BitLocker Drive Encryption

• A Real-world Windows Vista BitLocker Tip
• BitLocker Drive Encryption
• BitLocker Drive Encryption Frequently Asked Questions (Microsoft TechNet)
  
• BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool
• Keys to Protecting Data with BitLocker Drive Encryption (TechNet Article)
  
• Why won't Bitlocker read my USB token on boot? How to use Bitlocker without a Trusted Platform Module(TPM)

Data Exception Prevention (DEP) (32 Bit)

• How DEP Can Protect Your PC (Scott Dunn, Windows Secrets)
  

Encrypting File System Enhancements

• Encrypting File Systems

Internet Explorer Protected Mode

• Internet Explorer Protected Mode

Parental Controls

• Family Safe Computing & Microsoft (MSDN Blog)
• How to configure Parental Controls in Windows Vista (3.5MB) (Vista4Beginners Video)
• How to view the Activity Reports (1.5MB) (Vista4Beginners Video)
  
• Internet Explorer Parental controls
• Parental Controls for Windows Vista (MSDN)
• Parent's Guide to Microsoft's Windows Vista (The Road to Know Where)
• Setting up Windows Vista Parental Controls (Bleeping Computer Tutorial)
• Use Windows Vista to help enforce limits on your children's computer use (Microsoft "Security Tips & Talk")
  

PatchGuard (Kernel Patch Protection)

• An Introduction to PatchGuard Protection

User Account Control (UAC)

• Confusion about Vista Features: What UAC Really Is (Jesper's Blog)
• How to use User Account Control (UAC) in Windows Vista (Microsoft KB 922708
  
• Inside Windows Vista User Account Control (TechNet Article)
  
• Manage User Accounts (Vista4Begnners)
  
• UAC Prompt Triggers (Ed Bott)
• Understanding User Account Control in Windows Vista (Microsoft)
• Understanding Windows Vista's User Account Control (William R. Stanek, Paul Marquardt)
• User Account Control (Microsoft)
• User Account Control (Paul Thurrott)
• Windows Vista User Account Control Step by Step Guide (TechNet)

Windows Defender

• Getting Started with Windows Defender
• Windows Defender (Home)
• Windows Defender (Microsoft Feature Review)
  
• Windows Defender Review (Paul Thurrott)

Windows Firewall

• Exploring the Windows Vista Firewall (TechNet Article)
• Getting Started with Windows Firewall with Advanced Security (Microsoft TechNet)
  
• How to allow a program through the Windows Vista Firewall (Simple Help)
• Windows Firewall (Microsoft)
• Windows Firewall (Vista4Beginners Tutorial)
  
• Getting Started with Windows Firewall with Advanced Security (Windows Vista TechCenter)
• Windows Firewall with Advanced Security—Diagnostics and Troubleshooting (Windows Vista TechCenter)
• Windows Vista Firewall and IPSec Enhancements (Steve Riley’s TechEd Europe Presentation)
• The New Windows Firewall in Windows Vista and Windows Server "Longhorn" (The Cable Guy)
• Windows Vista Firewall Virtual Lab

Windows Security Center

• Security Center
• Understanding Windows Update and Extras in Windows Vista
• Windows Vista Update List
  

Security-Related Topics

• How to see hidden files in Windows Vista
• Solving "Windows is not genuine" error
• Using a Hosts File
• Notes On Vista Forensics, Part One
• Security Enhancements in Windows Vista™ (Microsoft Whitepaper)
• Security Best Practice Guidance for Consumers (Microsoft)
• Windows Vista Security Groups
• Windows Vista Security Guide (Microsoft)

Home

Several companies and organizations began gathering and packaging Linux software together into usable forms called distributions. The main goal of a Linux distribution is to make the hundreds of unrelated software packages that make up Linux work together as a cohesive whole. For the past few years, the most popular commercial distribution has been Red Hat Linux.

In September 2003, Red Hat, Inc., changed its way of doing business. That change resulted in the formation of the Red Hat–sponsored Fedora Project to take the development of Red Hat Linux technology into the future.


Red Hat forms the Fedora Project
The announcement of the Fedora Project by Red Hat, Inc. at first it prompted more questions than answers about the future direction of the company and its flagship Red Hat Linux product. In fact, it seemed that nothing named Red Hat Linux even existed anymore. Instead, what was Red Hat Linux would be reflected by Linux distributions coming from two paths:

• Fedora Project (http://fedora.redhat.com) — An open source project, beginning from a Red Hat Linux 9 base, that produces its own Linux distribution. While the project is sponsored by Red Hat, Inc., there is no official support for the Linux distribution (called Fedora Core) that the project produces.

