Hacker Tool Steals Personal Info From iPhones

6. January 2010 by admin.

Apple iPhone

Mac security vendor Intego has found a hacker tool based on the holes in jailbroken iPhones.

The threat, which Intego calls iPhone/Privacy.A, runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux, can copy any user data from iPhones it finds: “e-mail, contacts, SMSs, calendars, photos, music files, videos, as well as any data recorded by any iPhone app.”

Unlike the ikee worm, this attack is silent. The tool scans the network, such as your home network, the Wi-Fi at the library, or your school, and attacks any vulnerable iPhones it finds.

Intego says that 6-8 percent of iPhones are jailbroken. Non-jailbroken iPhones are not vulnerable.

To protect themselves, users of jailbroken iPhones need to change the root and mobile passwords following these instructions.

Info PcGro Follow Us Twitter Pc Tips

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Remove your Start Button

14. November 2009 by admin.

Windows only: Freeware application Start Killer hides the Start menu button, freeing up extra space on your Windows taskbar. You can still access the Start menu by hitting the Windows key, but Start Killer frees up a good chunk of taskbar real estate. You can optionally disable the Start menu altogether if you wanted to deny users access to it. Start Killer only does one thing, but there’s nothing we like better than a simple tool that does exactly what it says. If you’re looking for a similar tool for Vista (whose Start button is much smaller), our tipster sent us this AutoHotkey script that may do the trick.

Start Killer Info PcGro

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Check Your Machine’s Specs for Windows 7

5. November 2009 by admin.

Check Your Machine’s Specs

The first thing to do is check whether your desktop or laptop PC is capable of running Windows 7. If it’s already running Vistawith acceptable performance, then the answer is yes. Officially, you need at least a 1-GHz CPU and 1GB RAM, but testers of the OS have successfully got it running on machines as out of date as a 266-MHz Pentium II with 96MB of RAM. Go ahead and try that kind of thing if you want, just don’t use your license key on that type of machine. It may run, but you’ll spend a lot of time waiting for it, and it won’t display the glassy new Aero interface and enhancements.

If you’re unsure whether your current system can run Windows 7, download and run Microsoft’s Upgrade Advisor to assess your hardware’s capabilities. When I ran it on an aging XP laptop, it told me I needed to back up my files and perform a Custom installation (see below), that my hard disk didn’t have enough free space (you need 16GB), and that the laptop wouldn’t run Aero Desktop. The good news, however, was that my 1.6-GHz CPU and 1.5GB RAM were sufficient. The advisor actually checks a lot more than the basic system requirements, and it lists every piece of hardware and software you have installed at the bottom of its report. Read More

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Destory Malware/Spyware For Good!

27. October 2009 by admin.

Spyware Begone!!!!

If you have had a very hard malware, spyware or virus that you have been trying to get rid of but it doesn’t want to leave. Or it has corrupted your systems so bad that you can’t load up the OS system anymore. Well here is a little detailed information that will guide you through catching that virus or malware and DESTROYING IT!

  1. Turn off the infected computer. Open the case and remove its main hard drive (the one containing the OS partition).
  2. If you have a USB/IEEE1394 external drive enclosure, you may connect the infected drive to that instead of completing the next two steps.
  3. Turn off the clean computer. Open the case and connect the infected drive.
  4. Turn on the clean computer. Make absolutely sure that it boots into the clean OS, not from the infected drive! Most PCs have a boot choice menu which can be accessed via the F11 or ESC key soon after power on.
  5. Make sure you can see all files. Once the clean computer’s OS has booted, you are going to want to clean out temp files from the infected drive, in order to make it easier to search. But first, you want to see all files, even hidden and system files. Go to “Control Panel” -> “Folder Options”, and click on the “View” tab at the top of the “Folder Options” window. You are going to want to change the following options:

    • Turn ON: Display the contents of System Folders
    • Turn ON: Show hidden files and folders
    • Turn OFF: Hide extensions for known file types.
    • Turn OFF: Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)
  6. Take note of the drive letter of your infected drive. It’s probably going to be E: or F:, depending on the number of hard drives, partitions, and CD/DVD drives you have in your clean computer. Let’s assume that we’re dealing with the F: drive for this article.
  7. Clear your temporary file folders. Once your temporary files folders have been cleared, there are a lot fewer files to search through. This should make the next few steps a bit less tiresome. Some of the following locations may not exist, some may be in slightly different places. It’s important that you find and clear the cache for all of your browsers (IE/Netscape/Firefox/Opera) and that you clear it for every single user! Check the following folders and delete their contents, but not the directories themselves.

    • F:\TEMP
    • F:\Windows\TEMP or F:\WINNT\Temp (Only NT4 and Windows 2000 use “WinNT”)
    • F:\WINNT\Profiles\UserName\Local Settings\Temp
    • F:\WINNT\Profiles\UserName\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
    • F:\WINNT\Profiles\UserName\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\SomeRandomName.default\Cache
    • F:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Local Settings\Temp
    • F:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files
    • F:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\SomeRandomName.default\Cache
  8. Make sure your recycle bin is empty of all files.
  9. Try backing up the infected drive to a folder on the clean computer, if you have room. If you can possibly back up the entire drive, do it. Otherwise, you should be able to get away with just the “Documents and Settings” folder (”Profiles” under NT4) and maybe a few of the games folders (some games store their saved games, maps, high scores, etc in their program folder).
  10. Perform full antivirus and spyware scans of your computer. This will hopefully find some things on the infected F: drive and remove them.

    • Download and install both Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Lavasoft Adaware. It is important that you use both of these utilities, as they will often find more malware together.
    • Update definition files when prompted.
    • Scan your machine (this could take a while).
    • Remove any spyware that is found.
    • Make sure you have an antivirus program installed and up-to-date. Perform a full system scan and remove any viruses, trojans, and worms it finds.
  11. When all the scans are complete, go to “C:\Program Files” (on your clean PC’s drive) and copy the entire program directories for Malwarebytes, Ad-Aware, and your anti-virus to a new directory on your infected drive, called “F:\Cleaners”. Also copy the installers for these programs to the “F:\Cleaners” folder. You may need them later.
  12. Hit WindowsKey+F to bring up the find files window. If you see a stupid little animated dog, you may want to turn him off, because he makes searching a lot more annoying. The search options you will want to use for the searches we will perform are “Search for All files and folders” with the following “Advanced Options” turned ON:

    • Search system folders
    • Search hidden files and folders
    • Search subfolders
  13. Look only in the F:\ drive for file names matching “*.exe” and which have been modified in the past week. Simply enter “*.exe” : “asterisk period exe”, and specify “within the last week.” You may want to try searching for “past month” as well, depending upon how long you’ve been infected.

    • Run the search. Let it run to completion.
    • Examine the files it found. Some of them you may recognize, especially if you have recently installed some programs. For example, if you recently upgraded or installed Lavasoft Ad-Aware, you may see “F:\Program Files\Lavasoft\Ad-Aware SE Personal\Ad-Aware.exe” in this list. Ignore this kind of file. The kind of file you’re looking for is usually in F:\Windows\system32, less than 100KB in size, and has a funny name like “lkaljya.exe”
    • Any files you find should be moved into a temporary directory until you can verify that they are legit. For example, you can create a folder “F:\quarantine” and move them into a subfolder “F:\quarantine\Windows\system32″ in there.
    • If you have an on-access anti-virus program, it may actually start complaining that it found a trojan the second you select the suspect file. If it does, then don’t bother quarantining it, just let the antivirus delete it.
    • Pay particular attention to *.exe files with either random or pretentious names. Pretentious names try to appear important by being very close to actual useful programs. For example, a useful program is “svchost.exe”, while a suspect program would be “scvhost.exe”
    • Another good way of identifying good products from bad is by right-clicking the executable and choosing “Properties”, then by choosing the “Version” tab (if there is one). If the file is digitally signed by a company, it will have a “Company Name” property on this tab, such as “Microsoft Corporation” or “Apple Computer Inc” or “Logitech”, etc. These files are probably good. If the file is not signed, then you should investigate further.
    • When in doubt, go to google and type the full name of the suspect executable: “scvhost.exe”, for example. Examine the search results. Often you will see links like “scvhost.exe, good or bad?” or “What does this file do?” and you can see whether or not it is a necessary file or a trojan.
    • Pay particular attention to any *.exe files you find in F:\windows\system32 and (especially) anywhere in F:\Documents and Settings. There really shouldn’t be many/any executables in the “Documents and Settings” folder.
  14. Repeat the previous step, but search for file names matching the pattern “*.dll” instead.
  15. Repeat the previous step, but search for file names matching the pattern “*.sys” instead.
  16. This last step is fairly complicated, but is usually successful at getting rid of most of the most stubborn worms and trojans. CAUTION: PAY VERY CLOSE ATTENTION WHEN IT COMES TO REGISTRY. YOU CAN EASILY MESS THINGS UP FOR YOUR SYSTEM IF NOT PAYING ATTENTION.

