SMS Phishing Part 2

Ok, this is Part 2 of the SMS phishing.

I emailed the bank :

Enquiry: I am writing it regarding an SMS I received asking to SMS my Credit
Card to some number (8 digits, not 5 digits) for a lucky draw by XXX.

IF XXX did sent this SMS, I would like to reflect that you should already
have our Credit Card number. It should be in your database. This SMS is
totally unnecessary. IF this SMS is not from XXX, perhaps someone is trying
to get credits cards number by phishing.

(Again XXX is the bank, which I must say was one of the better ones around)

Anyway, they send me a reply saying they received the email and to wait. 2 days and this came back :

We refer to your email of 2 December 2005.

We thank you for your feedback with regards to the SMS that we have sent to
our cardholders. The SMS was to inform our cardholders of our current
promotion to enjoy 5X XXXI$ for shopping or dining. More details about this
promotion can be found at our website at .
Registration for this promotion can be done at the website or via SMS.

Please be assured that all our cardholders information is kept strictly
confidential by the Bank at all times.

Should you have any further enquiries, simply call us at or email us again. We will be pleased to assist you.

( 2 portion has been edited away above in the <>)

Anyway, I didn’t think they were answering my question… I feel I should stop since they probably either did not know what I was asking or did not have the answer. Anyway, this is what I send back :

Thanks for your respond. At least I know the SMS is indeed from XXX.
However I am just a bit concerned about why do you need our Credit Card
number? Doesn't XXX already have our Credit Card number?

Moreover, the number that was sending the SMS belongs to a company call
localguru.com, which I found out was registered by a person in Hong Kong and
their website is not even working. I am just a bit concerned that XXX is
engaging a firm like this to conduct the marketing.
This is just my feedback.

( Well, that was the end of story from the email, nothing came back and I wasn’t expecting much )

This was a wild gose chase. But the important lesson is that, you can never be too sure. Even big bank would trust and use service by foreign company which doesn’t even have a working website. I am just hoping this is not like another ProtonWeb case. I quite like this bank to be honest and that’s is why I go all out to cover them this time.

HOWEVER, this does not mean Phishing by SMS is impossible. It CAN be done. And the message can looks very real and even if it came from somewhere else not many people will doubt it. How many of you would check out a similar SMS like this one? I hope you raise your hand now.

SMS Phishing Part 1

With the recent mentioning of NKF hiring an external company Protonweb which resulted in scam and undelivered work, it bought up a previous case I had, which I thought was worth mentioning…

Sometime back, I received this SMS :

With Love from XXX: Enjoy 5X XXX$ for shopping or dining! SMS "XXX shopping" or "XXX dining" followed by your card number to 90241111 by 10 Dec 05. T&Cs apply.
( XXX is a bank, which is not so bad overall )

Sound ok to you? Well, it doesn’t to me. I did not feel safe SMS my credit card to anybody. Not even the bank. Wait a minute, this is not even a 78xxx number… its just a normal SIMS number or even a prepaid card number which you can buy anywhere…

So I thought, this is probably a new way of phishing… by SMS. Now, a simple question before I go on. With ONLY the credit card number, what can you do? Most people will tell me : nothing. You dun have names, telephone etc… well, at least not even the date of expiry. OK, I am going to tell you it doesn’t take a lot of guesses to find the DOE. With common sense that bank replaces card 3 months ahead, so you can start check with at least 3 months. And most bank do not issue card exceeding 2 years ( some exception now with 5 years max ). So that’s not a lot of guesses to do. Now with these 2 piece of info, I can buy lots of things such as body part enhancement BS on the internet. J

Back to the SMS. So I decided I want to probe. I called the number instead of SMS back the info. It belongs to a automatic machine which answers. It dos not do much and there are no options. But it did gave me one piece of information. The company is called localguru and is located at http://www.localguru.com/. Now I am suppose to make joke about a company call localguru, but lets skip that and suppose they just happens to like this name. Open my browser and http://www.localguru.com/, waited a few minutes. Blank. Not found. DNS failure. Wonderful.

Domain localguru.com.
Type A
Class IN
TTL 3600
Answer 209.67.50.203

Domain localguru.com.
Type NS
Class IN
TTL 3600
dns5.register.com.

Domain localguru.com.
Type NS
Class IN
TTL 3600
dns6.register.com.

So I did my DNS search and found the above. And of course followed by a Whois.
Registrant: tmdigital.com
1508 Two Exchange Square 8 Connaught Place Hong Kong, HK HK HK
Domain name: LOCALGURU.COM
Administrative Contact: Mackay, Tony ****@tmdigital.com
1508 Two Exchange Square 8 Connaught Place Hong Kong, HK HK HK
+852 9180 2111
Technical Contact: Mackay, Tony ****@tmdigital.com
1508 Two Exchange Square 8 Connaught Place Hong Kong, HK HK HK
+852 9180 2111
Registration Service Provider: WebsForSale.com,
*****@websforsale.com +852 9180 2111
http://www.websforsale.com
This company may be contacted for domain login/passwords, DNS/Nameserver changes, and general domain support questions. Registrar of Record: TUCOWS, INC. Record last updated on 25-Dec-2004. Record expires on 23-Jan-2006. Record created on 23-Jan-2000.
Domain servers in listed order: DNS5.REGISTER.COM 216.21.234.73

Ok, so a Hong Kong company is running the show behind this. I started to feel the chills. It’s a Hong Kong company that does NOT even have a website that is running this! I decided to email the bank.

This is getting long, I will continue the story in another post …

Nero Scout Found My CPU Cycle

The latest version of Nero 7 has a rather strange feature know as Nero Scout. It seems to be like MS Search, but for media only. If you want to find out more about it, I suggest you search it yourself, since I am about to tell you to remove it anyway here.

So why am I so against it? It this a rootkit? Well, I wont know, but it is a sure hell of a CPU sucker. It has taken up 46% of my CPU while my other application is fighting for their own survival.

You can click on My Computer. And then you see the strange icon there. Right click on it and uncheck enable. Cool, you disabled it.

The cool part is that you absolutely did NOTHING. Yes, open your Task Manager and you can see the 3 NM* services are still running. They are NMFirstStart.exe, NMBgMonitor.exe and NMIndexStoreSvr.exe. So, they had provided either a buggy disable function or they had intented it to be so. Like SONY. :(

Ok, now, all you have to do is :

regsvr32 /u "%COMMONPROGRAMFILES%\Ahead\Lib\MediaLibraryNSE.dll"

Make sure you have admin rights though.

Operation Snake Cleaner

I am start to proceed to clean up my MSN, ICQ and Yahoo in that order...
Old contact which hasn't chat for a long time and presumed dead or lost contact I will also be cleaning them out...
Its a long overdue task that I suppose I should go about doing it...

Why is this call "Snake Cleaner"?
If you played MGS1 and 2 you will remember the "Snake,... Snake!!!" voice com when you die... Basically, all who did not respond in my IM should be as dead as that now :)

I discovered 2 New viruses / trojans / rookits

Just when I thought viruses is a past thing... I came upon 2 new ones that as far as ZoneAlarm is concerned, it was not flaged in its signature. I know ZLP is not hte best antivirus around, but its pretty scary. I made some google search on the info and return null. Its quite likely this is a new one and as to now I believe it has a rootkit like behaviour cos it can hide itself from the process list.

I will need time to look through this one. but being tied down to so many things going on this week, I only hope I have time for this.

Will update more on this 2 buggy if it doesn't take me down first. :)

Ubuntu 5.10 is here finally!

I had ordered some CD for Ubuntu V5.10 Breezy. Its finally here. Its one of the best linux I had used so far. Feel free to grab a copy from me anyway.

Guan Ying Zhu Flowers pictures

Here is the picture I promised to show last time. I hope its clear. There is another flower on the lower part of the picture.

Compaq / HP Services -2/10

On a scale of 1 to 10, they get -2 from me. Why? IF you own a HP / Compaq or if you are thinking of buying one, I suggest you read and at least learn from my experience.

Back in the days of Inkjet printers, I had already been evangelizing against HP simply because they are not capable of printing true black (often ends up greenish and waste lots of ink). Well, I thought HP had came a long way and now with Compaq, its probably better. Compaq WAS better on their own. Trust me. Anyway, this is a story about a Compaq notebook, which unfortunately is now under HP domination.

