most home networking is going wireless. What you can do is take advantage of the latest techniques for securing a wireless network.

Change the default username and password on your wireless access point.
- Most wardrivers know the default login and password for popular wireless access points. If you don’t change these, it doesn’t matter what other security measures you take.

Change the default SSID for your wireless access point.
- Like the default password and login, wardrivers will look for default SSIDs. These often indicate easy targets.

Disable SSID broadcasting on your wireless access point.
- If a wardriver can’t see the SSID, they have to guess what it is. This can put a serious damper in their efforts.

Enable WPA2 with AES encryption for your wireless signal.
- WEP algorithms can be hacked in a matter of minutes. Likewise, WPA has been hacked with similar techniques in a laboratory environment.
- While TKIP encryption works ok, it’s not nearly as effective as AES.

Use a long WPA2 key. The longer, the better.
- A longer key takes much longer to crack with brute force attacks. In most cases, it’s not worth the effort to even attempt it.

Use MAC whitelisting.
- MAC addresses are hard-coded into the computer’s hardware. Whitelisting the MAC address for your computers makes it very difficult for a wardriver to connect to your network, even if they have the login and password.

Understandably, most average users don’t understand all these settings. If you’re in doubt, spend a few extra dollars to have your network setup by a professional. In the end it could mean protecting your family from identity theft or unexpected attention from law enforcement.

The PC Repair Stimulus Package – Coming to a South Carolina City Near You!

Kevin — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 17:44:30 +0000

Summer is here, and you know what that means! More free time means more opportunity for people to create spyware, viruses, malware, and all sorts of nasty computer infections. Oh yeah, and lots of hot summer days giving me time to work on my business expansion plans in the cool comfort of my home office. As we continue to move forward with our plans for a storefront, I am looking to help more people. The more people I can assist with computer repair, the more help I get with my move to a storefront. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Give and you will receive!

If you are unemployed, or in transition, and have a computer that is in need of repair, we are offering a 50% discount for all computer repairs. This limited time offer is available only until August 31, 2010.

A few qualifiers…

You must show proof that you are currently unemployed. A statement from the unemployment agency would be ideal. However, I will accept a link to your social networking profile if it shows a history of your unemployment (more than one recent post referencing your unemployment, or job search.)
This is a “shop repair” service only (no in-home, remote, or phone visits).
This discount is for computer repair only. It does not include any hardware purchases that may be necessary to repair your computer.

EXTRA! If you are not eligible for the PC Repair Stimulus Package by PowerON Computer Services, you are still eligible for the Referral Program. Tell all your friends about this “Stimulus Discount”. You earn 20 FREE minutes of in-store or phone support for every paying client you refer to us.

To schedule a drop off, call 864-444-1093.

Killing Spam: The secret e-mail marketers don’t want you to know!

Kevin — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 13:07:43 +0000

Are you sick of sorting through an inbox full of junk e-mail just to find your actual correpondence? I know the feeling, and now I have a solution that will help you free your inbox of the clutter!

If you are like most people I know, you probably have a few e-mail accounts. Most of us have one for business correspondence, another for personal use, and a third and fourth for SPAM or junk e-mail. Well, I have some great news for you! You no longer need to worry about remembering all of those usernames and passwords, or which e-mail account to use when signing up for that “special offer”, so you can download that one freebie, without your personal e-mail account being inundated with SPAM.

I am guilty of playing the e-mail game myself. I have at least 6 different e-mail accounts in an effort to keep my life organized. Running a computer repair business, staying in contact with friends and family, and maintaining multiple e-mail accounts for SPAM or junk e-mail has become time-consuming and stressful. Well I say, “NO MORE!” For the last month, I have been using a FREE service to help me eliminate SPAM and the need to keep up with multiple e-mail accounts.

The service is know as 10 Minute Mail. It will provide you with a free e-mail account that is valid for only ten minutes. After 10 minutes, the account will expire unless you choose to keep it active for an extended period of time. It is a great service that will keep your primary e-mail accounts from getting bombarded with junk e-mail. Why would you need a 10 minute account? Here is an example: I found an interesting e-book I wanted to download about how to spot common mistakes made by computer repair companies. The website offering the free e-book looked very professional and may very well have been a reputable company. I, however, did not want to take the risk of entering my business e-mail address and having it blasted with newsletters, special offers, or other promotions I have no interest in. The solution? 10 Minute Mail.

