Saturday, September 26, 2009

An upgraded customer!

www.henzlikoliver.com a Kansas City based commercial realtor has upgraded their website with us. We added a new look and feel, we added an internal program to capture basic contact information for e-mail gathering. the whole site is written in CSS and much more.

If you are looking for commercial properties please feel free to give our client a call.

Content management

Have you ever wanted more control over your website? We now offer content management software that can be placed into your web page to give you more control. Call us for info!

Upgrade servers

Wow we upgraded our servers today and it went great! Yea!

Google Chrome

No it is not a shiny object it is a browser from Google and wow it is fast!

Friday, September 25, 2009

It is back again

If you get a letter in the mail from Internet Registry of America....just say no and go on and talk to your host vendor and make sure your domain name is still valid. This scam has been around for years and they usually catch many people who just do not know.

The moral of the story is...use a company like us that takes care of these matters.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Bing on the rise!!

Bing search from Microsoft is on the rise!

Google is the royalty of search, so powerful that even its name is used as a synonym for searching. But funny thing. I was talking to someone this week who said he'd "binged" for something.

Bing? What the hell is Bing? Those were the exact words from another conversation I had last week, with my retired next-door-neighbor. He'd seen Bing mentioned in a newspaper article that he was reading. Knowing I'm connected with the Internet in some way, he came to ask me more after spotting me outside.

Bing, of course, is Microsoft's "new" search engine launched earlier this year to challenge Google. I put quotes around the word new because Microsoft has had its own search engine since 1998. Formerly called Live Search, previously called MSN Search before that, Bing is Microsoft's hope that the third time really is a charm. Bing brings a new look and some new features to the Microsoft search engine. Bing's also got a multi-million dollar marketing campaign backing it.

Is it working? Microsoft just went over a 10% share of the US search market for the first time in ages. That person I'd mentioned having "binged" something rather than "googled" it. That's just one anecdotal story, of course, but it's coming directly out of Microsoft's marketing campaign.

I'd say the word is getting out. But is moving the dial? The person who'd "binged it" told me he hasn't been back to Bing. Google still safely has 65 percent of search share for itself. Google's a hard habit to break.

In fact, Google's not just a habit. It's a virtual best friend for many people. In the past, we depended on friends, family and professionals for advice. These days, we turn to search engines for a range of issues, from deeply personal questions to trivia answers. Google is the leading search engine. Like a best friend, Google always there for us, listening and offering help. Google challengers like Bing are the equivalent of someone you don't know walking up and saying they want to be your new best friend. Thanks, but I'm covered.

Still, friends do change. And at the very least, the competition is making Google sit up and take notice. After many rave reviews about search features that Google itself already offers (wow -- Bing lets you track flights!), Google rolled out a new consumer-oriented guide to its various search products (we let you track flights too!). And if things like Bing's new search-by-picture feature were to catch on, Google would likely roll out its own version.

It's not just Bing that's making Google react. Facebook lurks out there on the horizon, a community now 300 million strong, with social networking information that potentially could be used to make for better search results. It's data that Facebook holds to itself, one reason behind Google pushing a rival OpenSocial movement. As people have turned to Facebook for "people searching," an area the company wants to excel at, we've also seen Google rollout improvements to its own people search capabilities. Gotten your Google Profile yet?

Then there's Twitter. The company is appearing in so many places these days, in the way Google did during its early years, that I sometimes say Twitter when I mean Google. But how's all that supposedly self-indulgent twittering likely to make Google nervous?

Well, lots of those tweets are actually searches. Many people tweet questions out to their friends, families and others they follow on Twitter. Plenty get back answers, quickly, and from trusted sources. Twitter's not just a new best friend. It's access to hundreds of best friends, for advice.

Outside of tweeting, there's also Twitter Search itself. Was that an earthquake? Is your cable down? Twitter can tell you answers to such "real time" events even faster than Google.

Let's also remember Apple. All that "there's an app for that" stuff? Change "app" to "google" and you better understand the revolution happening via the iPhone. Google has seen mobile searches skyrocket since the iPhone came in, helped by Google being the default search tool. But want restaurant reviews? The UrbanSpoon app gives them to you better than Google can. Eventful's app keeps you updated on local happenings. There's a "google" for seemingly anything you might be interested in -- but they're not all run by Google.