It was quite a while back. The notebook was past its first 8 months and then the problem happens. The Centrino simply could not kick in. About 50% of the time the Bluetooth and the Intel Wireless card will just fail. I managed to live with it for a while, but had to disable the card in order to work sometimes as it interfere with other devices such as my PCMCIA Wifi. About 10 months down, finally send it for repair at HP. For security reasons, I wiped the HDD using Drive Scrubber. I did not know how well the send-in went because I am not the one who did it. But anyway, within 3 days it was back. No,w this is the shocking part. THEY ACTUALLY DID NOT FIXED THE BLUETOOTH AND THE WIFI CARD. They claim they can fix the HDD (What a tcch support department?) and they simply replace a new HDD for me. The Wifi card and BT, they just say tested and it works. WTF? I seriously wondered what they meant by tested? Bootup and it didn't say error? Anyway, nobody felt like going through RMA again soon, so we left it as it is. The BT and Wifi got worse. In fact, I think after the repair they totally wreaked it. now at least 80% of the time it did not work.

OK, its about the end of the warranty. At least I thought it is since its 1 year from the purchase date. It ended on a Sunday, so I thought maybe they will be kind enough to fix it on Monday anyway, but I decided to give it a try anyway. I was at the HP Service Center this time myself. There were full of people with broken Laser, printer, notebook etc. I had a bad feeling coming. When my turn finally came after 30 mins wait, I turned on the laptop and the F*CKING wifi actually worked. Anyway I told him the problem and usually it like happens after using it for a while and maybe even 5-6 hours. First thing he said, oh sorry, if its 5-6 hours we can test it. I tell myself, WTF? Even when i bought a cheap piece of RAM from Kingston and when I had problem, they actually ran test overnight for 3 days to confirm it and gave me a new piece (serve them right for not trusting me, but at least they did took the effort to fix it) and this is HP, telling me they cannot. Anyway, I told them the problem is the Centrino addon card and asked him to check the warranty. Actually I know I was late, perhaps I don't mind paying a bit. Guess what? He said it had expired in 19 Nov. I G*D D*MN got it on 12 Dec 2004 and WTF happened to the days in between. Apparently, HP warranty is not based on purchase date but perhaps their internal ship out date or manufacturing date. This is outright cheating. I dint explode yet. He then told me to leaving it for a check will cost me. IF the board is to be replace, it wont be just the Centrino cos they cannot just replace that only, they have to replace the whole F*CKING motherboard which will cost well above $600. This kinda remind me of the IBM case where the M/B cost $2800 where I bought the notebook for $2400, but thats another story.

So, whats the point? I told him forget it. I will probably buy a Dell. Hei, not that Dell is bad or what, but everybody else thought so. I personally don't cos I had very good experience with them. HP has managed to waste my whole morning and I suppose in order not to totally waste it, I should log this into my blog as an invaluable experience which I pray no one else repeats. HP managed to score -2 on the scale of 10 because :

1. They cheated on their warranty. It was about 1 month less.

2. They are (or at least intend to if I let them) overcharging for the hardware. I only need the Centrino addon board but they insist if replace, must replace whole M/B. P.S. Dont think I never deal with Intel. That board can be purchase seperately at $70 and actually I had gotten a whole batch of it last time for something else, but thats another story.

3. Their tech department is totally incompetent and irresponsible. In the first place, they were suppose to fix the problem back then, they didn't. They fixed a problem which they came up with. Now they won't either cos they cannot test it for 5-6 hours. And they probably never knew how to low level format a harddisk anyway, so I suppose I probably couldn't trust them either.

So now I probably have to live with it or transfer the risk to someone else. Last resort, I will turn to Intel and see if they warranty their card. If there is any update on this, you will see it here. But I seriously urge you to think twice, three times even about buying Compaq or HP. IMHO, they totally sucks now.

To HP : Please don't bother to contact me. I had totally lost confident and trust in your company. Nothing you say or do can change my mind.

Guan Ying Zhu Flowered

Yes, this kind of bamboo rarely flower I heard and this is the 2nd time it happened. The first time was last year. AND I won myself a $1.5k DVD Recorder. Hopefully if the luck thing works, it comes to a $3k this time cos we got 2 flowers this time. Hooray.

Pictures coming up soon.

Visual Studio and SQL 2K5 launched

I was at the Microsoft launch here in Singapore. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed. I heard in the USA, they kinda at least gave away usable Standard version of VS2k5. Here, we are the Professional version, but its a like 90 trial. Well, guess sometimes, I just had to stick with the Express for a while.

There are some photos I would like to post here too, but much later cos I am kinda stuck in no man's land now without a card reader nor a BT / IR connection from my phone to the laptop.

But in conclusion. VS2k5 is cool. SQL2k5 is cool, but kinda expensive. Rich people, what are you waiting for? Lets make MS even richer :P

Who Am I?

This is a short story :

There is this hungry man I met on the road by the river.
If I catch him a fish, I am a donator.
If I teach him to fish, I am an educator.
If I sell him a fishing rod to fish, I am a provider.
If I wait for him to catch a fish and comments on how he fishes and the quality of his fish, I am an auditor.
BUT
If I can sit down with this hungry man, and basically brag to him about fish and fishing, where he can get fishing rod and what fishes are food and simple not do anyting else,
I am a CONSULTANT.

Well, sorry, but this joke was too good to pass. Hei, at least no lawyer is involved yet.

Wedding Dinner turns into Nightmare at Holiday Inn Atrium

I missed one of my best friend's wedding some time back. Due to more than one reasonor another. But when I got in touch again, I was not able to even finish my blessing and I was told one of the most horrifying nightmare wedding dinner I heard so far.

Its a waste to keep in quiet. To be couples, I present to you this nightmare which I pray you will avoid at all cost.

Here goes :

My experience with them is so bad that my dream wedding has turned into a nightmare!

1) guests were spilled with beer even before the dinner started
2) the plates and spoons were dirty
3) it was supposed to be free-flow beer, and plenty of wine and liquor to go around... halfway thru dinner, all 'run out' liao? had prepared 18 botts of liquor, end up having to bring back 15 botts....
4) Asked for extra towels for the room twice, never received them even after 3 hours....
5) as the wedding couple, that's us, were mingling with the guests, we were 'asked' to move out of the way for the waiters to bring the dirty dishes out. I tot we were supposed to be the 'highlight' of the day? how can they ask us to 'move out of the way'????
6) guests complained that when their wine arrived, in the beginning of dinner, the wineglasses had lipstick marks on them!
7) after champagne pouring and before toasting, some of the empty champagne glasses on the 'fountain' were banged into, fell and broke!
8) after the event over, tried to call the F&B guy on handphone, never answer and never call back even the next day
9) checking out that time, still can't get hold of the F&B guy, just get presented by the total bill..... overall... PLS DUN USE HOLIDAY INN ATRIUM. My experience was just soooo bad that i have to warn other ppl out there...

OK, hope you dun lost sleep or worse call off your wedding becos of me. :)
Personally, if I have mine, no Dinner. You can count on these words. It would be a light buffet in the sunday afternoon where everyone just bring food and just eat and chit chat. More like the American get-together style. I hate big crowds and lots of beer etc cos basically I am not the beer guy. I only like wine and they are expensive :P.

MX 2005

It was weeks ago. Attended the MX 2005 conference held here to launch the V8 of Macromedia products including Flash and Studio. I find that the programming part, used to be called ActionScript 2 (now ActionScript 3) is getting more and more like Microsoft IDE. In fact, many of the top designer and man in chargeof the systems are ex-Microsoft guys. :) So we can expect MS people to pick up quickly on this.

During the QA, top question came up to be "What is PHP?" I wanted to slap my forehead, then I suddenly remembered. We all know what that is (maybe some of us don't) but what does it stands for? PHP stands for "PHP:Hypertext Preprocessor". Yes its a recursive shortform. :) OF course many other questions came up and it seems pretty normal to most people. Not to the programmers of course. One of the audience (The same one that asked the PHP question I think) pointed out that "i++" in a for loop is wrong. I almost died laughing. But come on, from a non programmer, that certainly looks BS to me.

Anyway, I do wish to get some time to try out Macromedia products, but unfortunately they did not give out any demo.

Of birds and snakes

There were a group of birds who live in a wooden box in the garden. The box are opened one way and they hide from their enemy, the snake, who wanted to eat them.

One day, Bird A discovered a hole on the box and informed the Elder bird about it. The Elder, instead of being thankful, accused Bird A of making the hole in the first place. Bird A was quickly punished and banished to silent the whole issue.

Bird B is a good friend of Bird A, but is not brave enough to voice out the truth. But knowing the danger, he fled from the box in fear that the Elder will punish him if he knows that he knows about the hole.

In the meantime, everyone believed the Elder and he said it is perfectly safe in their box. However the snake soon found out about the box and started eating up the birds one by one.

A few months passed and Bird B came back to the box. There is no one left. Bird B took a stone and stuff it into the hole covering it and lived happily everafter. Nobody heard of Bird A, some said he was eaten by the snake, others said he founded his own box somewhere else.

Sony XCP DRM Rootkit Remover V1.2

Made some changes about rebooting... Apparently, its better to reboot and then delete the aries.sys. Anyway, if anyone who has tried this, please leave me a comment.

