Posted: September 8th, 2005
I just listened to Episode 3 of Security Now which finally convinced me Podcasts aren’t a waste of bandwidth. It makes a point I’ve been trying to make for a while now: that broadband routers can provide a lot of security (assuming reasonable configuration, i.e. UPnP and WAN Admin disabled) to a home computer/network. I have one from linksys, a BEFSR41. A few days ago, a friend of mine told me he that his firewall which was his old PC, slightly modified and runing SmoothWall has a problem – the power consumption is too high which means more money out of his pockets and into EDP‘s bottomless pockets every month. He also said that he didn’t want to connect to the internet without a firewall so I recommended a router like the one I have. I can’t remember if software firewalls were mentioned… probably. The point is, broadband routers are certainly worth considering. Personally I’d rather have my own custom firewall but initial cost (getting the hardware) and/or maintaining it (the power consumption) is too high.
Early last week I also installed a software firewall, the kerio personal firewall. I did this among a lot of other things after I became convinced that there was some sort of malware on my box. It turned out the malware was just a creation of my paranoia. I suspected malware mainly because Bitdefender found Trojan.Downloader.Vbs.Small.S in a temp file on my computer. To the best of my knowledge it was never executed. Neverthless, paranoia took over and I ended up wasting several hours.
Additional Links:
SysInternals – home of filemon, TCPView and more great windows utilities.
Ethereal – A Network Protocol Analyzer
WinDump – tcpdump for Windows
NAT Router Security Solutions
How To Keep Your Computer Spyware Free – Basic Windows Security
Posted: September 8th, 2005
Revision 3
From the Revision3 “about us” page:
History
The roots of our web-based tech network, Revision3, started in San Francisco during our days with the international television network, TechTV. Our first experiences with this type of programming was a computer hacking web show called thebroken. Over the first year, thebroken received well over 2 million downloads, setting a trend for the viability of short, downloadable how-to and tech-based content. Fast-forward two years, when the lack of technology television programming and the loss of TechTV has re-inspired us to rejoin forces to do this on our own. Our mission is to deliver reliable, consistent, professional and fun tech content for Internet and TV distribution.
Shows
Systm
Systm is a downloadable how-to technology show geared towards teaching the common geek, such as ourselves, various hot topics and projects. Each episode focuses on one subject and is between 10-15 minutes in length.
thebroken
thebroken is a downloadable computer hacking show geared toward anyone interested in learning more about computer security. Each episode focuses on several subjects and is between 20-30 minutes in length. If it’s shady, underground… or borderline illegal, it’s thebroken.
Currently the only recent show is diggnation which releases a new episode every week:
Diggnation is a podcast where Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht chat about the most dug stories of the week on digg. This is the video release of that popular podcast.
NerdTV
NerdTV is a new weekly online TV show from PBS.org technology columnist Robert X. Cringely. NerdTV is essentially Charlie Rose for geeks – a one-hour interview show with a single guest from the world of technology. Guests like Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy or Apple computer inventor Steve Wozniak are household names if your household is nerdy enough, but as historical figures and geniuses in their own right, they have plenty to say to ALL of us.