I went to the 10 Minute Mail website and was given a temporary e-mail address to use while signing up for my free e-book. The company offering the free e-book sent an e-mail to validate the address I entered. I opened the e-mail, clicked the validation link, and downloaded the book I needed. Shortly afterward, the temporary e-mail account expired, leaving them unable to send me any junk mail and me free to read my book without worrying about SPAM.

So, what did we learn here? We no longer need to worry about sorting through junk e-mail, or maintaining several e-mail accounts exclusively for SPAM. There is a free and easy solution available with the 10 Minute Mail service. I highly recommend using a 10 Minute Mail account when signing up for special offers, contests, and promotions. I hope this helps you free your life of time-wasting inbox cleanup duty. As always, if you have questions or comments, feel free to post them below.

10 Minute Mail: http://10minutemail.com/

Disclaimer: I do not own, nor am I affiliated with the 10 minute mail website and/or service. This article is only intended to help our readers combat spam and I have not been paid or asked to write this.

Freebies : Ten No-Cost Software Packages for a Tight Budget

Kevin — Sun, 30 May 2010 10:42:10 +0000

So you just spent all your savings on a fancy new computer, but you don’t have anything left for software. Prices on commercial software can be downright scary, particularly if you need something specialized. Often times, the cost of the software exceeds the cost of the entire computer; but you need not fret! There are a broad range of free and open-source alternatives to popular commercial software, and today I’m going to list a few of my favorites.

Operating System

Ubuntu Linux

It used to be that Linux was for a niche group of techies and computer geeks, but those times have long-passed. The latest distributions of Linux include streamlined graphical user interfaces like Gnome and KDE, and are generally much more user-friendly. Ubuntu has established a solid #1 spot on the list of Linux distributions. It has an intuitive interface and some very nifty tools for maintaining updates and installing software. In terms of software availability, virtually everything you can do on Windows you can also do on Linux, and with the introduction of virtualization you can run Windows inside of Linux. Combine it’s ease-of-use with the speed, stability, and security of Linux and you have a solid candidate for a great operating system. If you’re not a PC gamer, you might find Linux to be right down your alley, and Ubuntu can make the transition quick and easy.

Image Editor

GIMP

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It’s a freely distributed software package for image editing with features that rival Adobe Photoshop. It’s available for Windows, Mac, and most major Linux distributions. Being a web developer, I can appreciate the value of a good image editor, and that’s exactly what GIMP is.

Office Suite

OpenOffice

Not everyone can afford the gold standard when it comes to office productivity, and not everyone needs to! While Microsoft makes a very good office productivity suite, and would have you believe that it’s the only one you can use, there is an alternative. Originally supported by StarDivision, then Sun Microsystems as StarOffice, OpenOffice is now supported by a range of big corporations including Oracle, Novell, IBM, and Google. It supports all the major office software formats including those from Microsoft and Corel, and OpenDocument, and hundreds of different languages.

Web Browser

Firefox

Though a web browser isn’t something you have to buy, I feel that this one deserves some credit. Microsoft Internet Explorer never has been, and probably never will be standards-compliant. It’s significantly slower than most other browsers, and because of its popularity it’s frequently targeted by malware. Firefox has been around for a long time and offers standards-compliance, faster load times, better security, and a huge library full of user-supported plugins for a wide range of additional features not found anywhere else. Firefox is a force to be reckoned with in the browser war, and it has been gaining market share since its inception.

Anti-virus

avast!

Let’s face it, the Internet is a dangerous place. It’s riddled with problems ranging from malware to identity theft, and it’s probably not going to get better anytime soon. There are a lot of anti-virus software packages on the market, and some of them are free. Why pay annually to secure your PC when you can do it for free? Most anti-virus providers share information, so most of them are pretty comparable. avast!, however, is a little different than most other free packages. They include features in their free application that can normally only be found in paid packages. avast! will monitor your web surfing, email, instant messaging, and even scan your system when the screen-saver is activated to ensure you’re not using the computer when it starts.