V1.2
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=9GE654PS
http://rapidshare.de/files/7806904/Sony_XCP_Rootkit_Remover.exe.html

Sony XCP DRM Rootkit Remover

Based on Mark Russinovish of Sysinternals finding and methods :
http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2005/10/sony-rootkits-and-digital-rights.html

Affecting the following CD (not exhaustive) :
http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/list-of-cds-that-have-drm_09.html

And here is the Sony XCP Rootkit Remover:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DYC609KS
http://rapidshare.de/files/7704839/Sony_XCP_Rootkit_Remover.exe.html

It works in Win NT/95/98/ME/XP/2003. Please leave any comments here.

Sony DRM

I am totally disappointed at the way Sony handles the DRM issue : By Installing a Rootkit! Well if you are going to ask what the hell is a rootkit? Its something that injects inside into your computer, then stealth itself so that even the process list cannot find it. Basically, it took over your computer. Well, back to Sony DRM. As usualy, this ends up hurting the people who bought ORIGINAL and support the music industry (well, at least Sony's industrial). Well done. The pirates never had a problem and its is highly unlikely you will find the DRM rootkit in those pirated CD.

OK, now comes the interestign part. Sony says it cant be harmful. Totally wrong. So far, 2 variants of trojans and several MMORPG trainers had made use of this. All backed by Sony's Technology. Now, when the DRM rootkit is in anyfiles named $sys$*.* will not be detetable. Don't laugh, I know what you are thinking. ANY process you can just rename it such and you have a stealthware protected by Sony's Technology. I can only imagine what else can people make from this? Perhaps a random file deleter? Emm... IF you own a Sony CD in the past year, its time to sweat, because as of now, there is no way to remove it without crippling your Windows. I am researching a bit on this. Hopefully, can fidn a way to undo the damage.

KDE on Gentoo

Well, I finally got some time to work back on the Gentoo Project. After a sucessful reboot with al lthe building of kernels and stuff, I am still basically in a shell with nothing there. Ok, almost nothing. So, I figure I need KDE since I already had Gnome on most of my other system... So why not? And I probably wnat ALL the KDE package for that matters... So here goes...

emerge kde

That was 4:00pm today.. Its still compiling. KDE and Gentoo is definitely not for the fast and furious.

Upgrading Ubuntu

V5.10 Breezy has been out for a while. I guess many people are probably still unsure what needs to be done to upgrade from 5.04 Hoary... Well, I learn it the hard way.

Let me tell you the wrong way to do it first. Download the CD. Not the LiveCD but the installation. Either its cache or the Internet is really fast. Then pop it in and install it. Wait, it stopped somewhere saying it found the old version and cacenl itself. Well, I should had thought why did it do that, but I was just rushing and I went back to the menu and force it to install anyway... After some more wasted time anda reboot. My Ubuntu is pretty dead. Another one bites the dust.

OK, let try another approach. On another Ubuntu. I installed Synaptic. Its cool and I am going to tell you why. First you open up /etc/apt/sources.list. Backup this file is you want to. Simply replace blindly "hoary" to "breezy". This is where I miss my [Ctrl][H]. Anyway, just get it done using emac, vi, or whatever.

Then fire up Synaptic. Go to Sources and you probably still see your old CD source there. I don't know why I didn't removed it in the sources.list. Anyway, its a good check. If its there delete it. If not, no harm done. Next insert the 5.10 CD if you have it.

Edited : You will have to remove the first line usually with the "cdrom" label in the source.

Run "apt-cdrom add" and it will add your CD as the new source. Unless your CD is damaged, it should be recognized as the Brezzy CD.

Run "apt-get update" and it should update your source list to point to the new breezy repositories. IF this part fail due to network, please try until it works.

Now, this is the longest part. Run "apt-get dist-upgrade" and yes, you may need to download some package since Breezy has been out for a while and newer package may had been out. Mine was about 450MB anyway, but I didn't really care. Time to grab my cereals and skim milk and take my breakfast.

After the reboot, you should have a working Ubuntu breezy now. I did. Just don't do what I did in the first place of this article. Now, I have time to tacklethe Gentoo...

Scarborough Fair

I remember Sarah Brightman's version of this song... But thats about all I know of this song.
I happened to hear it again a few days ago while watching Futurama S3 and even in the 30th century, the hibbies still are singing it, well, with some robotics remix in it, but still the same song.

It has brought up enough interest in me to dig up my DVDs of both Sarah's concert and listen to the wonderful song again. Then after a few repitition... I started to surf for information on the song because honestly, I really did not understand much about why the singer is asking the man she love to do all these impossible tasks.

Then to my realization, this song was not written by modern days writers... Its date back all the way to Dark Age... And because it was carried by the bards of those days from town to town, there are many version of it around. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme turns out to be flowers which carries a different meanings then. The meaning of the songs are clearer, especially after some explaination from these sites :

http://www.geocities.com/paris/villa/3895/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarborough_Fair

Its a great song to enjoy under the pale moonlight in solitude.

Gentoo - The Hardest Linux to install?

Just when you though Debian or Ubuntu is hard enough to be installed... There is Gentoo. Debian, especially installation from a floppy disk, is already one of the hardest way to install linux. Yet, how is Gentoo even harder? Why would someone want to torture himself compiling the kernel for Gentoo?

Gentoo, in short does not use RPM, DEB or any form of packager by default. Gentoo promotes the compiling of the application and drivers AND the Kernel as well. Therefore you always get the latest by compiling and you never have to wait for the next Distro release. Its very Cool indeed for Power Users.

I had long since compiled a Linux Kernel.. Must had been about 5 years back. The nightmare always catches up to you. You can never hide... So here I am facing the laptop and the Cute Gentoo (by the way, is believed to be a type of penguin) Logo. Here goes... Compiling...
What a way to spend my holiday...

Stucked in the MRT

This are actual photo sof a bag stuck in the train door while the MRT is moving...

We all thought it couldn't happen, but obviously the sensor is not there to prevent this...

Imagine if this is a little children hand or something...

Recovering the Linksys WRT54G

From router to brick... after a failure to flash the firmware.
Here is your last chance to make a comeback from brick to router again.

Full article at :
http://www.cerberus-network.com/Home/tabid/63/ctl/Details/mid/397/ItemID/5/Default.aspx

Bobi's Birthday

Finally have the time to take out the camcorder and extract the short clip captured for Bobi's Birthday. Its horrible. Well, cos its dark and shaky and well, I don't care. It's Bobi's Birthday that counts.

Bobi's Birthday

Bobi and Greenie

Bobi just had his first birthday on 15th Oct. I was really too busy tied up with everything... From the audit to my company stuff. Well, but Iat least I attended the birthday party. There were lots of dogs there. Mostly Shih Tzu though. I will post up the picture later on. But meanwhile, here is a nice video I made to celebrate Bobi's 1st year. Its sure brign back lots of memory when he was small and playful... and still nto able to break the hard greenie with one bite. :)

Bobi and Greenie

Trapt aka Kagero 2 Dark Illusion

Just released the original link for the japanese version is really hard to find now on the gameaq site.

Anyway, if anyone still needs the FAQ, its here:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/game/924502.html

Cerberus Antivirus Lite CD V2.00

I had been very busy with some Wifi auditing projects so I might not be able to catch up on the win32 version yet if anyone is still using it...
It came to me as a point I wonder whether its worth going on or not since the batch file now primary works and mine seems like a duplicated work.

However, I had continued on with the Lite version which I now I had renamed Cerberus Antivirus Lite (I hope you guys dun mind). The new ISO (14MB ZIP) based ius ready and contains both Mcafee and f-prot as the DOS scanning software.

I had also modded some of the core system files and boot image in order to make changes to the selection to choose which scanner to use. Because of the difficulty in using hte previous updater (believe me I know) I am going to revamped it into a single EXE files which automatically unpacks the necessary files and do all the work with just 1 request to the ISO file. The Updater will be ready soon.

Meanwhile here is the ISO for Cerberus AV Lite 2.0

Bit Torrent
cavlite.torrent

Emule
ed2k://filecavlite.zip14854757F971F36D55A63038451054900D9327AE/

Https
cavlite.zip

Well that all I have so far until I can find more bandwidth.

Writing Report for Audit

As you know Cerberus Network has its first project and the report is really kinda killing me. Escpecially since I broke my leg nowand I probably has nowhere to go but to sit right here and write the report. Hopefully it will be over soon... Show me the money man! :)

童话

Here is the song I had promised to sing. Firstly, for Angel and also for J as well since she is the person who had introduced me to this nice song. Hope you love it.

Tong Hua V3

IE and Netscape can read your clipboard

Ever had to enter a password that is like 16 characters or your credit card number or even something like a serial number? The most common way is to copy it into your clipboard and paste it on the webpage. Well, you are in for a shock.

Copy this into a file and save it.

