Managed Solutions

Joe Reviews SB10-242 Cert Report (Video)

Joe Hackman — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:32:22 +0000

Here is a review of this weeks Cert Advisory. This includes issues with Adobe products, Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. Be sure to update these products if you haven’t recently. This is a weekly feature here at Managed Solutions. If you have questions about this video post a comment here or ask on our Facebook Fan Page.

Powerpoint Tip Slideshow in a Window (Video)

Joe Hackman — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:36:34 +0000

Ever try to record a screencast of a Powerpoint presentation? If you have you may have noticed like I did that you cannot easily run the presentation slideshow within a window small enough for a practical screencast. After doing some research I discovered that there are some not so well documented features for Powerpoint 2007/2010 that will allow you to run your presentation in a window. This would be particularly useful if you were doing some kind of mashup.

Dr. Dan wants to buy Real Estate (Phishing)

Joe Hackman — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:40:29 +0000

We’re paid to be paranoid here at Managed Solutions. When this message arrived in my inbox today it was a rarity. Rare because it is one of very few phishing Emails that have bypassed my anti-spam mechanisms. Phishing is a process by which a criminal pretends to be a legitimate entity in an effort to gain passwords, identity, bank account or other private data. Here is the text of the message:

I am interested in purchasing a private residence in your country or in any country you are well-acquainted with.

The Property must be located in a well-reserved,serene,secure and highly-hygienic environment because I am most particular about the safety and sound health of my family.
I wish to make this transaction with you in a very secret and confidential manner due to my position as a cabinet minister here in my country Ghana.

Therefore,upon response from you I will connect you with my agent here whom I trust so much to represent my interest in this purchase.franciskweme2007@[hidden].com
Thank you and accept my kindest regards,

Dr. dan

Want to complete this article?

What issues do you see with the text of this message and why would I assume that it is a Phishing Email? Complete this story via comment and we’ll feature your comment as a part of the article and link back to your website.

We have a winner, David Schur completed the article via this comment on Facebook:

David Schur – I’ll take a shot Joe.
1) does not address you by name. Nobody will buy your house, or send you millions of dollars without knowing who the heck you are
2) Total lack of pii. If this was legit, they would know your address, which is the relevant pii in this case. My bank or cc includes the last 4 digits of my account to let me know the email is real.
3) Typo’s…when will the phishers learn that simply hiring a native english speaker to proofread would make a difference (maybe there is ba business opportunity here)
4) simple common sense…to good to be true = false…100% of the time

This won’t work for a real hack…but luckily phishers these days never invest in data that connects your email to any meaningful form of pii…luckily axiom 4 will ALLWAYS be true

Joe’s comment – I really like David’s rule #4, I think Phishers best tool is exploiting people’s greed. Also David had no desire to have a link back to anywhere so I asked him what Charity he likes, here is his response:

“American Red Cross…when bad stuff happens they get my money…then I can safely and with good conscience ignore the inevitable scam charity emails” – David Schur

DNS Made Easy targeted by DoS attack

Joe Hackman — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:51:56 +0000

One of our DNS partners – DNS Made Easy sent us this Email today about a large denial of service (DoS) attack that occurred on 8/7/2010. The attack started at 8:00UTC and was mitigated by 14:00UTC. While we received no complaints but since this outage may have affected the dns resolution for a small number of our clients we wanted to make this information available in a timely manner to all of our clients via our Service Status category here on Managedsolutions.com. If you have any questions about this issue please contact us.

Executive Summary of Issue

If you host with Managed Solutions you may have had some slow performance or time outs while checking Email. If your website is hosted through us it is possible that it took longer to resolve or may have in some cases timed out. This issue was only in effect 8/7/2010 from 8:00UTC-14:00UTC 3AM-9AM Eastern Time.

