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The problems with EFS can be greatly compounded if you are not looking for it as a possible culprit. When a user tries to access a file that has been encrypted by someone else, depending on the type of access attempted or the application being used, the user will generally get one of two messages: Access Denied or This File Appears To Be Corrupted.

If the Access Denied message appears, most end users assume that an admin has improperly locked them out, so they contact the help desk. If the person troubleshooting the problem just looks at the permissions on the file or folder, there’s no indication that a user has been denied access. Only bringing up the file’s advanced properties will reveal the problem. Many man-hours can be wasted pursuing other potential problems, such as group permission conflicts.

Of the two common messages users receive when they are not allowed to read the file due to EFS, the Access Denied message is the good one. Users receiving a message indicating that the file appears corrupted may go so far as to delete the file. Since EFS will not stop the deletion, users will be able to do so. If the person troubleshooting the situation is not looking for EFS as the potential problem, things can get far worse when the message This File Appears To Be Corrupted occurs. There are quite a few horror stories already being attributed to this scenario. Take the following example:

Two users working different shifts share the same Vista system. The user working the evening shift has a fair amount of downtime and uses it to explore different aspects of the system. Upon discovering the Encrypt Contents To Secure Data setting, he decides to activate this feature. "What’s wrong with securing the data?" he says to himself.

He has selected a file in a folder shared by both users, and the default EFS setting indicates that not only should the file be encrypted, but the parent folder as well. The user accepts this and clicks OK. Now every file created in this folder will be encrypted to the user who created it and unreadable by the other user. The user in the evening modifies these files without issue and believes everything is working fine.

When the daytime user tries to open a file in this folder, she receives a message indicating that the file’s data appears to be corrupted. She calls the help desk and indicates that there’s a problem. The files in this folder needs to be written to every day as part of their jobs, so the problem needs to be solved quickly. A help desk tech shows up and begins troubleshooting the problem. The tech tries deleting and restoring the file from the nightly backup, but unfortunately EFS files back up encrypted. So the restored file also comes up corrupted. The tech believes this signals a problem with the application used to edit the file. The tech reinstalls the application, but the problem persists.

Needing to solve the problem quickly, the tech decides to reload the operating system, since there is a backup of the data. The reload of the OS erases the keys used to encrypt the data, and it’s now completely unreadable!

Alright, I would be first to admit that a term like Bluesnarfing sounds like something coming back up after a hard night of partying. Yet in reality, it is significant enough that the United States’ own US-CERT has stated that this form of wireless data snooping is a serious threat.

Should we stop using Bluetooth headsets because of this? Please, give me a break. I am risk of a bigger threat by buying something off of the TV by using my credit card over a cordless phone. Look, the only real threat to using Bluetooth for most people is having your mobile phone’s battery being drained at an alarming rate!

So do you believe that Bluetooth is a real threat to your phone’s security? Are you storing your address, social security number or other critical data on it? Hit the comments and share your thoughts.

DNS has a hole in it. Bad guys are working on exploits right now. Patches are available right now. Anyone responsible for a DNS server needs to exercise that responsibility. Right now.

Dan Kaminsky found a security hole in DNS recently, the details of which he was keeping quiet so providers could fix and release patches and DNS server owners could get those patches deployed, in order to avoid security breaches on the Internet. His intent was to release the gory details in a couple weeks at the Black Hat conference.

But the other day word of the details inadvertently leaked out, and so now everyone responsible for a DNS system must — and I do mean must — drop what they’re doing and make sure their systems are patched and safe. Failure to do so puts Internet users at risk of site fraud and hijacking.

DNS is a system that translates names you can remember (like www.greghughes.net) to especially non-memorable numerical addresses the Internet can route (such as 208.109.238.146). It’s the Internet’s phone book, so to speak.

The security hole allows malicious people to spoof a Web site using the actual, legitimate domain name. In other words, bad guys could hijack a DNS server, and if it happens to be one your computer relies upon, you could type in a legitimate address like www.google.com or www.yourbank.com, but the Web page would be a malicious one — a fake. The recently-released patches plug the hole and prevent this misuse (although it doesn’t really change the underlying protocol).

