Create a mirror of a website with Wget

April 23, 2008 – 5:38 AM

GNU’s wget command line program for downloading is very popular, and not without reason. While you can use it simply to retrieve a single file from a server, it is much more powerful than that and offers many more features.

One of the more advanced features in wget is the mirror feature. This allows you to create a complete local copy of a website, including any stylesheets, supporting images and other support files. All the (internal) links will be followed and downloaded as well (and their resources), until you have a complete copy of the site on your local machine.

In its most basic form, you use the mirror functionality like so:

$ wget -m http://www.example.com/

There are several issues you might have with this approach, however.

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Live Mesh Technology Preview Announced

April 23, 2008 – 4:48 AM

Today Microsoft is unveiling a technology preview to a really neat new software+services platform called Live Mesh. Live Mesh is a brand new platform that helps your devices act together through the internet enabling users such as you and me to manage, access, and share their files and applications from nearly anywhere. By bringing user’s files, applications, and devices together along with the combination of social networking (such as with news feeds) – Live Mesh creates a unique platform experience.

First and foremost Live Mesh is a new platform.  The first phase of the technology preview process provides a foundational experience that exposes core concepts and functionality of the platform.  In the near future developers can expect to be able to take advantage of Live Mesh to extend their software to the Web, and their services to the desktop and devices.

Today’s technology preview is a pre-Beta release designed to get early feedback to make the platform even better.

I’ve been lucky to be given the chance to play with Live Mesh for the last couple weeks. I’ve had a great experience with Live Mesh so far and thought I’d share my experiences with you.

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Protect Yourself From PC Security Pitfalls

April 23, 2008 – 4:45 AM

Our columnist shows you how to get rid of spyware, shrug off spam, and stay safe on unsecured public networks.

Viruses, spyware, and worms. Oh, my!

We all know the dangers inherent in accessing the Internet, and we all take precautions. Yet our PCs still occasionally get infected because we can’t know everything.

Here I’ll show you how to rid your PC of nefarious, spyware-infected programs, explain why you sometimes receive strange e-mail from your own address, and teach you how to stay safe on unsecured public wireless networks.

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New Ultimate Extras Released

April 23, 2008 – 4:41 AM

If you’re running Windows Vista Ultimate and noticed two new Ultimate Extras have shown up on Windows Update – don’t worry, your eyes do not deceive! Today we released two new Ultimate Extras: Windows Sound Schemes and Windows DreamScene Content Pack #3.

Windows Sound Schemes is a pack of 2 new sound schemes for Windows Vista: Glass and Pearl. For more details on the Windows Sound Schemes – click here. Brandon tells me his favorite sound scheme is the Glass scheme.

Windows DreamScene Content Pack #3 brings you 3 new DreamScenes for your Windows Vista desktop. For more information on Windows DreamScene – click here.

And be sure you keep your eyes on UltimatePC.com for more Ultimate Extra news in future as well as hot Ultimate Exclusives for Windows Vista Ultimate users.

Source: Windows Vista Blog

Kraken Reverts to HTTP

April 22, 2008 – 7:47 PM

Following a friendly heads up from someone yesterday morning, I re-loaded the
following Kraken samples into my honeypot:

1d51463150db06bc098fef335bc64971
65b958bf6f5eddca3d9455354af08b6f
6ec7d67d5553cbec2a99c7fbe385a729
7ecef2f126e66e7270afa7b803f715bc
8fd8c67103ec073d9303a7fbc702f89a

and began monitoring them. Each sample proceeded to update itself;
the updated binary is around 160KB, given a random name and
placed in the system32 directory, and no longer has an imagefile icon.

The names/MD5 values of samples I got are:

26bd8e696629edba4a1d610d1062b3f1 jtliutnj.exe
36a8c8cce65c9ab46fca127de9dcc5d1 niksojrjbg.exe
b5f65d971d7362512dafdb473ef5888d xfkmrb.exe
5f94989145b4bf69cf81c223b15ec653 yy.exe
5c9274a4483ed540fd433a2cd885e561 zp.exe

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