Digital Samurai

THE JAPANESE ARE SO PRACTICAL

John is half Japanese and totally agrees with the title of this post. Now the rest of the security-minded world thinks so too. According to NetworkWorld, computer scientists in Japan say they’ve developed a way to crack WPA encryption in about a minute. At the PacSec security conference last November, presenters first showed how to hack WPA. According to Dragos Ruiu, organizer of the conference, “They took this stuff which was fairly theoretical and they’ve made it much more practical.”

We all knew that WEP is close to worthless to secure a wireless cloud, but now WPA is toast too. Not all WPA implementations though…only those that use the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) algorithm. Still want to use WPA to secure your wireless cloud? Configure the access point to use the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm instead. Or better yet, use WPA2.

So don’t walk, run to your nearest access point and switch the configuration to WPA(AES) or WPA2. They’re secure…at least for now.

- John and Mike

(703) 359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com

CLEAN UP YOUR ROOM

Mom used to say it all the time. We never thought our room was that bad, but we straightened the piles anyway and hid things in the closet. Perhaps the same thing should happen on the Internet? You can see how bad some sites really are by reviewing Symantec’s ratings service, Norton Safe Web.

According to the website, “Norton Safe Web analyzes sites using signature-based file scanning, intrusion detection engines, behavioral detection and install/uninstall analysis to identify security risks including phishing sites, malicious downloads, browser exploits and links to unsafe external sites. In other words – dirty stuff you don’t want on your computer!”

Amen to that. Remember that these sites can be just as nasty for a Mac as they can be for a PC.

- John and Mike

(703) 359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com

SNOW LEOPARD IS HERE!

Apple announced this morning that the next operating system, Mac OSX 10.6 ("Snow Leopard"), will be available for purchase starting this Friday, August 28, 2009.

Some of the new features included in Snow Leopard include:

• Transition to 64-bit operating system and applications
• Built-in support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 in the Mail, Address Book and iCal programs
• Faster load times for system start-up, waking from sleep and system shutdown
• Smaller system footprint, reducing the installation size by about 6 GBs

The cost to upgrade will be $29 for customers upgrading from Leopard and $169 for everybody else.  The upgrade is only available for Intel processors and is not compatible with a PowerPC processor. Anyone who purchased a new Mac on or after June 8, 2009 can upgrade for only $10. To learn more about what Snow Leopard has to offer, visit Apple's web site at: http://www.apple.com/macosx/.

- John and Mike

(703) 359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com

WINDOWS 7 – IS YOUR SYSTEM COMPATIBLE?

If you’ve purchased a copy of Vista or a brand-name new computer since June 26, 2009, then you may be entitled to a free license of Windows 7 when it’s released on October 22, 2009.  We understand that many users will be in a rush to upgrade, but do you know for sure if Windows 7 will run on your computer?

Before installing Windows 7 on your computer, we recommend running Microsoft’s Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. This utility can be downloaded from Microsoft’s web site here. This free utility checks your system to see if it’s ready to run Windows 7. The compatibility check takes a few minutes to complete, and once finished, generates an easy-to-read report detailing the results of the scan. The report is broken down into sections, explaining what system requirements, devices, and applications are compatible, which software might have to be upgraded or reinstalled after the installation, and where any potential problems with an upgrade might be encountered.

To view all of the system requirements for Windows 7, visit Microsoft’s web site at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/system-requirements.aspx.

- John and Mike

(703) 359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com

THINKPAD BATTERY RECALL

We LOVE our ThinkPads. We have several of them including some that are even labeled with the IBM logo. Today they’re manufactured and distributed by Lenovo, but carry the same high quality and reliability of the IBM versions.

There seems to be a rash of problems with batteries these days. You’ve probably heard of laptop batteries blowing up on airplanes or iPods exploding in pants pockets. We just learned that John’s T60p ThinkPad is the subject to a battery recall. The recent announcement on engadget only says that models R60, R61, T60, T61, X60 and X61 are impacted. So how did we know the T60p has a bum battery? Lenovo has a utility on their website that you download to your ThinkPad to determine if the battery is subject to recall. Don’t bother going to the link unless you are actually using your ThinkPad. Selecting the automated solution “Determine if your battery is being recalled” will download an application that checks if you’re going to be unlucky today. If so, then you are sent to a page where you fill out a form to get a replacement battery. It can’t be much easier than that.

Geez…now we have to run around and check all of our ThinkPads.