It's easy to assume that when it comes to search, there's Google and nothing else. That was never the case. Some of Google's former competitors have fallen by the wayside, but new competitors like Facebook, Twitter and literally hundreds of smaller companies -- along with re-energized ones like Microsoft -- keep it from resting on its laurels.


Article by Danny Sullivan 2009

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Leasing the other option!

Leasing the other option to consider for your business………….

In a time of tight money companies often need other sources of finance to keep the business wheels turning. Leasing is an option that can be used to keep the sales gravy train going. Long ago (too long ago) I in my early career faced a tight money environment and it was leasing that I turned to help me sell.
Leasing is very good if you sell equipment of most kinds and especially capital equipment. The big benefit for a salesman is to be able to say “Mr. or Ms. Prospect that will be just $250.00 down and $250.00/mo. on a five year lease! This is usually a lot better than saying “that will be $50,000.00 down and $25,000 at delivery! It is all psychological, it sounds better, it is an easier figure to try to justify.
If you should need leasing, one of our clients, Heritage Leasing has been in the business for years! I can say I have worked with Jack Williams and Teri Loveall, for over thirty years and they are very knowledgeable working with companies both large and small. Please feel free to call Jack or Teri at 913-422-9525 or visit their web site at www.heritageleasing.com.

Friday, September 11, 2009

A new e-mail scam

Beware of e-mail scam, IRS warns

Another reminder that the World Wide Web is still a bit like the Wild Wild West.

The IRS again has alerted consumers that scammers are copying names, logos and Web sites of government agencies in an attempt to steal your personal information.

"So far this year, the IRS has identified nearly 1,400 unique phishing sites that use the IRS logo or otherwise purport to come from the IRS," the agency said.

According to the IRS, the current scam e-mails say you have "/UnreportedUnderreported income" and asks you to download a file that has your most recent tax return. That attached file has a virus that will infect the computer.

Anyone receiving a scam IRS e-mail should forward it to the IRS at phishing@irs.gov. Or call the IRS at 1-800-829-1040.
Submitted by Steve Rosen on September 11, 2009 - 6:01am.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

top 20 virus threats today

Infected Files in Past 24 Hours - North America
Recent Threats Information with name type risk date discovered # Virus Name # of Infected Files # of Scanned Files % Infected
1 Spyware-AdaEbook 933352 8422589 11.08
2 W32/Rontokbro.gen@MM 909658 20131909 4.52
3 Exploit-MS04-028 758014 2235540 33.91
4 W32/YahLover.worm.gen 747422 18231734 4.10
5 Generic!atr 429088 55531935 0.77
6 GameVance 241887 144873870 0.17
7 RemAdm-VNCView 193461 34675340 0.56
8 HTML/FakeAV 175448 50294958 0.35
9 W32/YahLover.worm 160290 5904109 2.71
10 FakeAlert-XPSecCenter 157432 56319627 0.28
11 Generic QHosts.c 141810 3666002 3.87
12 Vundo!grb 141544 18855891 0.75
13 Generic PUP.z 141127 527509672 0.03
14 New Malware.j 135138 8102376 1.67
15 Generic-CTG.a 106704 581501 18.35
16 Adware-DoubleD.dll 98511 54982336 0.18
17 Adware-BHO.gen.g 98291 211951065 0.05
18 Generic PWS.y!u 89629 632928 14.16
19 W32/Yahlover.worm.gen.c 74406 1824288 4.08
20 CasOnline 69776 51706693 0.13

Recent virus threats

Recent virus threats follow the link to Mcafee :

http://home.mcafee.com/VirusInfo/

McAfee security hint

A good article follow this link to McAfee: http://home.mcafee.com/AdviceCenter/Default.aspx?id=rs_na_sarticle1&cid=64250

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Thought for the day

I really have to express what I think when a company wants to use a persons services and says I will try you for 90 days. I want to see what you can do. The problem is and I believe even though money is money if you do not charge for your hard work you are cheating both yourself and your client. Moral of the story is, you get what you pay for! Both parties have to be happy with the deal or you both end up sad in the end.

Friday, September 4, 2009

I love wireless!

