Create strong passwords

I found this article on Microsoft Online Safety and wanted to share it with those who are interested in this topic.

Strong passwords are important protections to help you have safer online transactions.

Keys to password strength: length and complexity

An ideal password is long and has letters, punctuation, symbols, and numbers.

• Whenever possible, use at least 14 characters or more.
• The greater the variety of characters in your password, the better.
• Use the entire keyboard, not just the letters and characters you use or see most often.

Create a strong password you can remember

There are many ways to create a long, complex password. Here is one way that may make remembering it easier:

What to do Suggestion Example Start with a sentence or two (about 10 words total). Think of something meaningful to you. Long and complex passwords are safest. I keep mine secret. (10 words) Turn your sentences into a row of letters. Use the first letter of each word. lacpasikms (10 characters) Add complexity. Make only the letters in the first half of the alphabet uppercase. lACpAsIKMs (10 characters) Add length with numbers. Put two numbers that are meaningful to you between the two sentences. lACpAs56IKMs (12 characters) Add length with punctuation. Put a punctuation mark at the beginning. ?lACpAs56IKMs (13 characters) Add length with symbols. Put a symbol at the end. ?lACpAs56IKMs" (14 characters)

Test your password with a password checker

A password checker evaluates your password's strength automatically. Try our secure password checker.

Protect your passwords from prying eyes

• The easiest way to "remember" passwords is to write them down.
  It is okay to write passwords down, but keep them secure. See 5 tips to keep your passwords secret.

Common password pitfalls to avoid

Cyber criminals use sophisticated tools that can rapidly decipher passwords.

Avoid creating passwords using:

• Dictionary words in any language.
  Words in all languages are vulnerable.
• Words spelled backwards, common misspellings, and abbreviations.
  Words in all languages are vulnerable.
• Sequences or repeated characters.
  Examples: 12345678, 222222, abcdefg, or adjacent letters on your keyboard (qwerty).
• Personal information.
  Your name, birthday, driver's license, passport number, or similar information.

5 Tips to help keep your Passwords Secret

Form Microsoft Online Safety:

Treat your passwords with as much care as you treat the information that they protect.

Use strong passwords to log on to your computer and to any site where you enter your credit card number, or any financial or personal information—including social networking sites.

1. Never provide your password over e-mail or in response to an e-mail request.
   • Internet "phishing" scams use fraudulent e-mail messages to entice you to reveal your user names and passwords, steal your identity, and more. Learn more about phishing scams and how to deal with online fraud.
2. Do not type passwords on computers that you do not control
   • Computers such as those in Internet cafes, computer labs, kiosk systems, conferences, and airport lounges should be considered unsafe for any personal use other than anonymous Internet browsing.
   • Cyber criminals can purchase keystroke logging devices which gather information typed on a computer, including passwords.
3. Don't reveal passwords to others
   • Keep your passwords hidden from friends or family members (especially children) who could pass them on to other, less trustworthy individuals.
4. Protect any recorded passwords
   • Don't store passwords on a file in your computer, because criminals will look there first.
   • Keep your record of the passwords you use in a safe, secure place.
5. Use more than one password
   • Use different passwords for different Web sites and services.

PS Tools

For Systems Administrators and IT Helpdesks, PSTools are great utilities they can make use of to locally or remotely manage their systems (desktops and servers).

Here are tools included in the PsTools suite, which are downloadable as a package. The PsTools suite can be downloaded Here (PSTOOLS Suite)

(Note: Click on each tool to see how it is used)

• PsExec - execute processes remotely
• PsFile - shows files opened remotely
• PsGetSid - display the SID of a computer or a user
• PsInfo - list information about a system
• PsKill - kill processes by name or process ID
• PsList - list detailed information about processes
• PsLoggedOn - see who's logged on locally and via resource sharing (full source is included)
• PsLogList - dump event log records
• PsPasswd - changes account passwords
• PsService - view and control services
• PsShutdown - shuts down and optionally reboots a computer
• PsSuspend - suspends processes
• PsUptime - shows you how long a system has been running since its last reboot (PsUptime's functionality has been incorporated into PsInfo)

The PsTools download package includes an HTML help file with complete usage information for all the tools.

