Various cool software and more

WordPress Security -> Wordfence

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WordFence

You are likely familiar with WordPress, if not well – interesting 😉  anyhow, you may also have heard about the recent attacks on wordpress blogs by a worm like virus/malware?  Attacks on WordPress installations is not something new, it has always been there as it’s such a popular platform however time has revealed some not so smart features with wordpress security, one thing is that you can try to log in as many times as you like without any action being taken – hence there is nothing to stop a brute force attack on your wordpress installation’s login!?

Well Wordfence to the rescue, a simple plugin you install on your wordpress installation that all of a sudden offers you a ton of cool security features, I will just mention a few here – for the complete listing visit their website..

Features;

  • Login limiter – limit how many incorrect passwords/usernames are accepted
  • Site and theme scanner – scan your wordpress blog for changes
  • Block unwanted IP’s from accessing your site
  • Manage crawlers (search engine index bots)
  • and many many many more cool features

You can define what the reaction to different attacks, eg. block IP/Lock account for xx min/throttle traffic.

Wordfence1

Now a thing like that must cost a fortune you say!?  well no, there is a TOTALLY FREE version with basic functionality (enough for most I would say) and the deluxe version which cost a bit.

Now after adding this you should also add Two Factor Authentication, eg using “WordPress Google Authenticator Plugin” – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-authenticator/screenshots/ Or one of the other TwoFactor authentication solutions out there.

So, what are you waiting for 🙂 protect your WordPress blog now 🙂

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WSUS on a stick – Windows Update Downloaded

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In the good old days you could install SUS on your “home” server and have your own Windows update repository, however after WSUS version “whatnot” the requirements for WSUS has by far outgrown what I wish to allocate on my home/test rig..  Hell I only have 3 machines and a few servers anyhow….

Never the less, when installing new test VM’s etc it would be nice to avoid all the patching since SP1 :-/ well, now you can 🙂

 

Martin over at Ghacks.net has reviewed an excellent utility that will do JUST that 🙂

http://www.ghacks.net/2013/01/03/windows-offline-update-8-0-released/

http://www.ghacks.net/2011/02/25/wsus-windows-offline-update-updated/

 

Further uses is as he describe that you can download all patches for an OS (pt. Win 7 = 1.8GB since SP1) and put it on a stick so you can patch your friends and family’s machines with minimal Internet impact.

For now I have installed the thing and tried downloading patches for Windows 7, it seemed to work flawlessly – but I will try to do some install testing and see how this works out.  Looks solid enough though.

Project web site;

http://www.wsusoffline.net/

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Altaro’s big Christmas Backup giveaway

If you are working as a sysadmin and are working with Hyper-V you may be eligible for the Altaro’s great Christmas giveaway of 50 free licenses for Altaro’s Oops!Backup.
http://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/50-free-pc-backup-licenses-for-all-hyper-v-admins/
All you need to do is to fill out the form (name, email and a screenshot of your Hyper-V manager), you sadly need to use a “company” email but other than that it worked without a glitch and I got my 50 licenses within 1 hour.

Oops!Backup is a basic though fairly full featured backup software solution, it’s aim seem to be end users so it’s very simple to use and setup, but with a bit of tweaking you can configure it somewhat for advanced use also.

I’ll see about creating a small walk through video if I can get myself into gear 😐

A few screenshots;

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SCCM Deployment – updates hang/stall

An odd SCCM bug, some of our DP (Distribution Points) recently stopped working, the Task Sequence would hang during the “Installing Updates” step and would never finish..  Now the updates (files/packages) were all there and refreshing them did nothing to resolve the issue – at the end one of our external consultants pointed me to a hotfix kb2509007 which quickly resolved the issue (thanks to Thomas Marchussen, Edgmo).

Deployment would just get stuck here and never finish.

Odd and annoying problem which caused a lot of wasted time 🙁 – however the patch once applied and replicated worked like a charm.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2509007

Keywords; Sccm 2007, Updates, Stuck, Hung, Installing, Windows, Microsoft

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Search and you shall find – Windows 7 search improved 10 fold

When I first installed Windows Vista I was annoyed with the changes to the search ability of Windows, this experience did not improve under Windows 7 quite to the opposite actually..  The thing is, if you allow indexing of your drives searching is bearable – however if you like me have several terrabytes of data then Windows will never stop indexing, and the constant ‘ticking’ of the harddrive was driving me insane.