<script language="JavaScript">
var content = clipboardData.getData("Text");
if (content!=null) {document.write(content);}
else {document.write('Clipboard is empty');}
</script>

Copy some text into your clipboard. Execute it. You might get a toobar block, but there are ways to work around it just that I only meant to demostrate this. Just allow it.

See what I mean? You still feel safe about your clipboard?

Ubuntu Grub Recovery

Another mini disaster stuck. I had to reinstall WinXP on my dual boot machine and the problem was I forgot to backup the boot sectors. Result was that the boot sector was overwritten during WinXP installation and I cannot go back to my Ubuntu now...

But fear not there must be plenty of help on the internet... Ok, let see.. Redhat, Debian, SuSE... Well, there are help for everything else except Ubuntu. And obviously this method don't quite work the same way, especially linux rescue doesn't work in Ubuntu bootup disc.

OK, so here I am going to post the solution. Bootup as per normal. Break the install procedure and get to the menu. You may shortcut to here but using expert as well. Anyway, you will need to go to the partition part and edit your mount point / in. BUT DO NOT FORMAT THE PARTITION!!! Ubuntu will doube check I think and warn about formating a previous installation, which IMHO is cool. OK, now you can skip the rest of the steps and go to the Install-GRUB option. btw, you may want to try and run install-grub from a shell in ubuntu... You will be shock to only find the *.deb there with nothing you can do. OK, back to the menu. It will try to install. If it did, good for you. For me, the instruction is not quite right. My first HDD turns out to be hd0 install of hda or whatever. Its pays off to check it while your ubuntu was working.

In any case, after sucessfully install grub, you can skip the rest of the step and reboot. TADA. IT works. And guess what the boot menu for me has changed. It even detected that I had upgrade from WinXP Home to WinXP Pro. Cool.

童话 ~光良~童话

I came across this MTV and I must say it touches me in a very unique way. Its not just the song, but the story. If you know my story with Angel, you will know what this means to me. I know its not such a new song and I know someone who also sang it. I wanted to sing this again. Someday.

童话~光良

忘了有多久
再没听到你
对我说你最爱的故事
我想了很久
我开始慌了
是不是我又做错了什么
你哭着对我说
童话里都是骗人的
我不可能是你的王子
也许你不会懂
从你说爱我以后
我的天空星星都亮了

我愿变成童话里
你爱的那个天使
张开双手变成翅膀守护你
你要相信
相信我们会像童话故事里
幸福和快乐是结局

你哭着对我说
童话里都是骗人的
我不可能是你的王子
也许你不会懂
从你说爱我以后
我的天空星星都亮了

我愿变成童话里
你爱的那个天使
张开双手变成翅膀守护你
你要相信
相信我们会像童话故事里
幸福和快乐是结局

我要变成童话里
你爱的那个天使
张开双手变成翅膀守护你
你要相信
相信我们会像童话故事里
幸福和快乐是结局

我会变成童话里
你爱的那个天使
张开双手变成翅膀守护你
你要相信
相信我们会像童话故事里
幸福和快乐是结局

一起写我们的结局

Kismet + HostAP + AirCrack on Ubuntu Part 2

Ok, now we that we got hostap up, make sure you can on it in monitor mode. What you dun have a card that card do that? Em.. Then I dun know why you should be using hostap in the first place :P Anyway, to test run iwconfig wlan mode monitor. Or whatever your interface is. No error? Good. We are in business.

You will need to install Kismet now. Yes, I know. No package as well. There is kismet for Debian though under unstable branch. But I guess its a pretty good idea to recompile since you probably want the latest stable version of kismet. Get it here http://www.kismetwireless.net/download.shtml.

It may require some additional package, so grab them as you come along. I believe using default all of them should be installed. So, its make andmake install. At least try running kismet now. With erro, but make sure its there. Next you need to find the kismet.conf which is in /etc/kismet/kismet.conf if I am not mistaken. Edit the user to the user you wish to run as (not root). And edit the source=hostap,wlan0,kismet. Change whatever as needed. Then go to the user (you entered) directory and run kismet. Kismet need to write the log. You can change that in the conf as well, but I will leave that out for now. Dos it run? Hope so, Mine didn't.A weird FATAL: channelget ioctl failed 22:Invalid argument came up. Search the whole internet and could find the problem. But luckily I found out in the end how to fix it. Just run ifconfig wlan0 up. Well yes, people makes very stupid mistake and program also return very gabble errors.

Now you probably want a few other good stuff out there. That will be aircrack, airodump, aireply, airsnort etc.. Basically you can use apt-get for most of them. The package I suggest are :
driftnet dsnif aircrack airsnort.

For now that will be it. I will cover soon another tutorial how to use al lthese in your warring session.

Kismet + HostAP + AirCrack on Ubuntu Part 1

Ok, this one may end up as a long long one...
Firstly, if anyone ask. For now, there is NO working HostAP for Ubuntu for apt packaging.

Ok, lets start with HostAP. Assuming you have Ubuntu installed now, you will need to get the source file from http://packages.debian.org/testing/net/hostap-source. This seems to be the newer place I can find so far and yes I know you want to ask me why Debian. Ubuntu is deried from Debian and the *deb is also part of the legacy. You can go quick and unpack it and try to compile it. I can tel lyou a lot of fatal errors. So be patience. There is one more step.

You need to download Module Assistant from http://packages.debian.org/stable/devel/module-assistant. This by right can help you build the module, but anyway we do not need to do that. We just need ot run it through 1 pass and even if it did not build any module, it has prepare and download the kernel source headers etc for module building. Now you can make, make install on your hostap. It will build. Trust me.

Now that you have that. Ensure you have iwconfig too. If not then apt-get install wireless-tools. Run a check and see if you have the wlan0 usually for the hostap. If not, try /etc/init.d/pcmcia restart. Still cannot? Just reboot the system. You can also check by lsmod grep hostap. If not you simply do a depmod, insmod hostap. Anyway, I would think you can get it running by now.
I will leave the other stuff in the next post.

Kismet on Fedora Core 4

I was very very busy afte the conference trying to setup my laptop for the Wifi Pen Test and Wardrive. Its back to the Linux OS again. And of cos, I realized I had forgotten quite some bits of it and learn some more new stuff along the way. One of the important things encountered and I felt is better to document was the installation of Kismet on FC4. So here is it.

1. Before you start, you will need to get Fedora Core 4 installed, preferable with as much Programming and Administration tools installed as possible. I am running low on space and as such had no choice but to partial install.

2. Next, is to get Kismet. I had download it from the source and compiled it. But actually I later found out there is a RPM release for FC4. You can find it at :
http://dag.wieers.com/packages/kismet/
But I don't know how it is with other people, I could not install it because the Kernel version did not really match. I had to download the kernerl-source package using yum as well as doing all my Fedora updates before I got the version to match.

3. Now, you need to get your PCMCIA card working. The card I was working on was the D-Link DWL-G650 so my choice of driver will be madwifi. I got it working in Linux with some driver. And I happy ran my Kismet. Got a ioctl error. Was stuck there for a few days since before the conference with no idea what when wrong. Anyway, I had changed to a Linksys WPC11 v3 card and still the same problem. Then I found out something. You CANT use the linux NORMAL driver to get Kismet working. You need a special driver for that. There are several out there including Project Evil, NDISWrapper etc. But for real rfmon action, I would suggest you go for HostAP. This you will need to get from Atrpms:
http://atrpms.net/dist/fc4/hostap-driver/
And since you are there, you can also grab hostap-utils :
http://atrpms.net/dist/fc4/hostap-utils/
And hostapd :
http://atrpms.net/dist/fc4/hostapd/
A note I want to say was that there are a few mode in hostap. You will only need to worry about hostap_cs.

4. Along the way, I found out that I needed some more of the modules one way or another. Among them were Perl-Net library, Pcap library and some libray, but yum handled it nicely. And if not either ATrpms or DAG has. Thanks to these 2 great site. Anyway, after installing all these. You should be able to do a ifconfig and see some weird stuff with you card now. You will get a NORMAL interface with a 6 pair hardware MAC and another one with insane among of pairs ID. That btw is the rfmon mode. You got the driver working now.

5. Kick in Kismet and I know so much about murphy law. The driver I installed from the RPM did not work. Invalid Module Format. Damn. So back to the hostap source. I rebuilded it and yes, I mean you NEED to know how to build from source. Basically, make, make install (under root). Weird that the path of the install is not the same as the RPM, hell, I just copied all the hostap*.ko into that directory. My installation is probably very dirty now. But I only needed to get it working.