    • Go to Start->Run and type “regedit” and hit enter.
    • Load the “SOFTWARE” hive from the infected computer and remove any bad “run on login” entries.

      • Select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE by left-clicking it.
      • Go to the File menu and choose “Load Hive”.
      • Navigate to F:\Windows\System32\Config and choose the file named “SOFTWARE”.
      • It will ask you for a key name. Type “INFECTED_SOFTWARE” and hit enter.
      • Click the plus sign next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE to reveal the key “INFECTED_SOFTWARE”.
      • Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\INFECTED_SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.
      • Back it up! Right-click on “Run” and choose “Export Data” and save the file as “INFECTED_SOFTWARE,RUN.reg” in the quarantine folder. Note that if you need to restore this backup later on, while the infected computer is running, you’ll have to open the reg file in a text editor and slightly change the key path. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\INFECTED_SOFTWARE would need to be changed to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE, for example. If you merely want to immediately restore the reg file while running on the clean computer, you don’t have to edit the file; just make sure that the hive is still loaded and double-click the reg file to re-insert its keys/values into the appropriate places.
      • In the right pane you should see a list of entries. Some of these may include Java Update, AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger / Windows Live Messenger, ICQ, Trillian, nVidia / ATI drivers, Sound drivers, Keyboard / Mouse drivers, Antivirus, Firewall software, etc. Again, use your best judgment and the methods described earlier for differentiating good from bad. If you determine that something is bad, grab the EXE file pointed to by the key and throw it into the quarantine folder, and delete the key. You can always restore it later using the registry backup.
      • Perform the same steps in “RunOnce” and “RunOnceEx”, right next to the “Run” key. They may or may not have entries in them.
      • When you are done, it is important that you click on the “INFECTED_SOFTWARE” and then go to the File menu and choose “Unload Hive”.
    • Load the “DEFAULT” hive from the infected computer (F:\Windows\System32\Config\DEFAULT) and remove any bad “run on login” entries. Use the same steps as in the “SOFTWARE” step. Note: the “DEFAULT” hive may not even have a “Run” key. If that’s the case, skip it. Be sure to unload “INFECTED_DEFAULT” when you’re done.
    • Load each user’s hive from the infected drive. You will find the hive at F:\Documents and Settings\UserName\NTUSER.DAT — load it as “INFECTED_USERNAME” and then go through its “Run/RunOnce/RunOnceEx” keys for bad entries. You know the drill by now, right? Be sure to unload each hive when you’re done.
  17. If you’re using an external hard drive enclosure, use “Safely Remove Hardware” to remove it from your PC, turn it off, and remove the (hopefully, by now) cleaned drive. Otherwise, you need to power down your clean PC and remove the cleaned drive from the case.
  18. Reinstall the cleaned drive in its own case and power on your cleaned PC.