For a long time I decided to just live the very basic search ability in Windows 7/vista, it is quite possible to search for filenames and extentions – however the other day I really needed the ability to search for files containing a special text string – something that is impossible if you have turned indexing off (as far as I have been able to figure out).  So after googling the subject I found several different utilities that could remedy this, however most at a price of around $25, now normally I don’t mind paying for something useful however as I use this quite seldom I decided to keep googling 🙂

And I am pleased to announce that not only did I find something free it is awesome 😀

Your search ends here;  http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/search_my_files.html


This utility is just brilliant and offers you tons of different search options..

tags; Windows, Search, Within, Text, Content

Curse Microsoft for their stupid changes to the basic Windows Search.

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Time registration / Time management / Time tracking with Grindstone

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Do you for some reason need to keep track of your time?

Let’s say you work in a helpdesk and need to keep track of what you spend your time on, or perhaps you are an independent consultant and need to register when you use time on clients.  There is a lot of reasons why you may need this.

Anyway here is a very cool free utility to assist you in doing just this, it is very easy and intuitive to use and implement.

Watch and learn 🙂

Software can be downloaded here;
http://www.epiforge.com/Grindstone/


 

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HP Softpaq driver utility

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If you have the need to download HP drivers, especially for more than one model or for both 32/64 bit then this utility is something for you.

This utility allow you to download drivers for any number of models at the same time without needing to visit the HP web-site which can be a bit of a hassle if you need to visit each model page.

Links;
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=4138087&prodNameId=4137878&swEnvOID=4060&swLang=13&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=ob-97225-1

Or
http://www.google.com/search?q=SoftPaq+site%3Ahp.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t

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Crackle.com – more streaming

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While ‘playing’ with my Roku2 box I came across Crackle.com and thought I’d mention it.

Www.Crackle.Com is a fully Free (yes I don’t get the business model either) streaming service (USA only, but this can be fixed with either www.witopia.net eller www.unblock-us.com), not quite as good selection as www.netflix.com but FREE 😀

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Roku 2 HD getting it to work in Europe (Partly anyway)

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Today my Roku2 set top box arrived from the USA (my first order via www.shopusa.com which seem to have workd fine), I had ordered this to be able to watch Netflix in my bedroom and the Roku2 box seemed the easiest and cheapest way.

The device which comes with remote and build-in wifi seemed nice, small and elegant and I did not expect many issues connecting it, I had read in advance that the service www.unblock-us.com was supporting this unit so everything should be a brease.

Well things did not go acording to plan 🙁

First things first, www.unblock-us.com works by you replacing your DNS servers with servernames (or rather IP’s) they provide, well the darn box has no network settings it gets it’s configuration from DHCP and that is it.  Well no problem, I run a Windows 2008R2 server with DHCP so I just created a new reservation for the MAC address of the Roku 2 box and setup the Unblock-us DNS server ip’s for this reservation – and sure enough this part worked like a charm (note you have to follow the instructions on the www.unblock-us.com site and activate the service before starting to use it, I’m not 100% sure how they register you, likely by your external IP – but how do they deal with dynamic IP’s then??).

So now I had the device connected to my WLAN and tv.  The first thing is then to link the Roku box to an account, you need you computer for this – so I created an account and entered the ID-code from the Roku 2 box (it displays a code you need to enter into your new Roku account to link the device to your account), and everything worked like a charm (I used a P.O.Box address in the USA as my postal address and my American Express as credit card, everything was fine).  But now began my trouble, see the device somehow knew that it was not in the USA and only showed a few totally uninteresting streaming channels (no Netflix, no Hulu etc. etc.), and now began a lot of googling – I found these two threads that seemed to give some insight to the matter;

http://support.unblock-us.com/customer/portal/questions/141869-roku-2-not-showing-us-content

