Flu Shot of the week

[Xanders]

The Legos way of explaining is way more sense than my way of explaining it to my friends, this is awesome

[Minkseru]

 

Welcome to your Flu Shot of the Week:

 

This week we are going to discuss the road, and foundation of your computer, the motherboard.  I know we say we think about the CPU Chip, and the Ram, and the Graphics Card.  We all know these have to match up with your Motherboard.  However what I am bringing up here is more so why the Motherboard is so important.

 

First off we need to clear up a few common mistakes.  1.  The Motherboard does not have any real hidden agendas.  2.  The motherboard has set protocols unique to it.

 

The Motherboard was not always inside the computer, actually the Motherboard was designed by IBM.  A Motherboard is a Backplane, with the basic components needed to run most of the basic components of your computer.  You will find for instance, that most motherboards have a built in panel with mouse, keyboard, speakers, monitor, some usb plug ins, and the like.  This means that the Motherboard is not so much the driving force behind your computer, which is the CPU, but is more so the road map, and the limiter on the gear.  Like a backplane, which in many ways are the predecessor, this merely has electronic roadways mapped out, with various kinds of connecters.  The limiters is the design and recognition that the board knows.

 

Well then why should I care so much about which kind of pathways and connectors and all that, that my board has?

What a confounded looking question.  The electronic world is constantly changing.  So if the connectors are something that are about to go out of use, finding upgrades to your computer will be far more difficult.  I have personally tried to use motherboards with a large variety of option for all the connectors.  Biggest things to make sure of.  Your CPU is recognised, your Ram, your hrad drive, your disc drives, and if you use one the graphic's card.

 

What else does my motherboard do?

It keeps the basic settings for your computer.  that optional loading screen when you start your computer?  the options it gives you and saves?  that is all on the motherboard.  While the Motherboard may seem less useful than other components without the motherboard nothing else would run.  Those little lines are the busways if you will to all the eletronic devices on the motherboard.

 

Should I keep anything in Mind while shopping for a Motherboard?

A few key things.  Make sure the board will fit in the case drilled holes for the motherboard, unless you are hand building the case.   Also check to see what cards the case is compatible with.  These are the two biggest things to double check when getting your motherboard.

 

This has been your Flu Shot of the Week.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Minkseru

[Dark_Angel13]

Another good issue Mink, thanks for the info.

[Xanders]

Nicely done on motherboards looking forward for the next

[Minkseru]

 

Welcome again to the Flu Shot of the week.
This week we are going to talk about installing third party operating systems. I have been having some issues with installing Ubuntu. Now that I have figured out what I did wrong I think it would be helpful to other people.
Alright first off I had issues with writing discs for the installer, but I found the easier method was to use Alcohol 52% to be the proxy disc, and then mounting the image. Don't bother with opening it yet. Close the auto loaded Wubi Installer, and instead go to My Computer find the virtual drive you mounted and open it.  Select all of those, and paste to either your external hardrive, easier to explain, or your harddrive.  Regardless of where you put it, there is a file to install onto your computer, in the case of Ubuntu as a Windows user it will be WUBI, guessing it means Windows Based User Installer.
From this point it will ask where you want to install make sure to choose an internal drive for these.  It will make life much easier in the next processes.  It will also ask for a username and password.  I would suggest a password you easily remember.  It will have you reboot at which point it will run it's installer.  From here you may have an issue with updates if your wireless card is not recognised by linux you may have to install a driver for it.
Hopefully this has answered any questions you may have.  This has been your Flu Shot of the Week.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Minkseru

[Minkseru]

 

Welcome to this weeks Flu Shot.
-----
Today we will be discussing that silent brick in our machine, the harddrive.
The first thing to note is that there are three kinds of harddrives. Internal, External, and Portable. Just because a harddrive is External does not make it Portable.
The biggest things to note are how the motherboard transmits the information.  with the external, portable and not you are running the harddrive from a USB port.  meaning that you are going through two parts to the motherboard to transmit the info, harddrive to usb port to motherboard. With Internal you are going from Harddrive to Motherboard.
The non portable external and the internal harddrives can both be used for most operating systems, but the speed and reliability of an internal drive begs it to be used for your main operating system.
-----
On the more technical side of things digging into what makes a harddrive work was kind of cool. First off did you know the first harddrives were the size of a doubledoor refridgerator? The easiest way to explain a harddrive is think of an old school vinyl album player. You have the discs which the album headcase in this case magnetises to store data to make the "bumps" that the album headtop will also read . I will admit that after this point I do not understand it all enough to actually break it completely down for you, kind of like the magic we call a printer, and thus for now will use this to explain it simply. It is an advanced album player that plays the memory it reads.
-----
Selecting a harddrive can be simple or easy.  Here are some guideline questions for you. If you are going to run an external harddrive can your motherboard/CPU recognise it as a bootable device? Can you fit everything you are running on the computer withing 1/2 of the drive?  This latter bit is important for speed efficiency. Also for partitioning something we will cover later.
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This has been your Flu Shot of the Week.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Minkseru

