Scream At The PC
A Techie's vents, frustrations, solutions and lighter side of lifeSoccer 2010 Worldcup Schedules
Posted on June 07, 2010Hope you are going to see the Worldcup, here is a listing of all the games taking place and where they are taking place. It will be very interesting to see who wins the worldcup.
Click here to view the schedules.
#Nowplaying The Unhackable PC
Posted on May 11, 2010The other day I came across an idea that if it were to be implemented, would certainly make computers very secure. The idea would be to shuffle through a list of passwords with separate hints. As a computer engineer I know that this probably is not very practical, however I set about finding a similar but more secure way of doing this and came up with the use of a smart card and either a pin code or a bio-metric scanner.
The password in this case will be automatically generated for you and if required can be changed frequently.
This would make your PC more secure and to log out, you would just be required to unplug the USB device.
The Bio-Metric scanner may be a safer bet as this would ensure that your security is always uniquely you – i.e. your finger print.
http://www.dekart.com/products/access_control/logon/
Ok it wouldn’t make your computer completely unhackable, but if you implemented this solution on a computer running FreeBSD – they would have to literally steal your access card, cut off your finger and somehow find your pin.
Hopefully one day we will make the Unhackable PC a reality, but for now the only real unhackable PC is probably locked away in a deep CIA basement…
Key Witnesses Terrible F1 Accident
Posted on April 23, 2010
http://sheylara.com/2008/09/terrible-f1-accident/
Now Playing Get Rid Of That Pesky Recycler Bin Virus
Posted on April 20, 2010Ok assuming you still want to continue using Windows after being infected by such a nasty virus:
This Step by step can be done even if you don’t have an antivirus:
Stopping Autorun Viruses – this applies to all variants of the virus WORM_AUTORUN.CG
DISABLE AUTORUN. This will stop a lot of viruses from spreading from one drive to the other. You can do this by opening regedit.exe and modifying the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer
There should be an entry with the name NoDriveTypeAutorun. Set it to 0×95 to disable autorun on everything but CD drives, or 0xB5 (the letter ‘B’, not the number ’8′) to disable it on all drives.
Ok now to remove the virus:
This virus distributes itself using your USB stick and your local hard drive – it has the uncannily ability of filling up a USB stick with whatever is in your recycle bin and then hides all the files using the windows dll files and resident memory in exlorer.exe. Most Antiviruses will detect this, but they are unable to get rid of the virus totally…
Gather all hard drives and memory sticks suspected as having the virus, connect them up in a machine that has Linux installed or simply boot infected machine with an Ubuntu Live CD – Important, please don’t boot into Windows as you will cause the virus to spread more…
Once booted into Linux, locate the windows hard drives connected, on Ubuntu these are usually displayed on the desktop, others will be located under /mnt/windows or /mnt/media in Dolphin File Manager accessed from the menu at the top of your screen.
Go to the root of each Windows drive, delete the following: autorun.inf, recycler and any bat or cmd files present excepting for autoexec.bat which is a legacy file for windows. Also delete “.recycler” and any folders that say recycler, do the same on any memory sticks or external drives you have connected to the infected machine recently.
The Autorun.inf files and the cmd files are what makes this virus work, when you boot back into windows now the files are removed, you may get a few error messages, to get rid of these messages:
- Open Registry Editor. Click Start>Run, type REGEDIT, then press Enter
- In the left panel, double-click the following:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SOFTWARE>Microsoft>Active Setup>Installed Components - In the left panel, locate and delete the key:
{08B0E5C0-4FCB-11CF-AAX5-90401C608512} and any other keys that contain information about Recycler or Autorun
- Close Registry Editor.
If you are still getting the error, go back to registry editor and locate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>SOFTWARE>Microsoft>Windows>Current Version>Run
Delete any files you do not recognise, also browse in Windows Explorer to where they are installed and delete off your hard drive (it would be wise to google and make sure) – most of the files here start up when your machine boots up, a number of them can be located next to your system tray next to the time.
For a detailed and somewhat different approach try Bleeping Computer
Lion’s Mugshot Taken By Robotic Buggy
Posted on April 19, 2010In retaliation of their photo being taken, the Lions mauled the Robotic Buggy, smashed it a bit and then carried it off . Surprisingly the device was back in operation after a few hacks using some string and a plank or two of wood.
The Beetle buggy as it is called, has two cameras for eyes, four wheel drive and even camouflage was put together by Shutterbug Will Burrard-Lucas and his brother Matthew, more on this story and others like it can be found at wired.com.
www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/04/robotic-buggy-takes-stunning-photos-of-african-wildlife/