- John and Mike

(703) 359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com

WINDOWS 7 AND IPHONE REPORTS

InfoWorld has just released two reports from their “Deep Dive” series. One report is on Windows 7 and the other deals with the iPhone. Both reports feature the results of hands-on-testing from InfoWorld’s Independent Test Center. Think of it as Consumer’s Report for high technology.

The Windows 7 report will be of interest to those considering moving forward with the upgrade to the latest operating system. InfoWorld has examined the performance of the new OS, changes to the user interface and the security capabilities. Of particular value is the tool to check for a PC’s compatibility with Windows 7.

The iPhone report explores the use of the iPhone in a business context. There is new support for Microsoft’s ActiveSync in the latest iPhone 3.0 operating system, which InfoWorld cranks though its paces. The report also compares the iPhone, RIM BlackBerry and the Palm Pre. After reading the report and the blog post on Ride the Lightning, you may have second thoughts about using the iPhone in a business setting, but we’ll leave that decision to you.

- John and Mike

(703) 359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com

SAY IT ISN’T SO

Sometimes you just wonder what people were thinking. Why would you buy a technology and not really buy the technology? That’s what appears to have happened here. Back in 2005, eBay purchased Skype for billions of dollars. The actual amount was dependant on how Skype performed over the years. Now we find out that eBay didn’t really “buy” Skype at all. The problem is that Skype depends on key technology that is licensed from third parties. No license…no Skype. Shocker that the owners of the key technology are the original founders and ex-owners of Skype. Didn’t anybody at eBay think this was a problem?

Now there is a court battle over the licensing terms for this key piece of technology. Trial is scheduled for June 2010. eBay may have to change the way Skype works or shut it down if it loses the case.

We (and 480+ million of our closest friends) love Skype for its efficiency, speed, capabilities and cost. Who knows what’s going to happen here, but you better start planning for alternatives if you use Skype on a regular basis.

- John and Mike

(703) 359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com

OUTLOOK SEND ASSISTANT

We attended a webinar where our friend and colleague, Donna Payne (President and Founder of PayneGroup), demonstrated a new product that will be a must have utility for every Outlook user. It’s simple and elegant and works like a charm. Essentially, it is an add-in for Outlook that protects users from themselves. So what does this wonder product do? Here are some of the features.

• Determines if there is an external e-mail address contained in the TO, CC or BCC recipient list; confirms if the user would like to edit the e-mail or continue sending. (BCC works with internal or external addresses).
• Notify recipient of BCC status and prevent related disclosure.
• Checks for Firm Distribution Lists to verify that the user meant to include them in their e-mail.
• Designate Global Address List (GAL) Distribution Lists as automatically trusted.
• Any GAL Distribution List can be set up to prompt with a desired message that you can specify. For example, if you have a Distribution List that goes to the entire firm, Outlook Send Assistant can prompt the user to verify that they really want to send their message to the entire firm.
• Can also prompt the user whether they would like to include any kind of disclaimer, message directing users to their website, etc., and place the appropriate text at the bottom of the e-mail message.

• Detect Reply To All usage and prompt the user by asking if they would actually like to reply to all recipients (customizable with any firm-specific language).

Outlook Send Assistant works within Outlook 2000 and above. Some of the features, such as the disclaimer message, require that Outlook be configured with HTML type messages. That doesn’t bother us since that’s how we’re already configured. The cost is $15-$40 per seat depending on the number of licenses purchased.

We think Donna hit another one out of the park with this utility. You can get Outlook Send Assistant by contacting the PayneGroup at 888.467.2963. While you are ordering Outlook Send Assistant, be sure to get a copy of Metadata Assistant as well if you don’t already have one. This is by far our favorite metadata-scrubber.

- John and Mike

(703) 359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com

MICROHOO - AND THEN THERE WERE TWO

Yahoo has finally bowed out of the search engine game, coming to a search and advertising deal with Microsoft last week. A deal was finally reached after two years of intense, back and forth negotiating between the two sometime friends, sometime rivals. With the deal in place, Microsoft may finally be able to make up ground against search engine leader Google, while leaving Yahoo to focus on providing better content to its followers.

Although the Yahoo search engine won't disappear altogether, it has outsourced this function to Microsoft. Microsoft will be responsible for meshing the two search engine technologies together to provide Web surfers with an alternative to Google.

With the release of Bing, Microsoft's newly revamped search engine, and the acquisition of Yahoo's search engine, Microsoft may have the necessary ammunition to put a chink in the armor of the almighty Google. What search engine will you use?

To learn more about Microsoft's acquisition of Yahoo, visit http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10298708-75.html?tag=newsLeadStoriesArea.1

- John and Mike

(703) 359-0700
digitalsamurai@senseient.com
www.senseient.com