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (www.redhat.com/software/rhel) — An official, commercial Linux product from Red Hat, Inc. that is offered on an annual subscription basis. Red Hat backs up its Enterprise product line with technical support, training, and documentation.


The primary result of the Fedora Project (at least at first) is a set of three binary CDs and three source code CDs of a Linux distribution referred to as the Fedora Core. Before it was called Fedora Core, that distribution was being tested simply as the next in the series of Red Hat Linux distributions (presumably, Red Hat Linux 10).

The name change from Red Hat Linux to Fedora Core wasn't the only differences between the two distributions, however. Red Hat, Inc. also changed its association with the Fedora Core distribution in the following ways:

• No boxed sets — Red Hat decided to not sell Fedora Core through retail channels. The ever-shortening release cycle was making it difficult to manage this, and Red Hat believed that most of its customers were clever enough to download the software.

• No technical support offerings — There are no technical support programs available from Red Hat for Fedora Core, although at the moment you can still purchase the $60/year update service entitlement for Fedora.

• No Red Hat documentation — The set of manuals that came with the previous Red Hat Linux product is not being brought over to Fedora. Instead, a series of small task-oriented documents will be collected for the project in article format.

By not creating a whole support industry around Fedora Core, that project is free to produce software release on a much shorter schedule (possibly two or three times per year). This allows Fedora Core users to always have the latest software features and fixes included with a recent version of the operating system.

Another potential upside to Fedora Core is that the Fedora Project hopes to encourage community software developers to create compatible software. By including software download and installation tools (such as the yum utility) in Fedora Core, the Fedora Project hopes to encourage people to contribute to software repositories that Fedora Core users can rely on to download additional software packages.


Red Hat shifts to Enterprise Linux
The major shift of attention to Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the focus of Red Hat, Inc.'s commercial efforts has been on the horizon for some time. Some characteristics of Red Hat Enterprise Linux are:

• Longer release intervals — Instead of offering releases every 4 to 6 months, Enterprise software will have a 12 to 18 month update cycle. Customers can be assured of a longer support cycle without having to upgrade to a later release.

• Multiple support options — Customers will have the choice of purchasing different levels of support. All subscriptions will include the Update Module, which allows easy access to updates for Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. The Management Module lets customers develop custom channels and automate management of multiple systems. The Monitoring Module allows customers to monitor and maintain an entire infrastructure of systems.

• Documentation and training — Manuals and training courses will center on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux install types focus on three different types of computer systems, referred to as WS (for workstations), AS (for high-end systems), and ES (for small/mid-range servers). Each system in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux family is meant to be compatible with the others. There are Basic, Standard and Premium editions of these Enterprise systems. While Basic offers only software downloads, standard and premium editions offer hard copy documentation and additional technical support.


Choosing between Fedora and Enterprise
There is so much overlap between Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora Core provides a way to test out much of the software that is in Enterprise editions.

Although Fedora Core may not be right for everyone, Fedora Core is still great for students, home users, most small businesses, and anyone just wanting to try out Red Hat Linux technology. Larger businesses should seriously consider the implications to support, training, and future upgrade paths before choosing whether to go the Fedora route or sign on with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Source of Information : Red Hat Linux Fedora For Dummies

Malware E-Mails Disguised as Invoices and E-Tickets contain the GenericDownloader.ab Trojan

Recent reports from McAfee have stated that malware is being distributed through e-mail in the form of airline e-tickets and UPS invoices. The price of air travel is already outrageous so you want to be sure your purchased airline ticket is secured right?. If you are one of the lucky ones and recently purchased an airline ticket, 9 times out of 10 you are going to open a received email related to an “airline ticket”. What better way to spread malware onto computer users than using a fake airline e-ticket, airline titled email or even a UPS invoice?

Through further examination of these types of emails, it was confirmed that the threats are variants of a downloader called Generic Downloader.ab which is classified as a Trojan infection. Because many Trojans are manually installed they can utilize emails such as in the case of fake e-tickets and UPS invoice messages. Once the Generic Downloader.ab trojan is installed it attempts to access a remote host (81.29.241.20) where it could send your personal information to a remote user or hacker.

Have you ever had UPS or FedEx mess up a shipment of yours?

