What to do if subjected to a Denial of Service attack.

A couple of weeks ago, I lost internet access for about 30 mins due to a Denial of Service (DoS) attack.

I feel honoured that I've annoyed someone on the internet so much that they spent time and effort DoS attacking me!

Brute-force attacks from individuals are difficult, as my downlink speed is much faster than most people's uplink speed. To mount an effective brute-force attack requires multiple computers infected with a trojan. This is known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack and requires a lot of computer knowledge.

A much simpler approach is the SYN flood attack. I believe that I was subjected to one of these, as on rebooting, I temporarily had internet access but lost it after a few seconds when all of the available connections on my pooter became "half-open".

To defeat such an attack is simple. All that you have to do is harden the TCP/IP stack. See also http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa302363.aspx and http://www.pctools.com/guides/registry/detail/1237.

Foxy vs Internet Exploder - which is better?

Google Image search never fails to deliver...

First Google Image search result for "Foxy vs Exploder"

So, which is better? Firefox or Internet Explorer?

The answer is... It all depends! Drag the mouse pointer over the white area to reveal the text, unless you've come here via Paleobuzz, in which case you already know the answer!

I love Firefox. However, sometimes it drives me bat-sh*t crazy! Last night, I tried to use it to edit some html on my blog (to install the Disqus code) and the memory used by it went up and up and up, until my pooter started using pagefile.sys. Hard disk is about 1,000,000 times slower than RAM, so when pagefile.sys kicks-in, my pooter becomes as useful as a chocolate tea-pot.

I'm going to max-out my RAM and disable pagefile.sys, but my local shop hasn't got the RAM in, yet. I could use Internet Explorer to edit the html on my blog in the meantime, but I'm going to wait for the RAM upgrade and give Firefox another go.

Foxy versus Shiny.

I've been using Mozilla Firefox for about six years. It's a very good browser, but it occasionally annoys me by acting like a Giant Panda i.e. it becomes very sluggish. It's possible to speed-up Firefox by going to about:memory and clicking on the "Minimise memory usage" button, but occasionally, I have to shut down Firefox, wait (sometimes for quite a long time) for it to disappear from memory, then restart.
I therefore decided to have an affair with Google Chrome.

First impressions were good. Chrome installed quickly and it imported all of my Firefox bookmarks correctly, although it didn't import any website user-names & passwords (probably because they are protected).

Chrome has an extensive range of add-ons available. I was able to install Adblock Element Hiding Helper (which had all of the functionality of Adblock Plus, plus some extra features), Script No and Flag. With all of these installed, Chrome loaded pages very quickly.

Then cracks started to appear in the relationship.

Chrome has a grey bar at the top of the page which obscures things on the page. Double-clicking on it makes it disappear. Reloading the page makes it reappear. Using Adblock Element Hiding Helper, I could hide the grey bar (Alt+B, click on grey bar, Enter) on any particular site, but it occasionally reappears, requiring re-hiding.

Right-clicking on a link and selecting "Open link in new tab" opens a new tab but doesn't display it, requiring the user to click on the new tab. Firefox used to do this, but has worked correctly for a long time.

Watching videos on ITVPlayer, I noticed that the resolution appeared much lower than when played on Firefox. On Firefox, there's pixel interpolation which produces a much higher apparent resolution.

And the killer blow:-

When I created a new blog post, I couldn't set hyperlink text colour and the Html editor revealed a large number of spurious div & span tags.

That's it, Google Chrome. You're dumped!

EDIT: P.S. Firefox has been running faster.

No System Sounds on XP? Buttons greyed-out?

Kerrie "did something" to her fiancée's lap-top resulting in the loss of all Windows System sounds, also all sound using Firefox, though iTunes & RealPlayer produced sound just fine.

On Start >> Settings >> Control Panel >> Sounds, the Play button for System sounds was greyed-out. The record & play buttons on Sound Recorder were also greyed-out.

After many hours of unsuccessful tinkering, the problem was eventually solved HERE.