6. One last shot. Another error. I can't believe it, the conf file it was looking for was somewhere inside .../updates/net/wireless... or watever. I didn't know what happened, but just copy kismet.conf there. Oh, I forgot to say something about editing the kismet.conf I guess... Even though many places will tell you WPC11 v3 is a Prism2 card, and some places will tell you to use orinoco mode in kismet. But you now got the driver working, so it will be hostap_cs instead. :)

7. Break for lunch at 3pm because I had forgotten to eat totally. And when I came back. I kick in Kismet. TA-DA. Working and capturing all my neighbours packets now. It did not capture my packets from my router. Why? I am not going to tell you. Think about it why.
Hint : WPC v3
IF you think you know, post the answer in the comments. :)

Leaving for Hack in the Box Conference 2005

After much preparation and all the rushing here and there to get Cerberus setup, I am finally getting ready to go for the conference tomorrow in KL I must say all the rush should be worth it, especially when I gotten my namecards just now. I still have many letters and email to reply andsend, but I guess those will have to wait. Much will have to be put down until I get back I suppose.

So wish me luck and I will try ob log there if I can. BTW, there is a hidden aganda in this trip. Perhaps I will talk about it once I come back. There is nothing like a real site testing.

(正宗)重慶火鍋 Nightmare

Another restaurant just got blacklisted by me again. There are hundreds if not thousands of so call 重慶火鍋 or Chong Qin Steamboat. But of course we know there is no such thing as the REAL thing since we are in the southern tip of the asia continent.

This was one of the newer restaurant which came up near the rest of the so call 正宗 ones around it opposite Shaw Center. A big red sign saying its for $10 per head attracted my attention. I am always attracted to (CHEAP) good food. There were a lot of waiter running around and around and no space, so I approached the counter and ask for a table for 2. Well he say upstairs also full, but will arrange a table for me downstair inside, which I saw a few. Then there was no fan and etc.. so I approached a waiter to help. Boy, I have never seen worse attitude from someone since my SAF days. He kind pushes here and there then say you need to queue up again behind some people outside (where the queue did not exist when I entered the place). I took a quick look at the 2 miserable stands with well not really a lot of food and I walked straight out pass the waiter and pass the stall and almost across the street to eat Subway which I loved but of course my gf hated it and I had to knock that off. I wont be able to tell you if the food is food, but the bad attitude and the bad manners the waiter (served) really knock off any appetide I had. I didn't need to taste their food to know I will not had enjoyed it at all. I know people always say you pay for the food and not the service (tell me about gSt) but I simply refused to eat especially when I am not happy cos anything would had tasted like shit anyway.

So, want to know where I ate then? I walked pass the stall again, pass the waiter who either ignore me or give me that shitty face look which I believe mine wouldn't had been much better. The shops next door were like only $15 and cosy and air-conned and lots of space... Well, not a lot, but have space. But I just could eat then cos was too full (of anger) then. Walked past Pivador there which I dined many time and I highly recommend for a full course western at $15 and very good environment. I ended up at Terre in Bugis. ITs $10 for a full course western as well and you can even get Steak at $12.80 there. Heaven kind of service and I believe we were eve nbeing served by the boss lady. Anyway, the meal was great and happy in the end. Actually to think of it $10 is not so cheap even since I had taken $8.50 steamboar in AMK before too.

Just want to say, they lost 2 customer that day and I bet their closing down offer should be around the corner if they keep up that kind of f up attitude.

PAV Updater V1.5.0

With the released of updated batch file, the Win32 version has been updated as well and the bug patched as promised. No auto extraction available yet in this version though. It will be available in the next version.

Changes :
V1.5.0Changed the CDWriter software from SCDWriter to BurnCDCC
Changed the download of Sophos web_ides.exe to web_ides.zip
Patched the incorrect naming of bootiable.img to bootable.img
Changed final ISO name to pav.isoChanged download list name to pav.lst
Added XBlocker to Spyware section
Optimized and remove some unnecessary copying of unzip.exe and mkisofs.exe

Download :
http://rapidshare.de/files/5365455/PAV_Updater_1.5.0.zip.html

AA Uploader V1.1.0

Was digging through my archives and I found this nice small application that can work with Accellion Attachment Outlook/Notes without the email client. Basically this tiny appz takes your file and get it uploaded and return you back the link which you can paste anywhere you want. I wondered why this appz was never released while I was working in Accellion, but anyway since I am no longer working there and I am not even sure if this even works as well. Here is the tiny appz which I recompiled. If anyone out there is using AA and it works let me know.

http://rapidshare.de/files/5351150/AAUploader.exe.html


Again I must stress that this appz is not in anyway related to Accellion and of cos comes with no warranty whatsoever.

爱似神仙 ~ 王蓉 ~ 专辑：多爱

风中残花
飘落在眼前
它为谁不屑上青天
素女织锦
为谁守空颜
又为谁在铸金鞭
窗外的孤雁依然依然出现
相思中奉候泪满脸
只盼会梦中等待他出现
看见归来的铁骑踏白烟

爱情是什么神仙
让人哭让人笑
让人看不见
我愿化作一盏灯
永远守在他身边
与君畅饮再征战

曾为清贫
富贵笑中谈
月光中重影舞双剑
只因忠孝
自古难两全
无奈独对清冷渊
枝头上残月依然依然出现
路相隔千尺思万千
山若有情听见我呼唤
为君再奏那曲琵琶怨

爱情是什么神仙
让人哭让人笑
让人看不见
我愿化作一盏灯
永远守在他身边
与君畅饮再征战

爱情是什么神仙
让人哭让人笑
让人看不见
我愿化作一盏灯
永远守在他身边
与君畅饮再征战

我愿化作一盏灯
永远守在他身边
与君畅饮再征战

PAV Lite Updater V1.5.0 Mirrors

Added another mirror just in case. BTW, if there is anyone who would like to host these files for me, I will be more than happy.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=NEWNS5ZB
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FH2SQPMK

PAV Lite Updater V1.5.0

I noticed there was a bug in the previous version I released with the filename of the boot image. It was looking for bootiable.img instead of bootable.img. I will be releasing a patch and update with it soon in V1.5.0Meanwhile, here is PAV Lite V1.5.0Lite in short only contains the bootup DOS mode scanner and nothing else in order to cut down the size. You will need the following files. Read the readme.txt inside PAV Lite Updater.

http://rapidshare.de/files/5285933/PAV_Lite_Updater.zip.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/5286452/pavlitecd.zip.html

GWA Again

Just got back from holiday and tried to updated my Windows as usual. WTF? How come need to download the ActiceX for GWA again? This is really getting on my nerves. I just cant be bothered. Anyway, just found that they installed a new version of the LegitCheckControl.DLL dated 29 Aug 2005. Heck man, I am going to upgrade like a few machines and plus a few more virtual machines and you expect me to download and validate all that? No way man. Pick up the patcher, change the code for the new file and walla. Works again. Hell man, I hope I did not have to do this every month. Its a plain waste of time. Imagine poor people who can only download using 56K modem. Its terrible. Anyway, I figured they probably patched the BHO block as well as the Javascript? Ha, Yes? No? Emm... Let me know. I have better things to do.

Public AntiVirus Updater V1.50

I had made plans for a update for PAV Updater. Basically I found an excellent extractor which I can automate the extraction of the ISO before the patching. I will replace unrar and unzip with this as well I guess since it is a universal unpacker. Emm, I also wondered if I need to ask the author for permission for include it in the package.

Oh, ok I guess I forgotten totally to explain what this is. Basically in short, Public AntiVirus has stopped support in Apr 2005 and as such the virus definitions and its arrays of program has not been updated. Antivirus which is not updated is as good as none. Public AV uses freeware Antivirus which are available and creates a bootable CD which you can just pop in and bootup the system for scanning. It has its merits because this means it does not boot into your OS which can had been infected. Moreover if the infection involves some stealth viruses then its very unlikely you can even find them at all once you are in the OS.

Anyway someone came out with a Batch file updater which downloads some of the updates and programs. Along the way, more tools where added and it also includes some Antivirus installation and scanners as well now. However the size has grown and its became difficult to download the packages using the Batch file as it stopped or maulfunction sometimes. So I had came out with my own Win32 Updater which splitted the download phase out. You can simply download at your leisure time using any downloader you prefer and then you can run the patching after you had finished the download. Once patched it also helps you build the ISO and you can burn the CD image using any burner you like.

I strongly supported this project because I felt that everyone should have an antivirus and if you choose not to pay at all this is one of the choice. So you should have no excuse not to have an antivirus in your computer from now.

Anyway, I am still looking for support and if anyone had tested it, please leave your comments here and I will try and improve on it.

Public AntiVirus Updater V1.10

Just spend the date making this Win32 Updater for Public AntiVirus. PAV is a CDROM based bootCD which contains FREE antivirus programs for scanning system at bootup. I will talk about why I needed this, but anyway I found it interesting and created my own updater for this.