[Minkseru]

 

Welcome to this week's Flu Shot.
This week we are going to discuss a topic I touched briefly on a  while back, but never really exapanded on, Keyloggers.
Remember those old spy movies where our heros magically zip through encoded door after encoded door? Well often times this is done by the wonderful use of keylogging. A keylogger is an application, or built in hardware device that logs the keys pressed on your keyboard in some method.  For example you go online to pay your phone bill, and you log into the website and type in your Username and Password.  You then go to your bill and pay it with your Paypal account for instance, well this keylogger that is in the rootkits of your computer just caught every last piece of that. Congratulations you are now a very stolen person now.
The biggest Issue with keyloggers is detecting them.  Well can't I just run my antivirus to detect them? Yes and no. You see the biggest problem comes down to how actually approach that, you see a lot of keyloggers use modules that are deemed trustworthy by your computer.  Also some of the keyloggers are built in to your computer, or connected to your keyboard.  So first we need to see if we have a keylogger, and the first step in that process is finding an anti-keylogger.  I would recommend this antikey or that one, but I am looking into that for research purposes when I find the good ones I will make sure you all recieve an update.
Things you can do.  If you think you have a built in keylogger look for an adaptor piece on your keyboard going into the computer, look inside the computer for oddities you do not normally see, or replace your keyboard.  Run your computer in a seperate OS not attached to the one you think has keylogger software in it.  reinstall your current os from a completely updated utampered with CD or flash drive version of itself, and I mean full reinstall.
 
--update--
By the way I forgot to point out that alot of the software loggers also have the option put in to record every x seconds or so what is on your screen, and can see is in your clipboard.  This sadly eliminates the idea that copy and pasting in your info will work to avoid it, and that you can type nonsense in between parts of your password and wipe it out. 
--update finished--
 
Any questions feel free to PM.  This has been your Flu Shot of the week .

Edited April 15, 2014 by Minkseru

[Big Papi]

Thanks for the info mate. A while back a friend of mine got keylogged and lost some accounts on Battle.net (gaming server for Blizzard games). I'm curious, can keylogger software infect my computer just like a virus or a trojan does, or does it need some other type of access in order to infiltrate?

[JohnFlower]

Keyloggers (and almost ever other malicious virus) are unknowingly installed by the user. They can come from email attachments, executables, and (less likely) browser exploits. If you are smart about what you click, you should not get most types of viruses.

[Minkseru]

Keyloggers (and almost ever other malicious virus) are unknowingly installed by the user. They can come from email attachments, executables, and (less likely) browser exploits. If you are smart about what you click, you should not get most types of viruses.

They do have to be executed by the user often times yes through emails, or those false popups. The more difficult ones are physical keylogger devices, but these have to physically be installed into the machine so if this happens it would most likely be by someone that you know. Thanks for the answer john.

[ZeroPenguins]

This can be overcomed if you had some common sense to block the application from being allowed to send data outside. I personally write up all my firewall rules and don't allow any program to automatically do it by themself. Another possible fix is to use password managers (such as Lastpass) also you could use virtual keyboards if you're real paranoid.

 

Anyways Minkseru, why not write a post about using a sandbox environment for web browsing OR opening up *cough*pirated programs*cough* hahaha. Real good ways for newbies to prevent themselves from being infected.

[Minkseru]

This can be overcomed if you had some common sense to block the application from being allowed to send data outside. I personally write up all my firewall rules and don't allow any program to automatically do it by themself. Another possible fix is to use password managers (such as Lastpass) also you could use virtual keyboards if you're real paranoid.

 

Anyways Minkseru, why not write a post about using a sandbox environment for web browsing OR opening up *cough*pirated programs*cough* hahaha. Real good ways for newbies to prevent themselves from being infected.

"By the way I forgot to point out that alot of the software loggers also have the option put in to record every x seconds or so what is on your screen, and can see is in your clipboard."

 

This sadly can include what is sometimes being typed on the v keyboard.  Will look into that for topics . As I have said before people should always feel free to add articles if they feel so compelled, but yeah I know more about pirated programs than I do about sandboxed web browsing .

