Chovy's Blog

When I ran the unix command “ls -la”, a .nfsXXXXXX file showed up…this was created as a temporary file when an open file was deleted on NFS mounted file systems. The file is created so the unfinished process can continue writing/reading to that file which was deleted. It stays around even after the process has finished.

Thanks to the University of S. Wales’ Engineering Dept.’s Deleting .nfs files article.

Here’s an article about trojans (no, not that kind) and virii
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/401

Here’s the apps I recommend you use/familiarize yourself with:

Instant messaging client
http://gaim.sf.net
supports jabber (open protocal, but not very popular), aim, msn/hotmail, yahoo, icq, etc.

bittorrent client (multi-threaded downloads)
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/
Once you install it, you can find search engines for .torrent files, like torrentspy.com, click on the “whatever-song/book-movie.torrent” file and it should open up azureus and begin a multi-threaded download from various locations (this basically downloads chunks simultaneous from different locations, giving you a greater download speed, then pieces them back together, it’s all seamless on your part, you still just get one big file in the end.

p2p filesharing client
http://emule.sf.net
This is similar to limewire, but no spyware/ads, crap.

Firefox (if you haven’t already)
http://www.mozilla.org
More secure, user-friendly browser than MS-Internet Explorer

Thunderbird email client
http://www.mozilla.org
If you use a POP3 email account from your isp, this email client is good. However most people use web-mail these days (ie – Yahoo/Gmail/Hotmail).

Open Office (office suite)
http://www.openoffice.org
Free office suite, like MS-office (word/excel/powerpoint replacement. Again, clean software, works well with ms-office documents too.

Gimp (professional graphics editor)
http://gimp.org
Open source replacement for Adobe Photoshop. Free, as always, and quite powerful. I use it for touching up digital images, removing obstructions, powerlines, etc.

When I find or hear about a piece of software that someone recommends, I do 2 things, checkout what it does, and then read the license. If it’s open source, (BSD, GPL, GNU, style license, then I give it a shot). Anything on sf.net (sourceforge) is going to be open source, free, which means that anybody can download, modify and redistribute the code, as long as they pass on the same privileges.

If I don’t find anything good, I usually check www.freshmeat.net, they have apps for both linux, windows, mac, and typically are OSI-Approved licenses (that’s the Open Source Initiative consortium that tries to keep taps on all the various licenses of open source) with a mix of other licenses as well.

If you find windows is getting boring, run of themill same-ol-same-ol, try burning a LiveCD of Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com), it’s the latest and easiest Linux distro to get up and running on. The live cd lets you pop it in and runs everything in the RAM, so when you eject the CD, and reboot, you have your windows back, untouched.

“The FBI says you will not notice anything different”

Seriously, why are people outraged, since when was the Internet considered a private area?

I’m curious how they accomplish this (technically), other than at the isp level. If privacy is a concern online, use Gnu PGP for encrypting your email, http://tor.eff.org for surfing, and ssh for file transfer, ssl/https for banking and encrypt *all* your communication. These tools ensure that only the intended recipient can unencrypt the data, although you’re still at the mercy of what the recipient does with it.

__BEGIN SECURITY RANT__

For what it’s worth (and I’m bored, and had a big brain fart…):

Nothing online was ever private anyway, your isp has the ability (and the right as the user-agreement states) to track where you go (unless you use an anonymous network like tor.eff.org, which theoretically makes it impossible).

Of course, you can always go down to the the local coffee roasting co. or the free wifi access in the park to continue what may be construed by a CIA mainframe server farm crunching all this bs as “terrorist sympathizing” emails, at least that’s what they’d have you believe is happening.

Funny, how requiring a driver’s license at the local library before getting online is in someway supposed to be a deterrent…if someone wanted to do some damage, they’d simply steal a laptop and logon at a free-wifi hotspot. Heck I even ran a free hotspot at my apartment, which brings to mind the need to encrypt at the harddrive level too, incase of theft the thief wouldn’t be able to boot up a stolen laptop and access your data until the password was entered. Reminds me of when it was suggested we Americans run down to the store and stock-up on ducktape, to tape up the cracks around the closet door when and if a chemical attack occurs…I mean c’mon fellas, that’s worse than having a librarian be the first line of defense.

At home when I do a wireless internet scan, I usually get at least 2 unencrypted hotspots from neighbors, in public places there’s even more. With the 5-15 mile range *omni* directional antennas for a few hundred bucks, why even leave the house?

There’s no way to make data %100 secure. I’m more worried about Foo, Inc. using an old/unpatched version of some exploitable database application or web server, and suddenly 50,000 social security numbers are now in the public domain.

There was an incident at a university recently, where the student found a hole in the school’s online registration system, and gained access to not only student social security information and bank records, but their parents as well. After 30 days of being notified, the university’s IT manager still had not fixed the hole, nor responded in good faith.

__END SECURITY RANT__