PAV Updater V1.10
http://rapidshare.de/files/4866976/PAV_Updater_1.0.zip.html

Original PAV Updater
http://www.aptv38.dsl.pipex.com/RescueME/UpdatePublicAV.htm

Download PAV
http://www.slashbomb.com/download/pafiledb.php?action=category&id=2

Support Support hor. If you test it let me know. BTW, the Docu sucks now and I figure 60% of the people who have a clue what this do anyway. But I am dead tired now. I will write some proper stuff tomorrow.

Nochnoy dozor 1 AKA Nightwatch 1

I had been a big fan of foreign movies I must say. I had watched quite some and some which I did not even know the name. Nightwatch is one of them. Until recently, I happened to see the trailer on a bus and I go "Ah-ha, haven't I watched this somewhere before?" Actually I did not even regconized the poster of the UK release with a pair of glasses showing the battles scenes.

Firstly, I must say I didn't I did not watched the trailer before the movie. I suppose if you did, you might be quite disappointed with the show as the trailer has probably the best part inside already. But then I felt, this is only the first in the trilogy, I would give it a chance. Basically, for this show, if I still remembered correctly, there are 2 main plots going on and they do not seems to link at all until almost the end of the show. Throughout you will wonder why they bothered to show this and that and such. The main characters are linked in one way or another. Well, not as good as it is in Magnolia or other shows, but its part of the story. The only thing they had fail to project was the idea of the prophecy of the Watcher who will walk from the light into darkness. I know why many people will want to compare this with Star Wars now.

Anyway, I am not here to write a full length review, but if you had watched and still are interested on how the story will go from here, look out for Nochnoy dozor 2: Mel sudby or Nightwatch 2 : Daywatch

http://www.canmag.com/viewwmv.php?clip=19
http://kino-express.ru:80/Video/ND2-teaser.avi

Bad Day at Quiet Ramen Ten

Was at Far East today collecting my Philips CoffeeMaker which came free with the Philips DECT phones I bought a few days back. Oh, I wanted to write about the phones, but heck this is not hte articles about it. Anyway, I was at this Ramen Ten at Far East Plaza at a weird lunch time when not much people are around...

I knew I ate there before. However the impession was not clearly remembered. Either its was super good, or really super bad. Took my chance today. Ordered and waited for a while... Was with there with J and I finished my Ramen (goodness knows whether it was good or not, I was damn hungry). Then more people came and they ordered too and more and more... then waited and wait... J's rice never came. Other people's rice, noodles, FCS even Ice cream came and go... In the end, I was so pissed off I cancelled the ordered and just paid for whatever we (I actually) had taken. I wanted to talk to the manager actually, but nobody obvious was there... All ofthem dressed the same and I guess I cant be bothered anymore since J is probably very dead hungry like I was before... We have to rush off for another appointment and out of choice, we entered the nearest fast food available.

That was the day I found KFC at least had a decent service level and they even let me choose the pieces of chicken I ordered. That was not what I expected at all. Today, I felt like I had just taken a walk in the Twilight Zone.

Winston Avalon's HP 1997

I don't believe it. Just a brief search and I found... My 1997 schooldays page. This is a mirrored site, but as far as I checked the internals are still there... I just dun believe it... And I can see my leonis address and my old and forgotten stuff there... Well the power of search engine nowadays. I wonder what I can do with all these bits and pieces I had left around... We can call these cyber junk or kinda I guess very much like space junks where they are lost and forgotten.

Anyway, if you want to see that aweful pages :
http://members.fortunecity.com/sakurako/

Ah! My Goddess Fan Page Ultra

You know its very surprising that someone just email me and reminded me that I HAD a Ah! My Goddess webpage... Well, as hard as I tried the page is no longer around. However, I found my very long ago guestbook is still alive. Amazing...

Ah! My Goddess Fan Page Ultra Guestbook :
http://two.guestbook.de/gb.cgi?gid=3949

Well, perhaps I should go look around and see if I can find some more of my legacy...

Microsoft Certified Professional

My MCP Cert and welcome kit finally arrived. I almost thought it will take forever. Well, it says Bill Gates on the signature. :P This will be the first and many more to come signed by him I guess. I only hope I have the chance to take them quickly because I had been tired up by many things recently. What? Thats a secret. The time is not right yet to talk about it.

Where is the Life Jacket?

Just a thought here...
On board the 747-x00 Commerical Plane, when the air stewardess demostrate how to wear a life jacket... How many of us actually listen? Well, does it have to depend on how pretty the air stewardess is? :P

Anyway, we were always told the life jacket where under our seats. Did anyone actually check and know how to open the cover etc? Probably not. Guess we will have to spend a few minutes figuring that out when it comes to that. Along with the dropping of the air mask which we will probably be struggling to put on and for your partner as well if he/she is not in the stage to do so. The air stewardess will probably be passing out papers and everyone else asking if you have a pen or pencil... Well, its doesn't really matters unless they keep your note inside the indestrutable blackbox which is probably somewhere all the way in front at the pilot cockpit. To make it worse, the luggage compartment will probably be opened by now and everything dropping all over the place. You probably can't stand up and shout "How the hell do you open the cover to get the life jacket??", can you?

Well, its a worse case scenario anyway. Hopefully whoever is reading this doesn't have to worry too much about it. Btw, I read somewhere that the seating at the tail (where away from the wings which connects the fuel and the front which probably take the impart head on) has the higher chances of survival. And the middle row (if you are in a 747+. 737 only has 2 rows) or as near the center as possible also increased your chance of making through all these. I can't pull where the articles is, so you probably have to trust me on this one.

AhAh, Megami Sama! S1

After a 2 weeks break, I am finally back from Thailand. Managed to finished watching Ah! My Goddess TV S1. I must say it bring back some fond memory. Although its is slow pace, but I guess its easy to enjoy it especially since I had followed this series for a long time. The Seiyu are the same which is what I really loved. IF they were changed, many things would not hadbeen the same. My japanese sucks, but I guess I could still live though all that and hopefully improve :) Anyway if you do not know or has not watch this anime, you are out man! :) I wont go about telling the who and what it is about but I would really like to know which character people really loved. I used to love Skuld a lot, but somehow hen she keeps getting in the way, I cant agree anymore. In fact, in some way, I think i like Ula a bit more now... But none of cos will surpass Balldandy. She is so cute (except for one epi where she is really sexy). Anyway, I cant wait till the S2 start and come to the episode with the travelling whale and Skuld. That in my opinion is one ofthe most touching story.

More info:
http://www.tbs.co.jp/megamisama/

Wellget Downloader

There were the days of NetAnts. GetRight (still around I think and they had an SDK), Jetcar (which now is GetFlash) and so on... Many of these still works actually, but are hardly updated anymore. There is one small problem... These are not free technically.

Take for example Flashget which I was using. There are adwares inside. IF you registered it, it will disable the ads, but it will not delete the registered DLL away. IF you us MS Antispy or something similar, you will find the adware there. Hate it don't you. Anyway, that is more than enough a good reason to get rid of it.

Here, I am going to introduce Wellget to you. Its FREE for a start. I just got it today. Ok, I know I am slow... Hei, but there are still lots of other people who hasn't. Tested it a bit. Looks and feel like the rest of them. This can even do streaming. Well, I am going to test this one out and uninstall Flashget. Grab it at http://www.wellget.com and let me know if you like ot dislike this one.

What Codec?

Yeah, I know... Need to play Divx and Windows does not have it build-in. What? Need Xvid too... OK, then? OGG as well, and so on... You can visit hundreds of sites to go fetch each codec. OR do something like I did. Download a Codec Pack. There are lots out there...

How to choose? Well, they ranges from 5MB to 150MB. In general, you probably do not need the "Extras" cos they are Enocders for people who encodes. If you use things like DVD Shrink, edit DVDs etc, you probably need the encoders. Well, I had used quite a few codec packs before.

K-Lite Codec Full was not bad. Played most of what I needed. But kinda confusing to install becos DirectVoB is not by default then and still is I think. DirectVoB enable subtitles. New version out at http://www.codecguide.com

Storm Codec. WAS great. V3.05 I think. Then came some betas and guess what? They installed some spyware along with it. Althought this codec uses the latest Real and Quicktime, but I simply cant have my IE keep popping ads for no reasons. Removed the spyware (which require manually since its not a well-listed one) and removed the codec as well.

K-Lite Mega Codec. I know K-lite makes you think of Kazaa. I don't know what this has anythingto do with Kazza. But heck with it. This codec works for almost everything around. I am still using this as of today and a new version is out as well at http://www.codecguide.com

All-in-One Codec. Never really tried. Saw the list and its far from ALL in one I think. I still stick to K-Lite becos its has Media Player Classic and the Real and Quicktime Alt inside. IF you had tried this one, let me know.

Ace Mega Codec Pro. Was pretty great, other than 100+MB download. Very comprehensive, but was not updated for a damn long time. Thus, making the codec pretty outdated. I must say if only it was updated, I might had stick with this.

