bitsconsultants.com e-mail newsletter

August 2003

Private information goes public (again).

There has been a lot of bad news recently for anyone who keeps confidential data on their computer.

• Swiss researchers published a program that could crack Windows login passwords in seconds.

• Another flaw has been discovered that allows anyone to run "arbitrary code" (that means any program they can think up) on nearly any Windows computer. The flaw could be exploited by a virus or trojan and could conceivably be used to attack other computers, damage the exploited computer, or steal information.

• A man pleaded guilty to computer fraud in New York. He obtained hundreds of online banking passwords by loading a keystroke logging program on public access machines.

• Video data from a camera filming locker rooms at a middle school was accidentally left exposed to the Internet allowing unknown persons to download the videos.  

I've been saying it for years and I will say it again every time someone asks me: if you are going to keep your private information private, use strong passwords, implement a firewall, use a good virus defense application, load operating system and software updates, and don't use public networks to send confidential information.

Here's a link to our ten simple security tips. If you follow these suggestions, you will not be vulnerable to any of the security issues described above. 

Tech News Highlights

Yahoo buys Overture.

Yahoo announced on July 28th a plan to buy Overture Services. Overture charges website owners for each click on a link to their website. The service offers improved placement in search engines like MSN, Go, and Alta Vista. This should bolster Yahoo's position against rivals Google and Microsoft in the booming market for Web search advertising.

Cisco flaw quietly patched.

Internet service providers rushed to patch a flaw in Cisco routers that could have crippled the Internet for hours or even days. Cisco holds an 80% share of the Internet router market and virtually all Internet traffic passes through a Cisco router on the way to its destination. You may have received a notice from your Internet Service Provider stating that they would be "performing image upgrades" or "updating network devices." These messages were a calm front masking an urgent effort to update thousands of devices before the flaw could be exploited. So far, so good.

Tip of the Month

Upgrade your RAM.

The most cost-effective way to make an older computer run better is to upgrade the system memory (RAM). In my experience, a system running Windows 2000 or XP with Internet Explorer 6.1 and Office XP will benefit substantially from by upgrading from 256 megabytes to 512 megabytes of RAM. Also, getting the right RAM to upgrade your system is easy. Kingston and Crucial allow you to enter the name and model of your computer system to get a list of compatible memory. You can also type in the name and model number of your motherboard if you have a computer built by a local whitebox builder.  

Ask Randy

Q: I keep accidentally pressing the Caps Lock key. Sometimes I type a few paragraphs before a realize that I'm typing in all caps! What can I do?

A: This happens to me, too. I used to get really irritated at having to retype everything. Then I figured out a way around the retyping. In Microsoft Word, there's a tool called "change case."

1. Select the accidentally capitalized text you want to uncapitalize using the mouse or arrow keys.

2. Click on Format and then Change Case.

3. Select Sentence Case with the radio buttons.

4. Click Okay to change the text.

Selecting Sentence Case will capitalize the first word of each sentence and put everything else in lower case. Sometimes you have to fix the capitalization on proper nouns, but it's still a lot faster than retyping the whole thing (particularly if you only type 20 words a minute like I do). Other full featured word processors like Word Perfect have similar capabilities.

You can also have your computer play a sound every time you press the Caps Lock key.

1. Click on Start, Control Panel, then Accessibility Options.

2. Enable toggle keys by checking the box labeled Toggle Keys.

3. Click Okay to save and exit.

Now your Caps Lock key goes "bleep" when it's toggled on and "bloop" when it's toggled off.

You can also remap your keyboard keys so that the Caps Lock and control keys switch places. One software program that lets you do this is Keygo. Switching these keys makes it much less likely that you will accidentally hit the Caps Lock key.

Places on the Web

Abdul the Great

Now we know: a teddy bear in North Austin controls the Internet.

Joggle

Yet another way to be humiliated by computers.

Visual Thesaurus

Online thesaurus using relationships between words to create an architecture of vocabulary in space.