Wireless vulnerability assessment solution helps protect wireless networks from outside threats, reduces third-party consultation costs, and ensures regulatory compliance and reporting

Aug 21, 2009 | 11:36 AM

SCHAUMBURG, Ill., Aug. 18 -- The Enterprise Mobility Solutions business of Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) , today announced the Motorola AirDefense Wireless Vulnerability Assessment solution, a patented wireless security technology aimed at proactively assessing the security posture of wireless networks. This innovative solution provides a completely new method to secure wireless networks against real-world threats by introducing active wireless testing capable of evaluating every deployed wireless access point. Through this revolutionary approach, the Wireless Vulnerability Assessment solution enables IT administrators to remotely find and secure vulnerabilities in their wireless network and automates regulatory compliance reporting, helping customers reduce operating expenses, streamline reporting and increase the resiliency of their wireless networks.

Watch out when you search the net

Be Careful With Your Search Results
Posted by Sean-Paul Correll at 01 September 09 07:29

Blackhat SEO (BHSEO) is currently one of the most prevalent distribution methods for Malware on the Internet. It’s also one of the most dangerous methods because of the user-implied trust in search results. A Forrester research study conducted in 2008 showed that 50 percent of Internet users trust content delivered by search engines. It’s no surprise that cyber criminals have been using malicious search results as a main monetization stream.

The Rogueware campaign we blogged about last week turned into a full blown BHSEO attack targeting relevant news topics such as, the California wildfires, Ted Kennedy’s death, DJ AM’s death, Mega Millions Lottery, Hurricane Danny, UFC 102, CNN and BBC breaking news among thousands of search terms and 123,000 links. Upon clicking one of many malicious links in the top ranking search results, the victim is put through several redirections and finally taken to a fake scan website designed to infect and extort money.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

What does spam cost?

Network World - Spam costs organizations $712 per employee/per year, according to Nucleus Research. However, these staggering numbers don't even take into consideration one of spam's latest victims: enterprise mobile users. Spam targeted at smart phones is on the rise and becoming a growing security and productivity concern.

Protecting the inboxes of Blackberries, iPhones and other mobile devices requires new thinking. Spam, viruses and phish getting through to a desktop inbox is troublesome enough, but on a mobile device these threats present a unique set of security concerns and consequences, some of which are only just beginning to surface.

Web attacks still a problem

This report is well a bit scary. One thing to consider, Rossini.com filters many of these virus programs at a server level before they get to you. This is just one of the many features we offer you at Rossini.com!

New Malicious Web Links Up More Than 500 Percent In First Half 2009
Vulnerabilities level off, phishing is down, IBM XForce report says

Aug 26, 2009 | 02:42 PM
By Tim Wilson
DarkReading

There has been a 508 percent increase in the number of new malicious Web links discovered in the first half of 2009, according to a security research report issued earlier today.

According to the IBM X-Force 2009 Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report, the malware problem is no longer limited to malicious domains or untrusted Web sites. The X-Force report notes an increase in the presence of malicious content on trusted sites, including popular search engines, blogs, bulletin boards, personal Web sites, online magazines, and mainstream news sites.

The X-Force report also reveals that the level of veiled Web exploits, especially PDF files, are at an all-time high, pointing to increased sophistication of attackers, according to IBM. PDF vulnerabilities disclosed in the first half of 2009 surpassed disclosures from all of 2008.

"From Q1 to Q2 alone, the amount of suspicious, obfuscated, or concealed content monitored by the IBM ISS Managed Security Services team nearly doubled," the report says.

"The trends highlighted by the report seem to indicate that the Internet has finally taken on the characteristics of the Wild West, where no one is to be trusted," says X-Force Director Kris Lamb. "There is no such thing as safe browsing today...we've reached a tipping point where every Website should be viewed as suspicious, and every user is at risk."

The X-Force report found a significant rise in Web application attacks with the intent to steal and manipulate data and take command and control of infected computers. For example, SQL injection attacks -- attacks where criminals inject malicious code into legitimate Web sites -- rose 50 percent from Q4 2008 to Q1 2009 and then nearly doubled from Q1 to Q2.

The report also says that vulnerabilities have reached a plateau. There were 3,240 new vulnerabilities discovered in the first half of 2009 -- an 8 percent decrease over the first half of 2008. The annual disclosure rate appears to be fluctuating between 6,000 and 7,000 new disclosures each year, IBM says.