    • If your PC absolutely refuses to boot at this point, you may have no choice but to wipe the drive clean and reinstall Windows. Make sure you have everything backed up and all your reinstall CDs and license keys handy before you do this.
  19. If your PC boots, you should immediately run the anti-spyware programs in the “Cleaners” folder. If there’s any spyware left on your PC, it’s probably in a weakened state at this point and may succumb now. Also run your currently installed anti-virus program, or try running your anti-virus program from the “Cleaners” folder; it may or may not work.
  20. If you’re certain that you have removed all malware, you may continue using your Windows install. However, if performance is unacceptable, you may have no choice but to reinstall. Some malware is so persistent that it’s less effort to simply start over with a clean slate.
  • Hope this helps you!

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99 Problems….But A Slow PC Ain’t ONE!

9. September 2009 by admin.

  1. Stop all unused applications. The Taskbar is on the bottom edge of the screen (unless relocated by the user). In the right side of the Taskbar appears a group of small icons. Each of these icons represent a program that has been at least partially started or is running “in the background”. Regardless of state, each represents a reduction of available memory and processing power (collectively called “resources”). Closing, exiting or canceling any unused icon returns those resources to the system, and becomes available for use by the application(s) started specifically by the user.
  2. Empty the Recycle Bin. Simply deleting files from the disk doesn’t really delete them at all, rather they are moved to a temporary holding area on the hard drive for easy restoration. This area is called the Recycle Bin and is usually displayed on the Desktop. Review the contents before emptying. Once emptied, the space on the hard drive that the data occupied is made available for reuse and the restoration of files emptied from the recycle bin becomes extremely difficult. Note that this will only speed up your computer if the hard drive is nearly full.
  3. Uninstall all applications that are no longer needed. When applications and games are installed to a Windows PC, in addition to copying files to the new application directory (likely “C:\Program Files\New Application Name”), some files are written in the Windows directory structure and dozens (or more) changes are made to the Windows Registry file. Most of these changes are not readily apparent to the user, so proper removal requires uninstalling the application through the Control Panel’s “Add or Remove Program” or “Programs and Features” icon (or, if provided by the application, an “uninstall” command). Simply deleting the entire application directory is not the same as uninstalling, as all the files written to the Windows directory and changes to the Windows Registry file will remain and may be loaded at boot time. Make sure that you do not uninstall any programs that are required by others. e.g. iTunes will not work if Quicktime is uninstalled, and many programs rely on other Microsoft programs.
  4. Run “Error Checking” on all hard drives. Right-click a drive icon in “My Computer” and select “Properties” followed by “Tools”. Choose “Error Checking” to let the utility scan the drive for damaged files that can contribute to slow drive access speeds. This process may take several minutes or more to complete.
  5. Run “Defragment” on all hard drives. Right-click a drive icon in “My Computer” and select “Properties” followed by “Tools”. Choose “Defragment” to let the utility clean up fragmented files and consolidate free space on the drive. This should be done at least once per week, or more often if the PC is used heavily. Some versions of Windows allow for the scheduling of this utility, and in those cases could be set to run automatically without ever having to manually run again. This process may take anywhere from several minutes to an hour or more to complete depending on size of the drive(s) and amount of unused capacity or free space. Consider starting the defragment process so that it will run over night or prior to logging off. After completion the speed of hard drive read and write times may improve significantly. There are also stand-alone defragmenting programs available from other developers available for download that may or may not charge a fee for use.
  6. Run CCleaner. CCleaner is a freeware application that can perform an entire suite of Windows PC optimizations. Included are options to help protect privacy, system and registry cleaning among others. It has a loyal user base as shown by the number of downloads (over 300 million), is fully supported and is adware and spyware free. Follow the link above to the application’s webpage for complete details. There are other system optimizers available from other developers available for download that may or may not charge a fee for use.
  7. Install anti-virus software and keep it current. Anti-virus (AV) software is an absolute must. There are many from which to choose at the software store, but there are free AV solutions that do a very good job, too. Two popular free AV solutions are Avast! and AVG. Both include regular “virus definition” file updates that allow the AV program to detect and protect from the latest virus being released. Note that while installing anti virus software actually slows down your computer, it does not slow it down as much as malware does.
  8. Relocate the Swap file or Virtual Memory file. These files (depending on Windows version installed) are hidden and are usually located on the Windows drive (usually “C:”) If there is a second physical hard drive in the system, consider moving to the secondary drive. Ideally, these files work best when located on the fastest and largest (in terms of free space) drive in the system. The procedure for changing the location varies by version of Windows, and is not detailed here at this time as it is fairly advanced.
  9. Find and Delete Temporary Files. Temporary Files are used for supporting some applications for a limited period of time and left unused for later. Go to “C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Temp” (Windows XP), “C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp” (Windows Vista), or “%TEMP%” (any version of Windows) and delete all the files from this folder. If there is a problem deleting one or more files, skip those files and remove the rest. This will free a lot of space on the drive. The Temporary Internet Files directory can also be emptied.

