Microsoft’s Really Hidden Files

There are folders on your computer that Microsoft has tried hard to keep secret. Within these folders you will find two major things: Microsoft Internet Explorer has not been clearing your browsing history after you have instructed it to do so, and Microsoft’s Outlook Express has not been deleting your e-mail correspondence after you’ve erased them from your Deleted Items bin. And believe me, that’s not even the half of it. When I say these files are hidden well, I really mean it. If you don’t have any knowledge of DOS then don’t plan on finding these files on your own. I say this because these files/folders won’t be displayed in Windows Explorer at all — only DOS. (Even after you have enabled Windows Explorer to “show all files.”) And to top it off, the only way to find them in DOS is if you knew the exact location of them. Basically, what I’m saying is if you didn’t know the files existed then the chances of you running across them is slim to slimmer.

http://microsuck.com/content/ms-hidden-files.shtml

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Revealed: How RIAA tracks downloaders

The recording industry is providing its most detailed glimpse into some of the detective-style techniques it has employed as part of its secretive campaign against online music swappers.

The disclosures were included in court papers filed against a Brooklyn woman fighting efforts to identify her for allegedly sharing nearly 1,000 songs over the Internet. The recording industry disputed her defense that songs on her family’s computer were from compact discs she had legally purchased.

According to the documents, the Recording Industry Association of America examined song files on the woman’s computer and traced their digital fingerprints back to the former Napster file-sharing service, which shut down in 2001 after a court ruled it violated copyright laws.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/08/28/downloading.music.ap/

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Beginners Guides: Back up and Restore Data in WinXP

PCStats has published a guide about backing up data in Windows XP

“Sure, if you’ve read our article on hard drive restoration you know that there are ways to recover lost data cheaply and easily, but this can lead to a false sense of security. What happens when a hard drive dies completely? It will die eventually… make no mistake.

I’ve seen hard drives dropped, catch fire, make excruciating noises and simply stop for no apparent reason. You have got to back up your essential data.

Catastrophic hard drive failures happen, and when they do, even if you still have warranty support for the drive you’re out of luck; no disk manufacturer warranties the data on the drive. Your only recourse is data recovery services, and they can charge enormous amounts for their services, though often only if they are able to recover the data. In the face of all this potential trouble, $100 for a new drive doesn’t seem so bad, does it?”

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1124

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Hack This Site 2 is now Open!

Hack This Site allows people to put their hacking skills to the test through a series of computer security challenges. Users are presented with fully-made mock websites, given a vague objective, and left to explore the security of the site on their own.http://www.hackthissite.org/

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Please Stop Bouncing Infected Emails

If the antivirus software installed on your mail server is set up to bounce emails with viruses attached, please turn that feature off. Unless you’ve been in a cave for the past week, you know that tens of millions -possibly hundreds of millions- of emails carrying the sobig.f virus have been hammering email servers worldwide. Not a single one of these emails has the real sender’s address in the FROM: field. Not one of them.

The person listed in the FROM: field is not infected with a virus. Someone with that person in their address book is infected. Your bounce message serves no useful purpose and is contributing actively to this problem. Please, look at the CPU and bandwidth usage of your servers. Every email server on the planet connected to the internet is under the same or greater load, and you, personally, are contributing to that load.

Please stop bouncing the virus emails. Route them to /dev/null/ and be done with it.

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/21/2151250

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