Phishing has decreased dramatically, the report says. Analysts believe that banking Trojans are taking the place of phishing attacks geared toward financial targets. In the first half of 2009, 66 percent of phishing was targeted at the financial industry, down from 90 percent in 2008. Online payment targets make up 31 percent of the share.

Nearly half of all vulnerabilities remain unpatched, IBM says. Similar to the end of 2008, nearly half (49 percent) of all vulnerabilities disclosed in the first half of 2009 had no vendor-supplied patch at the end of the period.

Do you Skype?

Trojan Could Enable Attackers To Eavesdrop On Skype Calls
Exploit saves conversations as MP3 files to make detection more difficult, researchers say

Aug 28, 2009 | 04:55 PM
By Tim Wilson
DarkReading

Security researchers at Symantec have observed the public availability of source code for a Trojan that targets users of the Skype voice over IP service.

The Trojan has the ability to record audio from the computer -- including any Skype calls in progress -- and store the files locally in an encrypted MP3 file, where they can later be transmitted to the attacker.

The Trojan, which Symantec calls Trojan.Peskyspy, can be downloaded to a computer by tricking the user with an email scam or other social engineering tactic, Symantec says. Once a machine has been compromised, the threat can exploit an application that handles audio processing within a computer and save the call data as an MP3 file.

The MP3 is then sent over the Internet to a predefined server, where the attacker can listen to the recorded conversations, Symantec reports. "Recording the call as an MP3 keeps the size of the audio files low and means there is less data to be transferred over the network, helping to speed up the transfer and avoid detection," the company says.

The Trojan targets Windows API "hooks" -- a technique used to alter the planned behavior of an application, which Microsoft designed for use by audio applications. The Trojan compromises the machine and then uses the hooking technique to eavesdrop on a conversation before it even reaches Skype or any other audio application, Symantec says.

"At the moment, the risk posed by this threat is quite low, and Symantec has not seen any evidence of this spreading at this early time," the researchers say. "However, with source code now publicly available, malware writers can incorporate this type of functionality into their own customized threats."

Attack of the Tweets

Attack Of The Tweets: Major Twitter Flaw Exposed
U.K. researcher says vulnerability in Twitter API lets an attacker take over a victim's account -- with a tweet

Aug 27, 2009 | 03:54 PM
By Kelly Jackson Higgins
DarkReading

A newly exposed cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in Twitter lets an attacker wrest control of a victim's account merely by sending him or her a tweet.

U.K. researcher James Slater reported the serious flaw earlier this week, and now says Twitter's fix in response to his disclosure doesn't actually fix the problem. "It seems they've made a pretty amateurish attempt to fix the issue, completely missing the massive problem staring them in the face," Slater said in his blog.

The attack basically exploits an input validation weakness in a field of the form used for adding third-party Twitter clients, such as TweetDeck and Twitterific. The form doesn't fully vet what can go in that box, Slater said, so an attacker can put JavaScript tags there as well as raw HTML code, for instance. "Whatever I type in that box will appear at the end of my tweets," he blogged in a follow-up post. "Anyone who sees that tweet will then be viewing that code."

The embedded code can perform any tasks the Twitter Website can perform, including redirecting a user to another page, sending tweets, changing account information, or adding or deleting followers, he said.

"Simply by seeing one of these tweets, code can be run inside your browser impersonating you and doing anything that your browser can do. Perhaps it may simply redirect you to a pornographic website? Or maybe delete all of your tweets? Send a message to all of your friends? Maybe it would delete all of your followers, or worse still, just send the details needed to log in to your account off to another website for someone to use at their leisure," Slater said.

Twitter's patch basically prevents people from putting spaces in that box, he said, which didn't go far enough. It left the door open for attackers to put any other code there, he said.

The best defense from this attack, he says, is to run a Twitter third-party client rather than logging into Twitter's Website directly, and to "unfollow" people you don't know or don't trust. "If you don't see their tweets they can't harm you," Slater blogged.

Twitter had not responded to media inquiries about the bug as of this posting.

It has been a tough summer for Twitter security-wise. Researcher Aviv Raff hosted the Month of Twitter Bugs in July, aimed at exposing vulnerabilities in third-party Twitter applications. Among other problems, Twitter was hit by a massive DDoS attack earlier this month that knocked the popular microblogging site offline for hours, and then a researcher discovered a Twitter profile being used as the command center for a botnet. The profile was sending updates and malware to bots.