Well, in case you did not know there are alternative to Quicktime and Realmedia which for some reasons are not the fav thing to install. Check them out at http://www.codecguide.com

My CISSP Cert

It finally arrived. And as I expected, my MCP Welcome kit is not even here yet.
Anyway, there is a offer to buy a framed, some buttons, the cert, my CISSP card and a letter to login. Well, no bumper stickers or T-shirt. :)

Bobi on Slide Take 2

Well, I decide to give it another shot and see if Bobi will come down the slide himself.
First, I got him setup and put on the top level and get him relaxed.

Next I start to tempt him to come down.

And actually I almost did it. He started to move down...

Well, he just happen to realize he is going down and suddenly turn back. He wont move down anymore...

Guess this means he learned something. But come to think of it. Fear. IT may not be something bad. His fear of slide can be a good thing to him becos then he won't hurt himself going down slides when nobody is around to watch him. Animals all has these fears build-in, where we humans learns to overcome it and some obviously learn it the very hard way.

Some afterthought I have is that perhaps its just not what Bobi is meant to do. I feel maybe its good to just keep him this way. :) He might not be able to play like other kids in the playground, but seriously, not many dogs looks cool on whale. ( See previous post )

Citibank Visa Problem on Vpost

I wonder how many of you realize this problem when you make payment at vpost.com.sg? Why only Citibank Visa? Emm... I bet there is an interesting story behind this. As far as I know this has been here for almost a week. Well, anyway I just wanted to post his here because I feel this is security related.

Trilogy EC

Trilogy Encrypted Communicator
http://www.trilogysolutions.com/products-trilogyec.html

Its FREE surprisingly. It may not be the most popular thing around, but it is useful to send files across the globe securely without having you to run SSH or SFTP. The people who are using it is also impressive. Take a look and leave some comments about this if you had tried it. I would like to know how good this is.

Thanks to my friend WJ from UK who send me this.

Seven Swords Part 1 (Possibly)

Its NOT a bad movie. Although I know I am going to say its not very original either. There is nothing new that you haven seen somewhere before. The story about 7 heroes (knights) protecting a village of defendless villagers. Marching behind them are a big bunch of bad guys that will kill and leave nobody alive. I haven't read the book by Liang Yi Sheng, but this plot however sound 70% similar to "King Arthur" last year.

Xu Ke's fighting scene is something I must say I had always loved, especially back in the days with Cheng Xiao Dong also doing many of the martial arts movies few years back. Its still enjoyable in this one, but you probably saw some shadows of Kill Bill here and there. Swords slicing heads and legs in cicular fashion, long blades crashes in a tight long corridor... Sound familiar? Hei, but I dint say the stunts are not cool.

Donnie Yen has always been my favorite. But I feel that this show is very unfocus in character development. OTher than Donnie Yen and Leon Lai, I do not even recall any other important characters. I also learn that there are at least 3 version out there. 120 minutes. 150 minutes and 4 Hours. Maybe the 4 Hours version is worth watching. I would getthis on DVD again I guess to watch all. It is just such a waste just because the cinema wouldn't play a 4 hours movie for the price of a 90 minutes one. Also right at the end, there is strong hint of a sequel. Like I said, I did not read the book so I do not know if the story actually ends here. But will this be Xu Ke's new Trilogy. Only time will tell.

Browser Museum

I would like you to pay a visit to :
http://browsers.evolt.org



Still remember Mosaic? Emm... Well maybe you haven't been on the Internet as long as I had been. That was one of the first, if not the first browser. Along with Lynx (Still around today), Netscape etc... The browser has came a long way today. This site has the archive for the old browsers as well as some write up on each of them. Its a good visit.

OK, I know you want to ask : What in the world am I looking at browsers from Dinosaur Age? Well, its a long story, I might tell someday. Basically its got to do with my Virtual PC running on Win98 and I did not want to load in IE6...

Lifts Fright

Something strange happen today duringthe evening when I was going down for my evening exercise. The lift came up with an old lady and she complain the lift came up although she was trying to go down. Anyway this happens quite often. Big deal.

So, I took the lift down with her and on the 6th floor it opened again. So I waited a while to see if there is anyone coming in. NONE. Ok, I click the close button. The door close and then it opened again. Emm... The old say she just came in from the 6th floor just now. Heck, I tried again... And it closes but reopen. And one more time. Same thing again. This is totally crap.

I was about to go out when the old lady press the close one more time and this time the lift closes and goes down. I smile at her saying the lift must be in need for maintances soon. Although I read the paper and it say 2006...

I know many of you will say, ah the old lady something weird. No la. This is NOT a ghost story. She is just a normal friendly old lady. Well, as I arrived at the jogging tracks. I just happen to notice a lot of burning of incense and papers to our "brothers" below... Its the first day of the Seventh Month in the Lunar Calendar.

Emm... I dont know... Suddenly, something makes senses...

GWA Revisit

A few post back I was complaining that GWA was too easy to bypass...
Well they kinda fixed it now by having a 2 step method where you are required to enter the code on the page. PS... The LegitCheckControl still works.

Well, I thought, at least the guys from Big M arent sitting around drinking coffee. But then... AGAIN they were defeated by ... yes, you guessed it, their own tools once more.

In days where BHO has been a big problem, they came out with a BHO manager or blocker. There is a weird new control there now... OK, I better keep my mouth shut in order not to get myself into any kind of trouble. I heard rumors that Firefox with the addon script still works too. I wont know cos I am one of the rare people who do not use Firefox. :)

Win Vista Virus

Before I can even install Windows Vista Beta 1, news of 5 POC viruses were released.
This was done by a friend from down under.

The news:
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/
The virus:
http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/danom.shtml

I can only hope AV catches up quickly to support WinVista and not repeat the same mistake last time where I am only stucked with Big S Antivirus since it was the only one that is working with WinXP then.
Its a wonderful world...

Speed

Seeing is believing.

7th month begins

The chinese believes 7th month is the month of the ghost festival (I striped the word hungry becos I did not fill it was correct, who invented it I cannot imagine). Anyway, this month expects to see more ghost stories, real and fake, ghost movies, ghost merchandizes etc. Anyway, don't stay up too late you little boys and girls... Wahahahahaha ^_^

Minor changes

I changed the old anime counter off for a more visual one.
Just added the AdSense code in.
Hei, I know this template look just like xxx's blog. Well, I will change it once I had time for it.
For now, this has to do.

A bird, a plane, a piece of my heart in the post

This is the prototype design for the latest YF166A Tactic Strike Stealth Fighter. Ya, right. :) It does look like a plane though. But this is actually folded from a piece of paper which say that for every heart you send in the post, Singpost donates $1. What have I got to lose? I guess nobody question whether do they really donate or not or would some postman conveniently just dump away all these piece of papers. In any case, they important thing is : It cost me nothing at all. Maybe kill a few trees for the paper, but it had already been recycled. CAn we stillre-recycled? :)

You can find this in the Today newspaper often now. Anyway, here is how the final thing look like.:

Alphonso II The Making 6/6

The last part. Almost feel like part 3 of Starwars.
"I'm glad its finally over." Winston Avalon.


The front of A2. Notice the ugly white parts. Well, what can I do? Also see the 3 5.25inch bay fans which I am not too sure helps or not, blows air towards the back. I must also mention that my 2 HDDs are also running HDDs fan as well to keep their temperature down.


The back where you can see the PSU fan as well as the holes for the 2 backfans to blow out. Also notice the PCI exhaust fan here. This casing is kinda weird as it uses a screwless system for the PCI cards.


And this are the tools that made all these possible. Well, what do you think? Still want to save that $30 and or you are dying to assemble one like A2? This practically took 1 afternoon and of cos after rearanging the USB ports, I ended up having to reinstall some drivers.

Well, before I end this, here is a prizeless quiz.
How many fans are there in A2?
Dont look at me, I am not too sure either. :P

Alphonso II The Making 5/6

Now we are coming to the end of this, finally.


Here you can see the air from the CPU comes up. The PSU has 2 fans too. One blowing towards the optical drives and the other is shown here blowing at the CPU. The back fans draws out the hot air and when covered, the casing actually has a funnel to channel out most of the hot air out via the side of the casing as well.


See the funnel I am talking about. This is also the reason why I left space near the CPU as well.


This show the back, but notice the top part. That is how the fans look like after the cover. You can see the dual fans which pull in air here and the funnel which channel out air. Just bear with me, one more last post.

Alphonso II The Making 4/6

We are almost done here. Here is just to showcase some of the other stuffs.



This is how the fan are blowing on the HDDs.


The other dual fan blows right down on the AGP card which is in turn suck out by the exhaust fan beside the AGP card.


Now you see mess. But I try to keep the CPU area as clear as possible. I will explain later why this is so. Note the backfans are facing out. That is also why I needed to get the grill to prevent some cables from falling into the blades accidentally.