K-Lite Codec Pack 7.1.0 STANDARD version also contains a very nice Media Player.

More odds and sods.

2011 is nearly here, so here's a quick post before I go off and start celebrating.

1) Mum: She had a good Christmas at Acacia Lodge. She even got a visit from Jenny Wood, Mayor of Henley!

2) Computers: I've been doing a spot of housekeeping on my lap-top as there were some start-up errors in the System Log.

It turns out that Microsoft had screwed-up. The Driver Protection feature in Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 (SP1) prevents the operating system from loading drivers that are known to cause stability problems (for example, preventing Windows XP from booting). However, the XP Registry still contained entries for the removed drivers so the operating system couldn't find them, causing errors. Editing the Registry using regedt32.exe to remove the keys that pointed to the missing drivers fixed the problem. There were still start-up errors, though.

It wasn't just Microsoft that had screwed-up. The Registry was full of keys belonging to programs that I had uninstalled. National Instruments LabView left loads of spurious keys. Virgin PCguard left over 1,000 spurious keys relating to virus pattern updates. If I'd known that there was so much crap to clean out, I would have used a free Registry Manager!

Odds and sods.

Christmas is nearly here, so here's a quick post before I go off and do Christmassy things.

1) The weather: We Brits love to moan about the weather. As we don't get much snow here for most of the year, when we do there's chaos on the roads and railways. Here's what it was like last Monday morning, shortly before I set off to visit mum.



2) NoScript: As I want my ancient lap-top to browse as quickly as possible, stopping unnecessary scripts from running is a good idea, so I added the NoScript add-on. Every new site that I visit has to have scripts marked as either approved for that site, or untrusted for that site. Approved scripts can run. Untrusted ones can't. I like it and it's definitely speeded-up surfing.

3) Vacuum Places Improved: Something that slows down auto-completion of web addresses and Firefox start-up is fragmentation of the Places database, so I added the Vacuum Places Improved add-on. This defragments the Places database and can be run by either clicking on an icon or set to auto-run.

4) Flagfox: The Flagfox add-on displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website's server and provides a multitude of tools such as site safety checks, whois, translation, similar sites, validation, URL shortening, and more...

5) Adblock Plus: I've been using the AdBlock Plus add-on together with its companion Element Hiding Helper for Adblock Plus for quite a while and I'm still impressed with it.

Look after your computer.

I don't know what I'd do if my lap-top were to die. For starters, I'd stop being an internet smart-arse. I'm on-line virtually all day (& some of the night, too!). I often talk to people on the 'phone with the 'phone in my left hand and my right hand doing 1-finger typing/mousing.

When my 2nd cousin asked me "Can you find out about the osteopath Paul that works in the Foot Pain Clinic, Winchmore Hill?", within a minute I'd found Paul Costin. When my ex-G/F asked me "who's the bloke that was in such & such TV programme?", I immediately went to The Internet Movie Database.

I therefore take PC security very seriously. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, my lap-top has limited memory and, being over 6 years old, limited CPU & graphics processing power. So, anything that can improve what I have is worth a try.

The first utility I shall mention is one that I've been using for ages. It's a watch-dog program called WinPatrol. It prevents programs from altering critical system files and installing start-up programs & services without your permission.

On 1st Jan, I installed Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (MBAM). It found a load of dodgy stuff in the registry (MyWebSearch & SelectRebates) and deleted it all. The end result was more free memory and a bit more free disk space.

On 2nd Jan, I installed ESET Smart Security 4 (& uninstalled Virgin PCguard) after trying NOD32 Antivirus 4 which detected stuff that Virgin PCguard had missed. I gained ~160MB of free memory and my lap-top ran a bit faster, too.

I test my Firewall from the outside using GRC | ShieldsUP! and from the inside using LeakTest.exe, which I renamed to IEXPLORE.EXE, to try and trick the software. ESET Smart Security 4's firewall, once set to Interactive mode, passed all of the tests.

If I find any other useful programs, I'll let you know.