Switching User in Mac OS X

In Mac OS X, there feature called Fast User Switching allows you to simultaneously log into two or more OS X accounts on one computer, and switch quickly between them. Unlike Windows Vista or Windows 7, this feature is not turned on by default on Mac OS X.

Here are the steps enable Fast User Switching:

1. From the Apple menu, select System Preferences... .
2. In System Preferences, from the View menu, select Accounts
3. If the padlock in the bottom left-hand corner of the window is closed, click it and authenticate with an administrator account.
4. On the bottom left side of the window, click Login Options.
5. On the right side of the window, check Show fast user switching menu as: (Mac OS X 10.6) or Enable fast user switching (Mac OS X 10.5 and earlier). If a sheet then drops down, click OK. Choose Name, Short name, or Icon to determine how the user switching icon appears in the menu bar.
6. To log into a different account, click the fast user switching icon in the menu bar, and from the pull-down menu that appears, select the account you wish to log into.
7. When prompted, provide the password for the account. It may take a moment for the login process to complete. After this, the screen will rotate and the other account will become dominant.

The drawback of this feature is that each user logged into a system eats up memory and the more applications open for each user, the more likely the system will swap stuff into virtual memory and system performance will suffer.

Capturing Screen Shot with Mac OS X

There are several commands (keyboard combinations) on the Mac that you can use to take snapshots of the screen:

• Command-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Shift-4: then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it as a file on the desktop
• Command-Control-Shift-3: Take a screenshot of the screen, and save it to the clipboard
• Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: Take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard
• Command-Control-Shift-4, then space, then click a window: Take a screenshot of a window and save it to the clipboard

In Leopard, the following keys can be held down while selecting an area (via Command-Shift-4 or Command-Control-Shift-4):

• Space, to lock the size of the selected region and instead move it when the mouse moves
• Shift, to resize only one edge of the selected region
• Option, to resize the selected region with its center as the anchor point

Installing Checkpoint SecureClient on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

I recently upgraded my Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) to 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Since I am a heavy Checkpoint SecureClient user, the first I did after the installation of the new OS was to try to install Checkpoint SecureClient. My first surprise was that when I went to Checkpoint website, I found out that there was no SecureClient for Snow Leopard (only for 10.5). I however went ahead and downloaded the 10.5 version but when I tried to run it: "BANG" -- I received I message saying that the application cannot be installed on this computer. I did not know what to do but I quickly found a way around. Thanks to Sysadmins-World

There are few steps to follow in the process of getting SecureClient works on Mac OS 10.6. Please, make sure you follow all the steps described here.

STEP 1:  DOWNLOAD, EDIT AND INSTALL SECURECLIENT FOR MAC OS 10.5

A - Download the SecureClient

1. Go to Checkpoint website and download SecureClient for Mac OS 10.5
2. Extract (unzip) the Package and try to run it. You will get an error message. But do nor worry! Go to point (B) below

B - Edit and Install SecureClient Package

When to try to install secureclient, the installer checks up for the Darwin Kernel version 9. but in Snow Leopard we have version 10. So two files need to be edit within the installer package.

1. Just right click on the installer and select Show Package Contents. This opens finder within the package.
2. Go to Contents/Resources.
3. Open TextEdit, use vi in a shell or whatever you prefer to edit a simple file
4. On file “InstallationCheck” change the number 9 in line 8 to number 10: if  [ "$MAJOR" != "10" ]; then
5. Same on file “postinstall “ change the number 9 in line 84 to number 10

That’s it. Now go ahead and install SecureClient and reboot your system. Changes need to make afterwards in order to have it starting.