Aaron Massey wrote a very good post describing the issue and its various details. He also links to Halvar Flake, a talented reverse-engineering guy who thought the threat through and pretty much guessed it right on his blog. After Halvar’s guess, another security blog that had specific knowledge of the threat details confirmed Flake’s hypothesis. As a result, the threat was disclosed.

Luckily, the various creators of the DNS systems used all over the Internet released patches about two weeks ago. The real question is, have you patched your servers? This is a critical flaw — it needs to be patched immediately.

If you want to know whether the DNS server your computer relies upon is vulnerable or not, you can use the DNS Checker in the sidebar of Kaminsky’s blog (as long as it remains there).

Vista includes two encryption technologies: Encrypting File System (EFS) and BitLocker Drive Encryption. As with most technology, once you implement either encryption technology, you might encounter some common problems. In this series of articles, we will take a look at some of the common issues that can arise with both technologies.

If you cannot enable BitLocker Drive Encryption on your computer, you need to check if your motherboard is TPM compliant. This is not so much as a problem but more of a configuration issues. Without a TMP, BitLocker will not be enabled by default and you will see a message indicating that a TPM was not found.

You can still take advantage of BitLocker without a TPM compliant motherboard. The workaround is to get an external USB key to store the encrypted keys. Each time you boot the computer, you will need to insert the USB key into the USB port.

On the topic of configuration issues, if your hard disk is not configured properly (refer to the Lockergnome article called ‘Planning For Encryption In Vista’), you will receive the following message:

The drive configuration is unsuitable for BitLocker Drive Encryption. To use BitLocker, please re-partition your hard drive according to the BitLocker requirements.

To use BitLocker, your hard disk needs at least two partitions. The first partition contains startup information and the second contains the operating system and user data. You can download and run the BitLocker Drive Preparation Tool to prepare your hard drive.

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As I was combing over this today, I could not help but wonder why some of the items were removed at all? Take DXDiag for instance. This is a tool that nearly every gamer out there is aware of and has likely used to diagnose issues with DirectX. Why was it cut - get this, it is not “cross platform friendly”. Yup, however according to this, cross platform with regard to Microsoft’s gaming platforms - Xbox and Windows.

So by this logic, because it will not work on Xbox…then it must be eliminated from Windows! Wait, huh?

2) APIs that are eliminated because no cross-platform counterpart exists

DxDiag gets cut. There is no real equivalent on Xbox 360 today. MDX1.1 will continue to support a managed wrapper for DxDiag. Do you have any concerns here? If so, let us know.

Yeah, I have “a concern”.I think I speak for a number of Windows users who might object to having their DirectX diagnostic ability being neutered. But that is just me.

Then there is one that I do understand it being phased out, yet had to DIG for its suggested replacement? SerialKeys. Yes, for those who need extra accessibility features with their Windows desktop, SerialKeys was a valued option and having it installed was a major boon to the platform. Unfortunately this is no longer the case. And as surprising as this may seem, I have no problem with this per se. I just wish the replacements: SKEYS and AAC Keys were more readily suggested for new Vista users. Seriously!

On the plus side, despite some people finding it to be annoying, Vista is inherently more secure than previous releases of Windows. And eliminating some of those dated little extras might very well spell less future exploits in the future? I am speculating, but it sure sounds plausible at least…

What say you? Are there any features you had with XP that you are finding lacking in Vista? Perhaps something was added with Vista that was lacking in XP? Whatever it may be, hit the comments and tell me about it.

I think at some point, we must realize that no matter how hard we rail against it, the keyboard will remain king on the desktop. Regardless of what kind of kind of cool touch screen options become available or even popular for that matter. At the end of the day, users all find themselves reaching for the all familiar keyboard.