Firewall

COMODO Internet Security

This one packs a punch. I have yet to find a free security suite as feature-packed as COMODO Internet Security. While the anti-virus module isn’t quite as powerful as avast!, the rest of the package has features that you won’t find anywhere else for free. COMODO Internet Security firewall is a complete NAT and stateful inspection solution, bundled with an anti-malware scanner and sate-of-the-art sandboxing technology that can isolate your applications from the operating system. When used properly, nothing gets passed this security suite.

Media Player

VLC

There are a ton of media players available for free, but none are as comprehensive as VLC. If your current media player doesn’t recognize a certain media format, the odds are pretty good that VLC does. VLC is a feature packed player available for a range of platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac, and even BeOS! If you’re in need of a powerful media player, I can’t think of another package that can rival VLC.

Text Editor

Notepad++

I do a lot of PHP and MySQL development, and there is only one tool I use to accomplish my goals. Microsoft Notepad is a joke; it was never designed for writing code. Adobe Dreamweaver is a pretty decent web development tool, but its PHP capabilities are nowhere near as comprehensive as Notepad++. Notepad++ includes syntax highlighting and folding for a wide range of programming languages, auto completion, a snazzy search and replace dialog, drag-and-drop functionality, tabbed file navigation, plugin support, and even macro recording! This fine piece of software is a must-have for any software developer, and it’s even handy for reading those readme files included with free software packages!

File Compression and Archiving

7-Zip

If you download files from the Internet, it’s pretty likely that you’ve encountered a compressed file at one time or another. Zip, Gzip, Tarball, RAR, 7z: They’re all used to package and compress files for easy distribution. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of options for software that supports ALL of the formats, so often times you need several archiving programs to handle all the formats, and often you have to pay for them. Not anymore! 7-zip is an open-source archiving utility for Windows. It supports all of the major compression formats, so you can handle everything within the same application. In a lot of cases, it’s faster and offers higher compression ratios than mainstream archiving utilities.

FTP Client

Filezilla

It’s an aging technology, but it works well. FTP is often used for things like file distribution and web development. There aren’t many viable options for free FTP clients. Most of them are buggy and difficult to use. Filezilla is not one of those. It can do everything the big boys do; often faster and more efficiently. If you need an FTP client and you don’t want to fork over cash for one of the big players, Filezilla will do everything you need.

Targus Recalls Half a Million Laptop Power Adapters due to Burn Hazard

Kevin — Sat, 08 May 2010 14:44:30 +0000

Beware, Targus just recalled half a million laptop power adapters as reported by Engadget. The adapters are actually made by Comarco and the reason for the recall is that faulty wiring could cause the connector tips to heat and melt their plastic casing, posing a burn hazard to hapless users that try to unplug it. 518 incidents of the tips heating have been reported to Comarco with 53 of the incidents resulting in the plastic casing melting. Eight incidents of a hand or finger tip being burned have been reported.

The recall is for Targus Universal Wall Power Adapters for Laptops and the SKU numbers of the models affected are:
APA23US-02
APA23US-03
APA23US-04
APA63US-03
APA63US-04
APM62US-03
APM62US-04
The SKU number can be found on the bottom of the adapter.

This info site from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends that anyone that has one of these adapters should stop using it immediately and contact Comarco. Contact info for Comarco is posted on that website.

Spam: Facebook Password Reset

Kevin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:23:34 +0000

As the most popular website on the Internet (Hitwise, 2010), Facebook is a treasure trove for hackers and scam artists. People share intimate details about their personal lives, and link to other people with similar lifestyles. This makes personal data collection all too easy for those to mean to profit from it.

Earlier this month, Facebook users became the target of a large-scale spam operation, in which victims would be prompted to open an attachment to retrieve their new password. The email has several derivatives, but the structure is always the same.

Dear user of facebook,

Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed.

You can find your new password in attached document.

Thanks,

Your Facebook.