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Desire to Spend Money. In a RECESSION!

1. September 2009 by admin.

For a little over a year know many of us have been bombarded with the negative information regarding living and the results of this recession. Yet we believe this at face value and receive this into our everyday lives, which a recession can not affect us directly unless we allow it. OK. What is a Recession, well it is a general slowdown in economic activity over a sustained period of time, or a business cycle contraction. Well conventional wisdom for recessions is merely to survive. DO NOT try to profit or expand during times like these, the public speakers would like for you to believe. It’s impossible. Your customers are broke, and too focused on paying bills and making ends meet to buying new items. I wondering if many has heard of the Tent City video that is going around. Leaving many to believe that most of America population is so broke that they are either living in one of the Tent Cities or thinking about it. Just how close to the edge the American economy is with people on main street. Well this Tent City idea was started by the city of Ontario, CA in July of 2007 to benefit its local homeless population. When then words of this spread and now it’s being pushed in YouTube video and without knowledge of the truth as to why this was done. People who don’t know and are believing that if they are struggling then I’m am too suppose to struggle. Again this is a recession and now one is suppose to prosper during this time, it would be a crime to do so. Two things happened at the same time: over-inflated housing prices began to decline, (meaning homes were worth less) and interest rates began to rise (meaning payments on ARMs went up). There are over 218 Million adults in this country. Which means that there are over 200 million people right now who aren’t being directly affected by this crisis.

Let’s sell the products to those people!

Give them High VALUE and QUALITY! Avoid directly attacking competitors with the cheapiest version, since many consumers will figure that if it’s that cheap then it must be the lowest quality. Low quality doesn’t do what it promises, and/or if it winds up costing more time or hassle. Result ending in low value.

Most effective, Highest-Quality Marketing! Build you the best quailty website that you can get. That will aid you in building a closer realtionship with your customer. By using these social media site such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, autoresponders, video forum and just plain conversation through your website. Now we can’t forget the usage of Old Media advertising - print, TV and radio, they are likely to be less costly right now due to waning demand.

Bottom line: Provide value to your customers. And it could bring tidal waves of quality traffic to your website, if let them know about it in every way possible.

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iPhones Can Deposit Your Checks

10. August 2009 by admin.

Technology has been known to do many things that will help and release stress from hard labor many people’s everyday lives. Now I came across an article that I think is just fascinating. You can take a picture with your iphone of a check and have the iphone deposit it into your account.

The Internet has taken a lot of the paperwork out of banking, but there is no avoiding paper when someone gives you a check. Now one bank wants to let customers deposit checks immediately - through their phones.

USAA, a privately held bank and insurance company, plans to update its iPhone application this week to introduce the check deposit feature, which requires a customer to photograph both sides of the check with the phone’s camera.

“We’re essentially taking an image of the check, and once you hit the send button, that image is going into our deposit-taking system as any other check would,” said Wayne Peacock, a USAA executive vice president.

