Windows Home Server?????

Like we didn't have enough of technology at home already, Microsoft is trying hard to push its latests server on to regular consumers. Microsoft Windows Home Server. Yep you guessed it is the server that will connect all of your "Microsoft" appliances, computers, consoles into one happy network managed from one place and protected by trusted Microsoft security framework.

Well, check it out for your self.

Microsoft Buys 1.6% of Facebook For ????

I am sure that I am not the only one in this world appalled by the news coming out from Redmond the the past few days. Facebook sold a part of itself to Microsoft for $240 million dollars, giving up the rights for exclusive ad management to Microsoft.

Normally I wouldn't have a big problem with this type of transaction, except for the fact that it puts Facebook's value to $15 billion dollars. Talk about over evaluating the company that doesn't even make a billion worth of revenue a year. How do I know? I really do not, but judging from other social networking sites, who release their revenue figures, I can as well take an educated guess and say that Facebook does not generate a billion dollars worth of revenue, never mind 15 of them.

Also, take into account the fact that in the near future there will come a time where some other social networking site will spring up and effectivelly kill facebook, just like it did myspace, friendster and others. And then all of those investing in it will be left penniless and I will be laughing.

Spoofing Google With Hosts File

These days security is on everyone’s mind. What if I told you there is a disgustingly simple way of spoofing real web-sites in order to steal your information? This technique has gotten little attention compared to OS exploits in the media, but is far more powerful of a technique than OS holes.

The technique involves modifications to the system’s HOSTS file. What is the HOSTS file you ask? For you newbies out there a HOSTS file is a computer file used to store information on where to find a node on a computer network. This file maps hostnames to IP addresses.

So? Who cares right? Wrong!!!! Observe this simple technique to hijack your computer without you ever knowing or suspecting!

The trick is to get you to download and install my little program, or execute my ActiveX control, or for me to plant it in some shareware somewhere, a million different ways of me delivering it to your computer. As part of the program I have a simple entry in your HOSTS file. A typical HOSTS file should look like this;

No big deal. But if my little program modifies your HOSTS file to appear as the one below;

When you launch your web browser and type in www.google.com you are redirected to www.goitexpert.com my friend! Same with the Citibank Web Login. You get sent to www.goitexpert.com. You can use this technique to set up a fake web site.

Even the title in the address bar says http://www.google.com since as far as the browser is concerned, you are at Google’s web page. Try the technique for yourself!

This is where you get into trouble. If I wanted to “rip off” Citibank’s web site, I could and you would never know it. The address would still appear as if it were Citibank’s and you would try logging in as you normally do, and you wouldn’t be able to login. But I would have your username and password!

By the time you realized what has happened, you would be broke!

How do you stop this type of attack? You can obviously buy Anti-Virus Anti-Spyware software, but they won’t help much. My HOSTS file actually has several needed entries and neither my anti-virus or spyware software has ever complained about entries in the HOSTS file.

The sure fire way to prevent HOSTS file abuse is to mark it read-only. Locate your HOSTS file in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc and right-click on it.

Go to Properties and put a checkmark in the box that says Read-Only.

As a result of this you will be prompted whenever an attempt is made to write an entry to this file. The prompt will say that you are trying to modify a read-only file and will prevent the action. Unless of course the coder was smart enough to try and modify the attributes before hand.

Oh but you use Linux so you are safe from this technique? WRONG!! The /etc/hosts file is just as vulnerable. If you are logged in as a user that can modify system files, you are vulnerable, and often to install software you have to be logged in as root or at least with sudo rights.

You should mark the /etc/hosts file as read-only as well.

http://www.goitexpert.com/entry.cfm?entry=How-To-Spoof-Google

Monday Link Mania

As it stands right now, we live on the only habitable planet know to us. However, scientists have found another planet, close to us (20 light years away), that could potentially support life or have some sort of living beings on there.

Now you can boot up linux straight from the motherboard. New sites are popping up everyminute, some good, some bad. The example of a bad site is this one. A good site is this.

A new yellow pages website was released recently. Hopefully they will get some exposure. And a few other things have happened too.

Some thoughts and news

Real player is attacking IE users. Well not the real player itself, the bad guys behind exploiting different software flaws are taking advantage of the zero-day flaw of real player to attack people's computers.

Microsoft is still trying hard to gain market share for its live.com and search unit. It seems that they are getting somewhere, albeit slowly, but still somewhere.

There are more start ups doing useless and sometimes outright idiotic things and getting millions of dollars in VC funding, while people who have real and useful ideas get left out because they don't want to move to the Silicon Valley, where most of these startups start and VC's head offices are located.

Just a short rant.

Take it easy.

Before I forget

This post should help those need to customize the windows installation process. For example, IT staff needing to add or remove windows components, but not looking forward to going to each workstation and performing that task. Well here is the link to the article.

Happy Reading.

It's been a while

It's been a long time since I posted anything on this blog. Over the past few months we've been busy with goitexpert.com, and a few other projects we are in the process of developing.

So what's new with Go IT Expert? On the surface, probably nothing much at all, except for a ton of a new and useful articles we've managed to bring to our readers. And our readers responded with their approval by visiting our site more often and linking back to it. Which is important if we are to continue writing such great articles.

It's no shame to say that we do make money off GoITExpert.com and in this time and age, who doesn't. Although the revenue is not enough to sustain even one full time writer and researcher, we hope that in the future our loyal readers will keep coming back and help us get more of these great howtos and guides to them.

After all, we are all about getting the right information on Technology and IT to the people who need it. Everything you find on our blog is carefully researched and presented to help our users solve problems by looking for solutions in one place -- GoITExpert.com

For now, we'll keep posting articles and look for announcements of our upcoming projects soon, on this blog.