Joe Reviews SB10-221 Cert Report (Video)

Joe Hackman — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:32:22 +0000

Here is a review of this weeks Cert Advisory. This update contains issues with Apple iTunes, Safari and Mozilla Firefox. Be sure to update these products if you haven’t recently. This is a weekly feature here at Managed Solutions. If you have questions about this video post a comment here or ask on our Facebook Fan Page.

Lenovo Product Showcase

Joe Hackman — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 05:23:31 +0000

This page is provided to provide information about the Lenovo products that are sold through Managed Solutions. This is primarily provided for the convenience of our customers, we do not offer e-commerce at this time.

Countdown to Zero Leasing Offer

Joe Hackman — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:07:11 +0000

Our business partner Lenovo is launching Lenovo Financial Services (LFS) and as a part of that launch they are offering special promotional leasing. This may be just the opportunity for your business to obtain equipment that is needed today while preserving cash flow. This Countdown to Zero offer consists of a 0% financing, Fair Market Value lease over 39 months with no payments for the first three months.

0% Financing Plus 3 Months of Zero Payments LFS Promotion

Transactions may be as small as $10,000 and as large as $250,000
Transactions must be approved by 9/30/2010 and funded by 10/31/2010
Up to 40% of the total sale amount financed may be Lenovo services, peripherals, and software (sold by Lenovo)
LFS can finance the entire solution; Lenovo Business Partners (like Managed Solutions) can supplement the sale with additional hardware, software and pre-approved services

It is also worth mentioning that Leasing of all shapes and sizes are available as a part of this new offering, feel free to contact us for more details.

Using the proper Importance Flag with Email

Joe Hackman — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 16:19:54 +0000

I received an Email Friday from a friend, I receive a lot of Email so sometimes I don’t get a chance to review non critical business Email until I have some free time. This morning while responding from the message I realized that part of the message involved a timely issue for Friday evening. The title did not indicate it and the message was flagged normally. This incident was a reminder to me of the usefulness and etiquette of the Importance options with Email correspondence. Here is my interpretation of the three options:

Low Importance

I recommend using this flag when sending Emails to people who you know to be very busy that are not time critical. Chances are busy people will respond promptly to all most messages anyway but it is a nice way to say “Hey I know your time is valuable, there is no rush here.”

Not Flagged or Normal Importance

Most Email fits in this category, most people don’t flag messages at all or use the subject line of the Email to indicate the nature of the message.

High Importance

This option is sometimes over utilized, I’ve seen some Email users that seem to flag a large percentage of their messages as high importance. This is acceptable if it is factual. I recommend using this option for messages where the response required is timely or the information will be considered urgent by the recipient. In conjunction with some carefully crafted subjects you can provide a range of urgency to the recipient.

Here is the location of this tag in Microsoft Outlook 2010:

Check out more Quick Tips.

Plague of Adobe Acrobat and Reader Vulnerabilities Continues

Joe Hackman — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:33:13 +0000

I seem to write a post on this once a month minimum. When I opened this weeks Cert advisory there were 14 9.3 vulnerabilities for Adobe Reader and Acrobat. This plague of vulnerabilities and the related exploits that have popped up remind me of Internet Explorer 5 years ago. So here at Managed Solutions we are once again advising our clients to apply any updates to Adobe products when prompted or to exercise extra caution with .pdf files. Here is the menacing list of vulnerabilities announced on 6/30/2010:

14 Adobe Acrobat Vulnerabilities

Quick Tip MrFixit for Windows Update Issues

Joe Hackman — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 17:44:04 +0000

Have you ever encountered errors with Windows Update or had it just stop prompting you all-together? This might be the solution to your problem. Either way it is a web page at Microsoft that will provide the right tool depending on what Operating system you are running.

To run the utility navigate to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058 and click on the Microsoft Fix It icon or link:

You will have one option that can be selected, only use this option if the first attempt without it checked was not successful:

After running the utility in either mode an additional screen will pop up with other options:

If after a restart you still experience issues, you can run the utility again to access the help links in the utility. Microsoft does provide free support for windows update issues.