PC gamers expect it, power users demand it and casual users of both the PC and yes, even the Mac, are simply so used to the keyboard’s familiarity that expecting even a slow migration to a touch screen on anything other than mobile devices is unlikely at best.

Perhaps it is some 21st century expectation that has us so bent on see touch screens becoming part of the technology world, I really could not say for sure. But one thing is for sure, short of bulletproof speech recognition software bundled with retraining our brains how we share thoughts with a computer, seeing touch screens becoming anything in the home of the casual user may in fact be the wishful thinking of dreamers.

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We all have networks of some kind. No matter whether you have two computers or 2000 on your network, you’ll need tools to manage it. This is why I love talking to Josh Stephens from SolarWinds. In the recent past, Josh and I got together to discuss Exchange Monitor. Today, we talked specifically about troubleshooting user performance on a network. I wanted to get his take on this, as I know it’s something he deals with on a daily basis.

According to Josh, networks today are more complex than they used to be. We’re using them for far more than we have in the past, and many of the things are bandwidth intensive. When he has to start narrowing down a problem, the first three rules of troubleshooting a network is check the cable, check the cable, check the cable. It sounds silly, but it happens much more often than you would think.

I asked Josh if turning on wireless actually impede the wired connections between computers on the network. Josh indicated that you can use some of the tools from SolarWinds to measure performance of your network both before and after you make any changes. If you’re having trouble with performance and you have wireless… check first to make sure if there’s a firmware update available for your access point. That can make a tremendous difference. There are many little things that could cause you to have issues with a wireless network, so using tools like SolarWinds has available can certainly help diagnose and manage it.

Another question that came up was wondering what Josh believed the greatest threat is to networks in the coming years. Josh tends to think that as far as things like viruses go, the network gear today is very well equipped to handle them. He doesn’t see threats like that as much of an issue. What he does feel that Network Admins should be aware of is the idea of having real-time collaborative conferencing. It’s really just barely starting to take off, and will likely grow very quickly. You need to stay a few steps ahead of the users you are providing support to.

I get a lot of people constantly asking me about tweaks. I wondered if many of the “popular” tweaks are actually valid. Josh stated there truly is a lot of things that can be tweaked in order to enhance your network performance. You definitely want to make sure you know what you’re doing before diving in to make major changes, and always back up everything you can before beginning.

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In the Part II of this series, you learned how to encrypt files in Vista and verify that users are unable to open the encrypted files. An important point to keep in mind is that although the user is unable to open the file, they can delete the file. You might be confused as to how this is possible.

Here is the answer: The user has full-share and NTFS permissions to the file. These permissions include reading, modifying, and deleting the file. If the user does not try to open the file, the EFS subsystem isn’t required. If the user tries to open the file, the EFS subsystem intervenes and denies access. But users can simply delete the file, which they have rights to do as defined by the NTFS permissions. Remember, file encryption is used to protect the contents of a file from prying eyes. It is not designed to protect the file itself. That’s why a properly designed share and NTFS structure is still critical even when using EFS.

In Vista, multiple users can be granted rights to read and modify encrypted files. Right click the encrypted file that you want to share and click Properties. From the General tab, click the Advanced button. From the Advanced Attributes dialog box, click the Details button. Click the Add button. Select the user to whom you want to grant access to the encrypted file. Click OK. Once the appropriate user has been granted permission, they will be able to open the file.

When an encrypted file is moved or copied from its source location to a new location, it is first decrypted. But this isn’t a hole in the security scheme. To copy or move an encrypted file, you must have the ability to open the encrypted file. In fact, even if a user has NTFS rights but doesn’t have rights to decrypt the file, he or she will be greeted with an error message.

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On the surface this might seem like a good idea. Create a version of XP with Firefox by default, no Outlook Express and completely removing Internet Explorer. There is just one little, tiny problem with concept - it is likely illegal. As explained here at DownloadSquad, TinyXP may be tiny but it is still software piracy as you have to download it illegally.