[ZeroPenguins]

 

"By the way I forgot to point out that alot of the software loggers also have the option put in to record every x seconds or so what is on your screen, and can see is in your clipboard."

It's highly unlikely that they will be taking screenshots every 1 seconds, also the amount of bandwidth to send all those screenshot isn't viable, hence why virtual keyboards are still being used. They are standalone programs that isn't affected by keyloggers. Some banks or password manager like lastpass have the web keyboard so no programs.

 

I personally don't touch any anti-virus or sandbox stuff. My motto is prevention is better than cure when it comes to computers. I think as long as people have some common sense not to fall for cheap tricks, than you really won't get infected.

 

Here's an excellent article I read recently. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/06/download-me-saying-yes-to-the-webs-most-dangerous-search-terms/

[Minkseru]

 

The topic asked was how to open a pirated program safely.  Which I do not really recommend, but I think more on topic and more of a valid question is how to safely install programs from online.
So this week's Flu shot, meant to post this Saturday sorry, is on the topic of safe p2p and torrent bit sharing.
 
Now first off a note for those not familiar with what or why, these methods are generally used for drastically larger files, persay if you needed to send yourself the hackmaster mannuel that you legitimately own, and were to transfer it to another computer that you were changin up to.  you would do this by torrenting the file, although honestly all of these methods require multiple people... Being realistic this is not always why people are using these kinds of files, but we are not talking persay of the reason, rather we are speaking of the method.
 
If you are going to use a torrent file transfer program, I would suggest UTorrent 2.2.1.  This is a program that I have had little issues with in the past, but before we go to grab ANYTHING with this program, we need to figure out what needs to be done on the computer first.  Some of this will sound highly unrealistic to some people but this is a hgeneral checklist I would suggest o people when dealing with programs that give any kind of access to your computer to other people.

• Are my fiirewall, antivirus, and sandbox programs up to date?
• Have I done a full virus scan of my computer BEFORE I go to get this new program?
• Have I set up a system restore point prior to this attempt?
• Have I researched the program or item in question?
• Does my virus scanner scan viruses on the attempt to download, completion of download. and when I open it?

Now the reasons that we are being so picky and particular?  The internet is full of destructive and malignant programs often times embedded into the programs you are getting.  As Angel has pointed out there is no such thing as a free meal.  Always always alwasy save the file to the computer if not torrenting it is never a good idea to open unknown or untrusted files without a chance to scan it first.  "Well my best friend Bob sent it by email!"  I do not care.  Your friend bob's email account could have been hacked or a program he got sent by email may have sent out itself to everyone on his email list.
 
Presuming everything has been going well, you have been actually reading your firewall warnings, and always see what something is trying to modify before autoyessing pass it, you should still ahe a working computer after this.  I would also suggest before downloading anything on your computer research the websites you are going to for your programs.  Just make sure to watch out for the fleas that come with alot of these programs, they bite really hard.

---edit---
also suggested by wallflower is Deluge or Vuze

This has been your flu shot of the week.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Minkseru

[JohnFlower]

BitTorrent... No. Not recommended. This client will get you banned at almost any private tracker. It is a client designed for leechers.

Recommended would be Deluge, uTorrent 2.2.1 only, or Vuze. (Note: these clients are for Windows. Linux has quite a few, but I don't think the average user would be using them)

You should also mention encryption with these clients. It is the very first thing one should do when installing a torrent client with the intention to download pirated content.

As for pirating software... Do not get them from your go to sites (i.e. The Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents). These sites are treasure troves for any malicious user looking to steal your passwords and whatever else.

Although I only download my content through private trackers, I have used a couple of 'verified' torrent sites in the past: 1337x.org and h33t.com. There is still the chance of getting something malicious from these sites, but it is a lot lower than that of The Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents. The best way to protect yourself is to register at IPTorrents.me (or any other well known general private tracker). All torrents are clean, guaranteed.

Edited July 2, 2013 by JohnFlower

[ZeroPenguins]

^Aye, utorrent 2.2.1 is more ideal. No bloatware and it does what it needs to do.

http://www.oldapps.com/utorrent.php

 

Well pirating anime usually comes with a few benefits anyhow, almost next to impossible to get you infected. Unless you're an idiot and don't pay attention to the file extension.

[Minkseru]

utorrent sorry. wife corrected me.

[Minkseru]

Sorry for the delay the next issue will be up next friday I apologise for the delay .

[wooden]

very thought full n useful info there will know what to do in the event of encountering one of these problems in the future 

[Minkseru]

extending that hiatus further and apologise for it, but as we are moving I am going to be a bit preoccupied.