Don’t you want to be sure that any package shipped to you makes it to the correct address? If so, you are going to open an email that says something about your package not getting delivered. The fake UPS invoice email states something similar to “your last shipment could not be delivered because the address was wrong”. The email further explains that you must print out the invoice and bring it to your local UPS office to obtain your package. The invoice itself is the malware. When you access it to print it off the infection is executed.

The fake airline ticket or e-ticket email says in the body of the message that an account has been created for your credit card used for purchase of tickets. Now common since would tell you that you did not recently purchase an airline ticket. But if you did, you may easily become a victim of this scam. This time the attachment looks like it is in the form of a MS Word document. Once you click on this attachment it is too late, you must now remove this Trojan.

Tip: The danger of opening email attachments or accessing links on suspicious emails has always been a serious threat. You must remember hackers are always changing ways to trick you and you must stay ahead of the game to avoid damaging your computer or exposing your personal information.

Have you ever received an email and clicked on an attachment and nothing happened? Did you later find out that you were infected with a Trojan?

For sure, most of us will not be content with the current PC configuration that we have. Depending on the length of time that we have had our personal computers, we are bound to want more in terms of speed and features of personal computers offered in the market. But the real question is what in particular do we look for?

There are a lot of options we can think of today. Ranging from processor chips, memory modules and video cards, it may seem that the possibilities are endless. But considering that these upgrades carry costs, it would be wise to determine what you really need. There are some who go for overkill specs and traditionally these would not be put to full use. Some only need a computer for word processing or browsing the web. So how sophisticated of a specification would you need?

Others tend to be drawn into tempting sales talks from PC vendors. For example, you would seek a certain specs and the usual thing you would hear is for an extra couple of bucks, you can get this higher version. Some do it to help a buyer decide and get more value for their money while others just want a better sale. When these factors set in, you are bound to go for the higher priced and supposed higher specs.

But in the end, it all depends on you. You are the buyer and depending on your sound judgment, it will be you who will be paying for it. Think wisely and broadly and work on a budget.

Now that Vista is starting to permeate the enterprise...I have started to get quite a few questions like this:

Steve, we just replaced 10 machines, and they all are running Vista. We have a 'one time' script that we need to roll out that requires administrative access. Every time we run it, it fails, and the users *are* administrators of their own machines. Know any way around this?

Yes. The reason why the script is failing is because Vista executes it with limited access - even if they are an administrator.

To get Vista to run a program as an administrator, you need the program to be elevated to full access. Vista will only show the elevation (UAC) prompt if the application requests it, or if it is detected that the program is actually an installer.

If you have not had the pleasure of using Vista yet (I am joking), it looks like this:



To force Vista to request administrative access, you need to have two scripts. The first script will force the prompt, and if accepted it will call the second script (The one you wanted to run) with the elevated administrative rights.

With some creativity we can distill it down to one script. This is accomplished by having the script call itself.

I have put something together that does just that... Just add this code to the start of your script, and it will force a UAC prompt.


'This flag is used to determine if we are being called the first time
'or if we are being called the second time with elevated access
Dim bFoundUAC
'The sSA object will allow us to execute applications
Set sSA = CreateObject("Shell.Application")

'Set our flag to the default
bFoundUAC = FALSE

'See if we are inside the second calling of the script
if (WScript.Arguments.Count=1) then
 if (WScript.Arguments(WScript.Arguments.Count-1)="UAC_PROMPT") then
  bFoundUAC = TRUE
 end if
end if

'If we are not called the second time, then call the script with elevated access
if (bFoundUAC=FALSE) then
 'Build our script command line
 sCommandLine = Chr(34) & WScript.ScriptFullName & Chr(34)
 'Build our arguments
 for iCount=0 to WScript.Arguments.Count-1
  sArguments=sArguments & " " & Chr(34) & WScript.Arguments(iCount) & Chr(34)
 Next
 'Add our trigger to the end
 sArguments=sArguments & " UAC_PROMPT"
 sArguments=sCommandLine & sArguments
 sSA.ShellExecute "wscript.exe", sArguments, "", "runas", 1
 'Since we are re-launching the script we exit now
 WScript.Quit
end if

'Your usual script code would be placed here


One thing to note is this script works by adding an argument to the end of all the arguments you originally passed it. This is how it knows that it has been elevated. Otherwise it would keep running itself in an infinite loop. In most cases this will not be a problem, but it is something to check if you do use arguments in your script.

Bonus: This script will also prompt for elevation when your XP users are not administrators:



Actually...I think it will prompt for elevation no matter what.

Finally, this method is much better than the previous article on the subject - since you don't need anything extra to elevate your script.