What makes this all so unfortunate is that based on what I keep hearing, it is a better version of Windows XP than Windows XP ever was. Yeah, better driver support, choice program selection, the list goes on. So will people take to it? I suppose those who are unconcerned about the potential for malware abuses preinstalled as who really knows what is out there floating in those bittorrent files…

Speaking for myself, I think most people are better off using something like nLite as it appears to be free of legal concerns. Well that and it allows for intelligent deployment without sacrificing any morals along the way.

Normally I am not one to follow Linus Torvalds anymore than I might follow the happenings of Bill Gates. To be blunt, I really do not care. But I found his thoughts on people that share security exploits interesting. The overall argument seems to make enough sense, place less importance on the person pointing out the flaw and more on the person who is fixing it. I have to admit, there is a certain dry logic there.

But I might also point out that being extremely thorough is not really such a bad thing. Not sure if this means we are creating “heroes” in the security sector so much as calling attention to issues that need to be resolved. And as for security people gaining some kind of fame, I think that is the silliest thing I have ever heard.

Am I all wet here? Does promoting security exploits to the point of promoting the person discovering them create a new set of problems? To the degree that developers fixing related bugs are simply not seeing the level of recognition that they should be? Hit the comments, share your thoughts.

Getting started with a basic EFS setup is as easy as a few mouse clicks for a simple configuration. For these steps, I will assume that you’re using roaming profiles to avoid the certificate confusion. From the client, browse to the file that you would like to encrypt. Right-click it and choose Properties from the shortcut menu. On the General tab, click Advanced. The Advanced Attributes window will appear.

From the Advanced Attributes window, select the box marked Encrypt Contents To Secure Data, and click OK. When you are done, the file name will appear in green, which indicates that it has been encrypted.

To see who has access to an encrypted file, you can view the file’s encryption details by right-clicking it, choosing Properties, clicking the Advanced tab, and clicking Details on the Advanced Options window.

EFS creates a Data Recovery Agent (DRA) automatically so that this step is not skipped, which would result in inaccessible files. To change the user whose certificate is used by default, you need to change the EFS group policy by going to Active Directory Users And Computers | Domain Properties | Group Policy | Edit | Computer Configuration | Windows Settings | Security Settings | Public Key Policies | Encrypting File System.

The easiest way to make sure that an encrypted file is inaccessible to other users is by trying to access it. For proper testing, make sure that another user has the share and NTFS permissions necessary to access the file. When the user logs in and tries to access the encrypted file, they will get an error message stating that access is denied.

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After using my chosen provider for some time now, it has come to my attention that more and more single user mailbox options for Exchange users are becoming available. So what do I mean exactly? Basically if you are like me, you have a Windows Mobile, BlackBerry or even an iPhone. You want the slick “connectivity” that MS Exchange can provide its users, but really are not interested in running your own server. This is especially true of SoHo users.

Over the past year or so, I have been a happy DSLExtreme user. I provided the domain name for my own personal dotCom mailbox/calendar/etc and they provide me with the means to enjoy the benefits of having immediate access to my own Exchange server with BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server). It’s been great.

Recently I was alerted to another option from sherweb.com. Again, reasonable prices mean MS Exchange is quite obtainable. What say you? If you are a fan of Exchange, would you consider plopping down a few bucks a month if it means over the air push-syncs over the platform dependent hassles of USB or Bluetooth? Hit the comments, share your thoughts.

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I have mentioned many times that I have an Exchange account that is hosted through Rackspace. I’m very happy with it. There are times, however, when Exchange isn’t too happy and I don’t have the right troubleshooting tools. Thankfully, the people over at SolarWinds live for making network tools to help people like me. They have released a new piece of freeware that is a desktop dashboard that continuously monitors Microsoft Exchange servers to deliver real-time insight into Exchange services, mail queue sizes, and host server health.

Exchange Monitor knows when there’s a problem. It can:

Quickly identify and troubleshoot Exchange server problems.
Stay on top of growing mail queues that can indicate bigger issues.
Leverage out-of-the-box settings to start monitoring Exchange immediately.
Spot performance issues with built-in red, yellow, and green health indicators.
Monitor critical server health stats, including disk space, CPU utilization, and memory utilization.