Customers will not have to mail the check to the bank later; the deposit will be handled entirely electronically, and the bank suggests voiding the check and filing or discarding it. But to reduce the potential for fraud, only customers who are eligible for credit and have some type of insurance through USAA will be permitted to use the deposit feature. Mr. Peacock said that about 60 percent of the bank’s customers qualify.

USAA may seem like an unlikely innovator in mobile banking. It ranks in size just below the top 20 banks in the United States, and serves mostly military personnel, though many of its products are available to anyone.

But with just one branch, in San Antonio, and customers deployed all over the world, the company has been aggressively developing an anytime, anywhere banking strategy. Three years ago, it introduced the option of depositing a check from home using a scanner. That laid the groundwork for the phone deposit feature, which USAA plans to offer on other phones this year.

“Mobile is going to be a bigger part of how people do commerce and how they interact with their financial institutions,” Mr. Peacock said. “The great value that we see is the time savings.”

About a million of USAA’s 7.2 million customers use their cell phones to access their accounts - either via text message, a mobile browser or an iPhone application introduced in May. The deposit feature, which USAA previewed in an on line video in June, puts the bank in the vanguard of the effort to turn cell phones into portable branches.

“USAA has been pretty progressive with this,” said Nick Holland, a senior analyst with Ate Group, a financial services research company.

READ MORE!

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Browser Update Failure (Firefox) Fixed!

7. August 2009 by admin.

Ok. My experience these past couple of days with Fire Fox have been very frustrating. It’s all due to the update that Fire fox did that didn’t really give me the great experience as it stated. First of all my browser crashed and I thought it was a normal crash to I clicked on the do not send button and then double clicked on the icon to reload the browser. It started to do the update process which I thought was fine and normal for it to do before it started up. Well after the update process it never did start up. Now I’m thinking ok what’s wrong. I would click on the icon and it would act like it was starting but it never did start. I started up my window xp in safe mode and the Fire fox browser started up just fine. So I’m thinking this is very weird and crazy for it to work in Safe Mode but not Normal mode. So finally my solution was:

Fire fox update had errors in it the conflicted with Windows drivers or devices. Firefox themselves stated they will be correcting that problem ASAP! Until then if you get an update you might have this problem.

Solution: would be to downgrade that version of Fire fox by manually searching for and find the version you had before the update. Then download it and click to install. I didn’t un-install the messed up version, I just installed the old version (working) on top of the new version(not working). And POW like a dream! Go Green it’s your birthday!.

So that’s my experience with a failure of an update with a browser and I’m sure this will work for both Internet Explorer and Fire fox. So hopefully I gave you some ideas on fixing your issue.

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Energy Secret of Tomorrow, In Your Homes Today! Wow

4. August 2009 by admin.

How would you like to create a generator which creates free electric energy? Doesn’t require any resource like wind or solar energy to function, the magniwork generator creates energy by itself and powers your home for free. The generator powers itself and creates energy by itself, without requiring solar energy, heat, water, coal or any kind of resource. This generator powers itself and works indefinitely, without stopping, creating a large amount of energy.

I think this would be a great idea to run my house on. Good Bye high electric bills…..Don’t come back no more no more no more!

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Bucklet Your Seat Belts In My Space Taxi!

31. July 2009 by admin.

Well I was doing some research and found this information regarding, Space Taxis. Wow, it’s a funny and interesting concept to have space taxies that actually goes into orbit.

The U.S. government should leave the business of launching cargo and people into Earth orbit to private commercial space transporters. The International Space Station, a $100 billion project involving 16 nations, orbits about 225 miles above the planet. NASA currently spends about half of its budget — $18 billion in the fiscal year ended September 30, 2009 — on human space programs.

Its future plans include completing construction of the space station with seven final shuttle missions, retiring the shuttle fleet in 2010 and developing new spacecraft that can travel to the space station, the moon and other destinations. Now, the government’s own new Orion spaceship is scheduled to debut in 2015. This would give new meaning to, “Do NOT open the doors while driving!”

Twitter me at @bootech

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