STEP 2: GETTING SECURECLIENT TO START

After rebooting your system, when you try to open secureclient, you will get the error message below.

A - SecureClient fails to start

Now this gets just a bit more tricky. Apple has moved some options of kextload to kextutil in 10.6. Checkpoint hardcoded such an option -s in two binary files. This option is to create the symbol files in the Checkpoint directory. It  does not exist anymore in kextload, and is now provided in kextutil. But creating the symbol files is only needed for debug reasons, so not really necessary. Therefore I only replaced the option -s with option -r to fill up the space, because the binary file should not change in size. Two binary files have to be changed with an hexeditor.

Preparation:

• Download and install a hexeditor. 0xED is one of it.
• After inserting the first command, it will ask you for your local user password (User needs Administrator permission)

Note: Please note that in Leopard and Snow Leopard, all the download files are stored by default in the Download folder in your home drive. To proceed with the step described below, MAKE SURE YOU COPY THE 0XED FILE TO YOUR DESKTOP AND EXTRACT IT THERE.

1. Open the terminal application from Utilities folder and type:.
   sudo cp /opt/CPsrsc-50/bin/StartupItemsMgr $HOME/Desktop
   sudo cp /opt/CPsrsc-50/boot/SecureClient/SecureClientStarter /$HOME/Desktop
   sudo chown $USER /$HOME/Desktop/StartupItemsMgr
   sudo chown $USER /$HOME/Desktop/SecureClientStarter

2. Now run 0xED and choose File/Open Files from the Menu to load the StartupItemsMgr and SecureClientStarterfrom your Desktop in it.
3. From Menu Edit choose Find/Find or just press Apple-F and type in to find: “kextload -s” and type in replace “kextload -r”
   Click on Replace All
   
   Save and close …
4. Now once you succeeded editing copy those back by typing in the terminal window:
   sudo cp $HOME/Desktop/StartupItemsMgr /opt/CPsrsc-50/bin/
   sudo cp $HOME/Desktop/SecureClientStarter /opt/CPsrsc-50/boot/SecureClient/
   rm $HOME/Desktop/StartupItemsMgr
   rm $HOME/Desktop/SecureClientStarter
5. Reboot and you should have SecureClient starting …

I also succeeded by doing all the changes on the installer package. Probably only interesting if you have a few Macs to install. As  soon as I have a bit more time I could write it down here.

Please let me know if this did help!

Again, the credit of this post goes to Sysadmins-World for their wonderful Article on this issue.

iGetter and RapidShare

iGetter is a powerful, full featured download manager and accelerator and is also known as RapidShare compatible.
iGetter can greatly improve the speed of your downloads using segmented downloading. In addition it allows auto resume on broken downloads, queue filtering by various criteria, site explorer, history list, scheduling downloads for low traffic periods, auto redial on broken connection, auto hang-up and shut down on completion, and much more.

However, lots of people (Mac OS X users) seem to have problem setting up iGetter that enable them to download multiple RapidShare files (.rar, .avi etc).
Below is a "step by step" guideline that will help you set up iGetter with a RapidShare Premium Account.

After downloading and installing iGetter, go to "Tools" and select "Integrate with Internet broswers" option. You will also need to install "Flashgot Addon" for Firefox.

• Go to "iGetter" Tab and select "Preferences" as shown in the picture below (Make sure you have your RapidShare "username" and the "password" in hand).

• Then you need to enter the following entries along with your user info in the Site Manager preferences of iGetter: "http://.rapidshare.com/" and "http://.rapidshare.com/files/"

(note that it's not "http://rapidshare.com/" but "http://.rapidshare.com/" which includes all subdomains)

• Once you finish with above configuration, you now go ahead and select as many rapidshare doawnlable files as possible and proceed as shown in the image below.

• Click "Ok" and...

• You should now be able see that the status of your download as shown below.

Please, kindly let me know if this helps!