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1695235

And the issue appears to be that the account somehow is not accepted as a fully valid USA account, now I tried deleting the account and recreating it via a USA vpn as some suggested, I tried different credit cards, I tried creating a USA Paypal account but nothing solved the issue.  It was suggested that by using a verified USA creditcard you might overcome the problem, however USA credit cards are hard to come by in Europe :-/  I only know of a few places where you can obtain these and these are not free so a streaming service would end up being fairly expensive 😐

Link to obtaining a USA credit card;
http://www.unblock-us.com/how-to-set-up/us-unlocked
https://readmydamnblog.com/?p=1860 (might also work)

I did however in the end find a liveable solution to my torment, once the device is fully configured and setup you unlink it from your Roku account – then you wait a few minutes and either restart the Roku or refresh your channels – this strangely enough caused the device to remove all channels BUT at the same time restore the Netflix launch button to the frontpage – and now Netflix works (and possibly also Hulu) – you still need Unblock-us not to forget, however all other channels are gone…  Ok, my objective was to get Netflix so I’m happy with this, but at the same time it’s a shame to not be able to try out all the other stuff – but I guess there is no winning every time 🙁

Btw; the powersupply supports both 110v and 220v so no problems there other than the wall jack which a universal adapter took care off

So status at the moment is; Got Netflix working (by unlinking the Roku from my Roku account) but now that is all the device can do…..  Hrmpf I am not totally satisfied, but guess this will have to do…

Streaming and Netflix navigation seem to work fine, quality is not fully as good as when I stream from a PC but quite acceptable.  Do let me know if anyone figures out a way around this messy situation.

Another odd thing about the Roku 2 box, there is no standby?  you need to unplug the darn thing to shut it down, acording to Roku it is because it uses so little power, now I don’t know in these days where we all are suposed to be thinking about the environment :-/

UPDATE March 8th 2012;
Found this site that appear to offer a workaround for any non USA credit card problems, I have not had the need to test it myself but it looks like a workable solution:
http://www.buyfrompowerseller.com

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iPhone Configuration Utility – easy configuration of iPhones/iPads

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You may be an IT administrator or just the person in charge of helping your users (or friends for that matter) configuring iPhones.  Now setting up an iPhone is not hard once you have tried it once or twice, but it is still time consuming and lets face it not very fun, well imagine that you had a piece of software in which you could prepare the configuration and then just sms the configuration to anyone?  Well it is almost as easy as that 🙂  and best of all, I will show you how 😀

What you need is the “iPhone configuration utility” from Apple, you will find it here;
http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/

Now you install this and are set to go, with this software you can create configurations for the iPhone (or iPad) and by connecting the device to your machine you can transfer the settings directly, this is easy enough but as mentioned you can do even better – you can send the configuration over the internet – the latter however require a web-server and maybe a little more skill that the average home user.

Anyhow, if you are an IT administrator etc. and need to setup a log of iPhones, then this is interesting for you..  You create a configuration with “iPhone configuration utility” and upload this to a web-server, eg. as http://www.webserver.com/iphonesettings.mobileconfig and now you can just sms the link to this page/file to new employees or BOD “bring your own device” users.  Now one word of caution though, if you publish your config this way you MUST omit ANY sensitive information like email, domain name, username and passwords, this however is not a problem – any information not entered will just be prompted – so if you omit the username and password the user will just be prompted for this when installing the configuration (information like this is likely known by the user, or could be included in the sms).  That some outside user may be able to read what mailserver you use is not really a problem, this information is already public knowledge via eg. NSLOOKUP – so there is really no security issue with this unless you include passwords etc. which you should avoid as mentioned.

The settings set this way are entered into the phone as a “Profile”, you can configure that this “Profile” can be removed “Anytime”, “Via Password” or “Never” (never mean that you need to reset the device to remove), if you remove the “Profile” it will also remove all data related to the profile (eg. if email settings was part of a profile, it will also remove the emails as part of the removal – but if you setup additional email’s manually these will be left alone).

What can you configure;
Almost anything, just to mention a few things; Email, VPN, WiFi, Policies (you can enforce password etc. etc.).

See my walktrough here for more details etc;

 

Ps.
If you upload the configuration to a webserver, you may need to set the mime type and remember to NOT change the extention of the file (.mobileconfig).

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