Josh Stephens from SolarWinds has joined me for this video. The company was founded to help Network Engineers and System Admins, by giving them tools that will help them do their everyday jobs. The reasoning behind the creation of Exchange Monitor is that there just aren’t many tools out there that will do this, at least not without a huge cost. Exchange Monitor can alert you of issues, or even situations that could become an issue later on so you can hopefully head it off.

Email servers are one of those things that if it is working right, they are happy with it and don’t think about it. But there are a lot of things that can affect the performance and health of that server though. As an Administrator, you don’t want to always have to monitor your server. But you do need to know when a problem is coming, or there is something that just isn’t quite right. You need a tool that lets you know what and where these problems are before users notice them and start to complain.

Josh is a member of the Thwack community. Thwack is a community site designed by network engineers for network engineers. It’s a place where they can go online and share troubleshooting tips and information. There are user forums and information on troubleshooting routing issues, network traffic issues and even maintaining Exchange servers.

I asked Josh for recommendations for people like me who have an Exchange account with other providers, full of Geeks who may be sensitive to outside suggestions. They may not like me telling them we should be using something like Exchange Monitor. Josh indicated that instead of saying the company “should” try or use something like this, I should say something about how I have tried it, and found it to be a huge help.

Thanks so much to Josh for joining me. I was happy to be able to pass along a great new free tool, and I’ll definitely be passing it on to Rackspace, as well.

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A couple of months back, a customer asked me for help with his desktop. I’d replaced the hard drive and re-loaded it for him over a year before, but he said it suddenly starting to freeze up randomly. He dropped off the machine, and I took a quick look.

I plugged the machine into my KVM, powered it up and took a look. The machine actually booted up reasonably quick for a 5+ year old Gateway PC. I ran some spyware scans, which came up with just a few relatively harmless tracking cookies, nothing major. I made sure the Antivirus definitions were current, then started a full scan. About 15 minutes into the virus scanning process, the machine just froze up. OK, I thought to myself, this is what the PC’s owner is talking about.

So here is where the wheels came off the wagon. After shutting the machine completely off, I went to boot it back up, and I got nothing. What do I mean by nothing? I mean no splash screen, no disk activity, nothing beyond the faint hum of the fan and power supply.

I let the machine sit for a good 20-30 minutes, then attempted to start it up again. Amazingly, it booted up as if nothing happened. I attempted to run the full virus scan, and just like before, the machine locked up after less than an hour of operation. And it refused to boot up, or give any signs of life until after I let it sit for a period of time.

I started to arrive at the conclusion that this was not a case of malware infestation, or even Windows corruption, because when the machine not only ran quickly (when it wasn’t frozen up), all my scans came up clean. And if Windows were hosed, it wouldn’t result in the PC not even displaying the pre-boot splash screen. This was a hardware issue.

I checked and reseated the RAM modules, thinking that could be the problem, but that didn’t improve anything. The inside of the machine was quite clean, cleaner than most desktops I’ve worked on… so it wasn’t a layer of crud causing the machine to overheat or choke to death. Maybe the power supply or motherboard had something going on. In any event, I shifted gears and focused on getting his data off of the PC. I was able to get the PC to run long enough to copy his data to a portable USB hard drive, which I then burned to DVD.

At this point, I cut my losses, as I didn’t want to invest any more time in troubleshooting this machine. It just didn’t make any sense given the age of the machine and the fact that this kind of problem may involve replacing components, possibly even the motherboard.