Alphonso II The Making 3/6

Now is the part where it will get really messy.

This is when I added in my cards. 2 slot taken for the Soundcard, one more exhaust fan here facing the AGP graphics card to suck out the hot air.

Here is another clearer view. You will notice I have a very huge Northbridge here near the AGP card, which prevents me from installing any of the dual side heat sink for the AGP card. :(

Here my harddisk and optical drives are in as well. I added the dual fans as well. More on that in the next post.

Alphonso II The Making 2/6

Here we are back again. Now lets start mounting the Motherboard into the case.



This is an awesome motherboard for its time. Now with the 9xx series around this 875 board has been forgotten. But its still good for me P4 3.0E.



Here the motherboard goes in. I think I forgot to mention the 2 backfans here are facing away from the case. Therefore the hot air will be effectively suck out of the case. This works with the aerodynamics of the 2 front front which blow in and this suck out, not resulting in any conflict where hot air is retended.

This is where the power supply goes in. This of couse is a really good PSU as well. It is PCIX ready as well. But like all power, the cables can be rather messy as you can see later on. This end part 2 here.

Alphonso II The Making 1/6

I finally had time to sit down and publish these photos which was taken during the making of Alphonso II.

The Beginning ...

I happened to see this $18 cheap casing one day at SLS and here it was back home. The casing core for A2 is monsterous. It has room for 4 casing fans. These 2 are from the front blowing towards the back.

Here is another clearer view of the front fans. I chose the Coolmaster Sleeve fans for these since I had overstock of it myself.

Ok, here is the 2 back fans. I will have to split this up. So the inital mounting of the fans before the installation ends here.

Genuine Windows Advantage

You will find that windowsupate and microsoftupdate no longer delivery without going through the new Genuine Windows Advantage (GWA) check now. Well, what do you expect from big M? But the only difference was this was broken in less than 1 day... and insult to injury, by a simple 1 liner javascript... I would had expect Microsoft to do better than that. After they hadput in so much effort in the ActiveX control, they would just let it through via a variable? If this is not a joke, tell me a better one.

In fact, I had even found a better way myself. Its not that I do not own originals (mind the s, I do owns quite some asserts label with big M, ok?), but it the fact that it was so easily done that makes this worth talking about. The javascript had to be ran everytime before GWA take place and thus not so fantastic. There is this Legit*.DLL sitting somewhere in the system32 directory... You might as well use Microsoft's own debugger and play with it. Its not even compressed to my surprise. There you can play with just assembly language and thus ending up changing 2 or 3 bytes. And this DLL let you bypass the GWA forever. Well at least until they can invest in something new.

My point is. Its too simple. Almost like a high school project. And all these never really bothers the pirates. They just crack it and forget about it. Its always the honest people like us who pay hard money for it that has to deal with all these inconveniences. Having to activate, to check this and that. Was this what we paid for when we buy the big M label? I certainly hope not. I would rather pay less and opt out on this. :) Haha.

By the way, its just POC. I wont give you the patch. I also wont tell you how to do it. Please do not ask me for it.

PSX Gamesave

Just confirmed that even the ORIGINAL Sony PSX Memory Card cannot be read using the PS2 Manager. But I kinda solved the problem. Wait, what? Oh the picture of Wild Arms 2? I am coming to that. This is the game that save my ass. Just kick this game in PSX mode and there is a cool Memory Manager in the game. You can copy, delete...(YES, delete). I finally got rid of my Rampage Through Time save and make some decent spaces for other PSX which I may play. But my multi bank PSX Card I am still unable to switch bank... Guess I can only use it like a single bank memory card then. Anyway, thanks for the guys behind Wild Arms 2. You never know this save me someday.

Kagero 2 FAQ

My Kagero 2 FAQ was finally posted in GameFAQs.com. It is also surprisingly fast that many other sites has mirrored it, without my notice as well. I don't really care about this one anyway. It was intended for sharing. GameWinners has a link, Gamespot too and so on. Anyway I guess everyone can find the FAQ now without having to download it from the share which I believed is not working now.

Cant help it, I feel good. :)

You have Won ... AGAIN

While trying to download Mess for MSN Messenger 7.5, I was redirected to a fastclick.net link and this is what I saw. Emm... they even used SSL, so they must be for real. Anyway, for a CISSP guy like me, I am always skeptical about this. So I registered Bobi for the name. If you still do not know who is Bobi, look lower...


Next gets more interesting... Some info collection. Since Bobi is not very good in English, he will fill up his info about his house in Dogville.


So the final screen is rather interesting... A number to call... Well, I will kill Bobi if he use my phone to make an international call. So of cos he didn't. Haha...

Anyway, you still envy of my dream holiday? Then I have a few links to show you:
http://www.expertlaw.com/library/consumer/free_vacation_fraud.html http://www.crimes-of-persuasion.com/Crimes/Telemarketing/Outbound/Minor/vacations.htm

Now what do you think?
Hei, you know what? I did some more homework if you are not convinced. I checked the address, well, nowhere to be found. The building yes, but a company called "Travel Services". How original. BTW, the original link was from fastclick.net. They have quite a reputation with spyware I guess too. Still not convince ha? Ok la, give you the link you go win yourself that dream holiday ba...
http://media.fastclick.net/w/click.here?cid=29633&mid=65482&sid=6164&m=5&c=0

National Library

Well, I am a real bookworm so to speak and you can often catch me hanging out at the libraries esp the one at Esplanade now. Anyway, since the National Library has reopened, I figure I should go take a look.ITs like 8 storeies tall, so what can go wrong?

Well, it was a day of disappointment. The shelf were huge, well kinda becos there are only like <8 books on each row of the shelfs. The total number of IT books came close to a total of 200 I believe if not less, which I feel is easily less than any regional Library. I was very disappointed.

Actually I primary aim was to see what Multimedia section offers. DVDs? CDs? Well, nothing. Yes, The biggest Library in Singapore does not have a MM or AV section. Dont't believe me? Take a spin yourself.

Tune Transfer

It turns out that there is another good software :
http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product_Code=VUS+TUNE%2FIPOD

This is for backup, transfer of iPod songs. But looking harder I notice there WAS iFree which actually can move songs between devices. But of cos Apple shut them down.

Well, according to my friends, you will not run into problem as long as you keep your songs in MP3. The M4P formats has DRM. Well, thats life. Though you could run away from MP3 right? Well, I did too when I was using WMA, but tough luck when I got my K750i, has to change all back to MP3.

iTunes Woes

Seems like this software spend more time making life difficult for the users than anything else. As I hear more and more evil about it, I figure there should already be solutions out there... I dint have to do everything myself I hope.

Pod Player
Info :
http://www.ipodsoft.com/index.php?/software/podplayer
Download :
http://www.ipodsoft.com/files/evildude/podplayer/podplayerpackage.zip

Alphonso II

Yes, my flagship PC just had a new makeover. The original Alphonso Casing was dumped and rebuilded. She is all black and shiny now. Well almost all black. The whole process took my whole day off. But she is a monster inside man. With more than 10 fans and a planned wind flow, I believe she is as cool as ever. I cant wait till I have the time to post the various pictures I took during the making of Alphonso II.

By the way, I would love to rebuild Calissio as well. Maybe when I find the time someday.

Casing $18, Transport $3. The satisfaction of Alphonso II's new look - Priceless. :)

Windows The Next Generation

Well, just heard from reports that the next Windows OS is going to be called Windows Vista. What a name right? Personally, I feel it can mean :

Viruses
Intrusion
Spyware
Trojan
Adware

Well, if these are the problem WinV try to address, I will be happy. Come to think of it, WinV is not a bad name. I still remember there was a Japanese DOS called Dos/V. Well, I really will take time to get used to Windows Vista. I felt that even Windows Victory! sound better.

Hello Kitty Roller Rescue

A good site with many pictures :
http://uk.playstation.com/news/newsStory.jhtml?storyId=106909_en_GB_NEWS&linktype=NSON

Needless to introduce, Hello Kitty is the cat without the mouth :) I do not mind playing HK games becos they are cute and simple. You will not be expected to make impossible jumps and make crazy coordination movements in these games. The graphics is cheerful and enjoyable I must say. Strangely this game has different names all over. Roller Rescue (NGC), Rescue Mission (XBOX) and actually the PS2 version is "Skate Battle" in Japanese.

Anyway this time, HK actually gets to battle against an alien invasion of squares like creatures where their ultimate goal is to change Earth into a ... Oops.. Better not spoilt the story. Anyway, you get to save all your fav Sanrio characters and have them fight side by side with you.

The game was partly made by the Hong Kong branch Typhoon Games who made the Soccer game earlier. And as such you will see many Chinese people in the credits. Its not bad at all I say. Man, I wish I was working for Typhoon Games. :P