Accompanying the message is an email attachment. The attachment is a .zip archive, and contains a malware application called Bredolab. This particular malware includes a rootkit, a trojan, and a keylogger, which allows the attacker(s) remote access to the infected system. It collects keystroke data including bank information, logins, and passwords.

With a user-base of over 400-million users, the potential for disaster is great. While many users can identify this message as fraudulent, just 1-percent of the Facebook user-base would need to be infected for the attacker(s) to yield 4-million infected systems. That’s a lot of stolen data!

So how do you protect yourself from this sort of danger? Use common sense. Don’t download attachments in email messages unless you are expecting them. If you’re sent an unsolicited message from an unknown source, simply delete it. Keep anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewalls installed and up-to-date, and make sure your operating system has all the latest updates. Most reputable organizations won’t send you email attachments, and none of them will reset your account password unless you ask them to.

Understand that this is not the only threat floating around in cyberspace. There are tens of millions of scams and infected files sent out every day, and you will continue seeing these regularly for a long time to come. Be diligent, be alert, and practice common sense.

Facebook tips

Kevin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:52:50 +0000

The “Koobface” virus (Facebook’s big virus) is at it again and this time, hitting the Twitter folks too.

If you want to get your computer protected before something bad happens to your computer, call us today to get some good tools installed. Remember…Norton Symantec, McAfee and most of the big box antivirus software do not catch these viruses!

If you think your computer already has a virus or feel there is something strange going on, we can remove these viruses and give you real time protection before you get infected again. It’s also a good idea to have this protection for just general web surfing anyway. Websites are getting hit too, not just Facebook.

Short list of things to watch out for:

Links sent to you from friends you don’t communicate often with.
Broken english in the messages.
Exciting messages. (Check me out in this video I’m hilarious!)
Email hackers. (Change your facebook password to not be the same as your email password)
Short website links instead of the full website link.
Wall posts from others that don’t seem normal or appear strange.
New Friends requests from people you don’t know in person.
That’s it folks, Enjoy your week!

Tips on using free software

Kevin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:46:18 +0000

Many of us today are using Gmail, Google applications, AVG free, etc. Free software is usually great, but the support you get if you need help is usually not up to par. About a month ago, I decided to start using Google documents to store a few files because I needed to have them on 3 computers. I worked on a massive “to do list” and after I was done, I hit the “cut” button to move something and it all disappeared. I could not get it back, even though it had saved just a minute before! I was LIVID to say the least. I had been saving it too for a whole day or so and I’m not sure how easy it is to put in a support ticket to Google and have it checked out for a restore, but decided then and there…to only rely on myself for such needs from now on.

Support is very important when it comes to things you need to use.

Here are my opinions:

AVG free is a good product, but not a great product. The download for AVG 9.0 takes a very long time to install (up to 45 minutes) and we see that program on virus infected computers. It works, but I quit recommending it to folks who want free software because it doesn’t work either. Toss up on AVG free! AVG free offers online FAQ/Knowledge Base and Forum help. No email or phone support that I could find online. If you upgrade to the paid version, then you get the premium support.
Microsoft Security Essentials Antivirus so far is doing well with the clients who I have recommended using it. Only one client so far has had a problem with “real time protection” and Microsoft will support that issue via chat or email.
Google calendar can have glitches that can’t be fixed easily (from what my clients have told me, I am having success using it for now, but am looking at paid alternatives). Again they have the forum/FAQ help, but put in a ticket and wait a few days for help, if they help….Google decides if they support you due to the millions of users.
Gmail is not something I am fond of, but many of my networking friends use it frequently and are happy with the product. My problem with Gmail is, what if you woke up one morning and your emails were all gone. Do you have time to wait for Google to figure it out? Who do you call? With Gmail, you have to search their support and help forums first, then put in a ticket and wait a few days. If you’re using Gmail for business (or hotmail, yahoo, etc..) do you have a few days to wait? Business is on the line!

For the sake of your business, please move to a paid email hosting solution. There are many affordable solutions out there, if you need some recommendations, please email us at info@poweron-cs.com

Feel free to comment on the blog!