Monday, April 13, 2009

My Nerdy Firefox Post

I know, I know, I have not posted in a LONG time. I have been somewhat busy, and too be fair, I hardly post on my Twitter account either. Since I am finally back at my SysAdmin position, I thought I would post something that has happened to me in the past week that has forced me to work with what I am allowed to and do my job.

Last Monday I was talking with some guys at the office while we waited for changes to their Web site to get uploaded. I went to one site, Failblog.org, whom with I have an RSS feed, so I pulled up their site to let the video load. Now I know I may have gotten the following malware/trojan installer from some other site on the Web, I just do not surf that often. Before I knew it, I had AntiSpy 2009 on my system, which installs trojan.vundo, at the very least.

So I then re-imaged my PC, and decided that I would finally run my browser in a great little program called Sandboxie from here on out. I will not get into the technical specifics, if you are curious here is their home on the Web - http://www.sandboxie.com/. Now my browser is running in a sandbox environment, and I can still use all of my Firefox extensions, which I will list momentarily. Not to mention I can download files and move them out of the sandbox, at my request!

I used this program in the past to look at Web sites if I had to reprimand someone for looking at obscene material, or check out Phishing sites. I feel safe to browse and have even gotten some people here at work to use it all the time. It does work with any software, so check it out!

I am finally starting to use Firefox for more than just my browsing needs, so I thought I would list what add-ons I use, just in case anyone out there is interested:

TwitterFox - just a nice add-on that will check for posts to people I subscribe to, and my own, and also keeps my replies, DM's, and everything in a nice to read and easy to manage interface.

Xmarks - I got really tired of saving my bookmarks to an HTML file and keeping it on a flash drive all the time. I have been using Xmarks for several months now, and I could not be happier. Everything is uploaded to an Xmark server which I have a FREE account with, and I can upload, download, sync, and everything with no issues. I still keep one HTML file for backup purposes, but having all my bookmarks at the ready on any machine I have the add-on installed is absolutely brilliant.

McAfee Site Advisor - I cannot stand their Anti-Virus software, same goes for Norton, but I do enjoy Site Advisor, which I use exclusively at work. At home I have AVG Anti-Virus installed, light weight and free mind you, and they have their own version of this software. Basically, it checks sites you search for in Google, Yahoo!, etc, and places a green check mark, red 'x', or '?' to let you know whether it is safe, unsafe, or unknown. Very handy if you are searching for anything really.

No Script - A nice add-on that lets you control what scripts, Java, etc. are executed, by giving you the option to allow certain sites access or blocking them outright. I had to modify some settings so I could hide all the pop-up questions this generated, and once you have your trusted site base built up it really is not as bothersome. This one you will have to install from their site, I at least did not find it in the Mozilla add-on search - http://noscript.net/

Firekeeper - This one I learned about at www.hackthissite.org, and I will just post what the Firekeeper site has to say about it, "Firekeeper is an Intrusion Detection and Prevention System for Firefox. It is able to detect, block and warn the user about malicious sites. Firekeeper uses flexible rules similar to Snort ones to describe browser based attack attempts. Rules can also be used to effectively filter different kinds of unwanted content." Head there to check out what you can and cannot do with this add-on - http://firekeeper.mozdev.org/ . This one you have to install manually as well, as you will not find it in the add-on search that Mozilla provides.

So for you Firefox fans out there I hope this helps you some. I am still not a big fan of IE, but here at work most sites the University makes is designed for IE. At least now when I browse with IE I use Sandboxie, that makes me feel a little better anyway.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Why not to do LSD

I found out about Mark Gormley at holytaco and that video blew my mind. I did a youtube search for him and found Little Wings...and then this gem, Beginnings. I think one of the things I love most about Mark is how he always looks like he just got off of work at Office Depot. He almost looks like the crazy uncle you don't want to be in the room alone with on Christmas, but hey, far be it for me to ruin what this guys loves doing. Oh, and he is Canadian! Enjoy!