I told the customer the bad news first, that I though the machine has some major hardware issue causing it to freeze up and fail to boot. Then I gave him the good news, that I had his data safely copied to a DVD. I then told him that the best thing to do is to just get a new basic desktop PC to replace it, rather than put any more money into repairing his old machine. He seemed somewhat loathe to buy a new PC, which I understand to some degree… but when you look at what the old PC is worth (basically nothing), it just makes zero sense to invest any money in repairing it. We kind of went around in logic circles about repair vs. replace, and I think my message finally started to sink in. I mean, I know everybody’s on a budget these days, but considering you can get a decent budget desktop these days for $399 (which would likely outperform his 5+ year old PC), why wouldn’t you want to go that route? If it were the motherboard (and I’m not saying it was), would you even be able to get a replacement from Gateway for a machine that old?

It’s kind of a shame that the economics of PC repair often make replacement more economically feasible than repair, but that’s the cold, truth of personal computers. The older the PC, the more it applies. It doesn’t take a genius to see how this feeds the growing problem of e-Waste. Think about it.

Vista includes two encryption technologies: Encrypting File System (EFS) and BitLocker Drive Encryption. In this series of articles, you will learn how to set up both technologies in Vista.

To use BitLocker Drive Encryption (assuming you are not using hardware cryptography) you need to first configure the local computer policy to allow you to use USB key mode. Within the local computer policy, navigate to the following location: Computer Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Windows Components \ BitLocker Drive Encryption. Open Control Panel Setup: Enabled advanced startup options. Select the Enabled option and the Allow BitLocker Without a Compatible TPM option.

To turn on BitLocker Drive Encryption:

Open the Control Panel, select Security and click BitLocker Drive Encryption.
Click the Turn On BitLocker option for the operating system volume.
Choose one of the available options to save the recovery password. The recovery password can be saved to a USB drive, in a folder or it can be printed. This password is required to move the drive to another computer or if changes are made to system start up. Therefore, it is crucial that it is kept in a secure location.
Once you have selected the password recovery option, click Next to continue encrypting the operating system volume.
Next, verify that the Run BitLocker System Check option is selected. Click Continue.

The computer will restart and proceed with the volume encryption.

Additional settings for configuring BitLocker Drive Encryption are available through the local computer policy. You can find these settings under the following container: Computer Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Windows Components \ BitLocker Drive Encryption.

Once BitLocker Drive Encryption is enabled, it will lock the drive that Windows is installed on in specific situations that include:

A possible security risk is detected on start-up.
The computer is operational but the BitLocker startup key or pin is lost or the startup key is damaged.
The computer is not operational and you have transferred the hard drive to another computer.

In these cases, you have to unlock the drive using the BitLocker recovery password to gain access to you files.

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Despite having zero pity for the foolish choices made by Psystar, I do feel badly for those who purchased these PC. This lawsuit is not going to mean long term hardware support for their end users. This is not to dismiss whether Apple is or is not within their rights. That is something the law can determine. No, my gripe is that Psystar opted to try this entire idea in the first place.

The concept of the “hack-in-tosh” is hardly a new concept, dating back when Apple was still using PowerPC for their CPUs. As far as I am concerned the only reason someone would be duped into buying a Psystar machine running OS X is to save money. Because apparently, the Mac mini is not meeting the price point that it was intended. And this is sort of interesting, being Macs are “not considered more expernsive” than Windows PCs. It appears, the market supporting the Psystar option is a evidence that this line of thinking might be a fuzz off.

Are people buying those Psystar machine because they think the tower look is sexy? Perhaps users enjoy not being able to run all of the provided Apple updates on the Psystar machines? Come on, it’s obvious. Apple will hopefully consider what drove people to these boxes in the first place as clearly, it is not being addressed by Apple themselves. Thoughts?

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It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

SnagIt 9 works like you work! Capture, edit and share images from your PC screen without breaking stride: stores captures automatically whether you saved them or not; new visual search panel lets you find captures easily whenever you need them.

Camtasia Studio is the smart, friendly screen recorder (and more). With it, you can create stunning videos with a great degree of ease. Download the free trial now and in no time you'll be sharing buzz-worthy screencasts, persuasive presentations, training that ROCKS, and demos that sell. Show exactly what's on your screen to anyone, anywhere. Record your screen, audio, and/or webcam! Make them wonder how you did it.

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