Sears has a problem!

Flaw In Sears Website Left Database Open To Attack
Business-logic flaw in Sears.com Web application could have let hackers brute-force attack the retailer's gift card database

Sep 01, 2009 | 03:49 PM
By Kelly Jackson Higgins
DarkReading

A newly discovered vulnerability on Sears.com could have allowed attackers to raid the retail giant's gift card database.

Alex Firmani, owner of Merge Design and a researcher, this week revealed a major security hole on Sears.com that could allow an attacker to easily steal valid gift cards -- a heist he estimates could be worth millions of dollars. Firmani says he alerted Sears about the flaw, and that Sears has since "plugged" the hole by removing the feature that let customers verify and check their gift-card balances.

The vulnerability was a business logic flaw in a Web application that handles gift card account inquiries; Firmani was able to stage a brute-force attack that could grab all valid, active Sears and Kmart gift cards from the company's database.

Firmani says the site wasn't auditing verification requests, which allowed him to verify gift card and PIN combinations using a homegrown PHP script that automatically submitted the requests. "I wrote a PHP script to hammer their verification server. It happily replied with thousands of verification responses per minute," he says.

The Sears application relied on client-side cookies to halt brute-force verification attempts, which Firmani says wasn't effective. "They should know where the verification requests come from, log them all, and be able to disable the verifications when they have a malicious attack," he says. "It doesn't appear to me that they had any server-side control over how many verifications were done."

Jeremiah Grossman, CTO of WhiteHat Security, says this type of flaw is probably fairly common on retailer Websites. And unlike a cross-site scripting or SQL injection bug, this business logic flaw is different: "It basically lets an attacker defraud Sears.com directly," Grossman says.

Firmani's discovery came on the heels of reports of multiple cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities on Sears' Web pages that were abused by an attacker to deface the Website.

"I thought this was notable with Sears being a Fortune 50 company," he says. "I have not tested many other large retailers, but I would hope most of them take better care than this. For smaller sites that write their own gift-card verification code, I'd expect just as many are vulnerable."

Firmani, who says he discloses Website flaws to site owners in order to highlight common Web application security issues, suggests that Sears require a valid user account login before allowing a verification request to be sent. "You could then record the number of verification requests and lock out any offending accounts automatically and without relying on client-side cookie," he wrote in his disclosure paper. "Recording requests server-side would be a more reliable way of handling repeat request offenders."

Another option is recording to a server-side database IP addresses of users verifying their gift cards, he said, as well as using a "number-used once" scheme in the verification form or logging all verification requests and using a script to shut down the response server if more than a specifically designated number of requests arrive per minute, he said.

"Security these days is less about what version of Apache you're running and more about custom-written Web applications. With Web apps given unfettered database access, it becomes a simple matter of exploiting less-than-solid Web application programming," Firmani says. "Finding holes in home-brewed Web app code is much easier than exploiting a root-escalation bug on a Linux server, but both often have similar database access."

Facebook troubles??

Facebook scam tricks Missouri woman

Beware scammers posing as friends.

A Missouri woman was tricked into wiring about $4,000 to someone in England after receiving faked messages from a friend on Facebook asking for help.

The Associated Press reports that Jayne Scherrman of Cape Girardeau wired about $4,000 to someone in England in response to faked messages supposedly from a friend on Facebook.

Police think someone took over the Facebook account of another Cape Girardeau County resident, Grace Parry, changed the password so she couldn't get to her account, and send messages saying she and her husband were stranded in London and needed money.

Scherrman, a dentist, said Parry and her minister husband went on mission trips, so she didn't think it unusual that they would be in England, or might need money till they could get home.

Parry, who hadn't traveled to England in years, eventually tried to access her account to warn other friends but couldn't, the AP reported. She asked Facebook to suspend her account, and her husband posted warnings about the scam, including one Scherrman received after she'd sent the money.

The police said people should remember to change their passwords often for Facebook and other online services, and to be careful about posting personal information.
Submitted by Greg Hack on September 3, 2009 - 7:19am.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

New virus on the net today!

A new virus on the net watch out for an e-mail from DHL do not open that tracking code attachment. The attachment has a virus!