Clete’s Blog

Wireshark is a free open source packet sniffing utility. In extremely simple terms, packet sniffing is the act of looking at network packets that your computer can see. If you are using WiFi to connect to the internet, this can easily include packets that weren’t meant to be yours (e.g. you see other users’ data). Usually, the way that your ethernet connection is wired prevents you from seeing other users’ packets.

I started sniffing around for fun today and I made some disturbing discoveries that shouldn’t have surprised me.  First, I noticed that my POP3 (Post Office Protocol; POP3 is the predominant email protocol) accounts are not authenticating securely. I was able to easily pull my username and password out of the network packets, as well as any email information that was sent or received. A few quick settings changes and I’m now sending and receiving email securely.

I also found out that the AIM protocol is not encrypted either. You can clearly see the message below that I sent to my friend. (Click to see the whole window)

If I get on a WiFi network, I should be able to see other people’s messages. I’m interested to see how many people out there are using no encryption or weak encryption (base64).

Recently, I have experienced some strange problems with my programs that reside on my NTFS partition (Windows Vista is in ‘charge’ of this partition). It all started when I tried to install Vista SP1 Release Candidate a few months back. The installer would would say “!!! 0xcc2321 WINMAIL.EXE !!!” or something like that. I had no clue what this was referring to. Luckily, I had just created a full system backup a few hours prior to this error. I restored my full backup and I decided to wait for the final release of Service Pack 1. So, I chalked one up to Microsoft’s expert programming.

Well, when Vista SP1 was released, I installed it and received the exact same error (some months later). So, I searched high and low on the internet and finally I found an answer. It so happens that all of my problems stemmed from the fact that Winmail.exe was not properly indexed by the NTFS partition. It turns out that a lot of other people had this problem with various files that were corrupt or not properly indexed by the NTFS partition. Why couldn’t Microsoft program a simple check into the Service Pack 1 installer instead of hanging every system with a single corrupt file? They should know that their file system always breaks itself. At any rate, I ran a chkdsk off of my Vista install disc.

Oddly enough, I still received the error. Another 3 chkdsks later and chkdsk was still reporting that it was fixing the same files over and over again! What happened here? Is my hard drive going bad? I haven’t noticed any of the typical signs of hard drive failure… I eventually just deleted winmail.exe and a couple of other files that were corrupt (9 out of 11 were in that same folder and the other 2 belonged to Windows Media Player). It turns out that this solved all of my problems. Strange. Service Pack 1 just copied the files off of its stores of files and everything worked fine.

A few days after that, Microsoft Office started to crash a lot, especially when I closed it. It would crash after the main window has closed, so I would never lose any work and I didn’t have time to bother checking into it. I eventually received a dialog box from “Microsoft Office Diagnostics” telling me that Word and Powerpoint have crashed frequently (OneNote never crashes). It asked me to check for errors with my installation, so I did. Nothing turned up. I suppose I’ll have to eventually give in and reinstall Office.

Two days ago, I shut my computer down properly. I started it back up and I received a plethora of error messages coming from acrobat.exe. Then randomly, Adobe Acrobat installer would start, shoot out errors, then kill itself, and finally restart itself again. It went into a never-ending loop of trying to repair Acrobat. Ugh. Here we go again. So at the next opportunity I had, I grabbed my Vista install disc and ran a chkdsk. It turns out that 81, yes, eighty-one files in the Adobe Creative Suite 3 folder were corrupt. This time, chkdsk corrected all of my problems and things are running smoothly again.

Does NTFS hate my folders? I use Photoshop CS3 daily and I always shut it down correctly. In fact, it has never crashed on me. Not once. I had an odd problem once Photoshop was repaired, however. Photoshop was stuck on the hand tool… permanently. No matter what I did, Photoshop would simply not change to any tool but the hand tool. Finally, I found a blog through Google that told me to go to “Edit -> Preferences -> General -> Reset All Warning Dialogs.” Sounds like an odd thing to do to fix a problem that has nothing to do with dialogs, but it worked. Strange…

I wonder what’s going on…

Mansfield University requires that all Windows users, who live on campus, install SafeConnect. SafeConnect is an application that runs silently in the background and ensures that your computer has antivirus software and antispyware software installed. It also forces Internet Explorer to pop up with an alert whenever the campus feels the need to do so. Additionally, it logs all of the user’s internet activity (linked to his/her login) and it can “quarantine” (deny all internet access) anyone who is not in “compliance.” (e.g. anyone who does not have antivirus software installed) Sounds like a great tool to keep a large network safe, right?

Wrong. SafeConnect is horribly inefficient at doing its job. It constantly fails to register with it’s mother-ship, denying the user access to the internet for long amounts of time. Sometimes, a reinstallation of the SafeConnect client and a reboot are necessary in order to get the connection running. SafeConnect also stops BitTorrent from working. This is a major issue for me, as I download Linux ISOs once every other week or so (testing purposes). I realize that 95% of BitTorrent users are using it for illegal purposes, but what about me? Besides, SafeConnect doesn’t stop limewire, edonkey, or many other Peer2Peer networking programs! SafeConnect is, at best, a meager tool for network administrators. Anyone running SafeConnect on their network clearly needs to brush up on their reading of the Communist Manifesto.

I had previously found a way to set up McAffee Antivirus so that it only scans .txt files. Then, I set it up to exclude .txt files. Essentially, all McAffee was doing was fulfilling SafeConnect’s requirement for antivirus software and wasting precious RAM. About 50-75 megabytes of RAM, to be exact.

Since IT is arrogant, ignorant, and in general, a bunch of morons, I decided to take matters into my own hands. My first idea was to get a friend in there to change my user policy so that I didn’t have to have the SafeConnect client installed. However, this would probably end up badly for me. First, my friend (who is not hired yet, but may be soon) would be fired. Secondly, I would be permanently banned from the campus network. So, after a bit of researching, I found a simple solution. This solution is so simple that I had thought of it previously, but pushed it aside.

All that I had to do in order to circumvent the SafeConnect client installation requirement was to change my “User Agent” variable for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Simple, right? It is amazing that one simple little trick can circumvent such a picky and pestering system. A couple of registry entries and one Firefox variable change later, I uninstalled the SafeConnect client and McAffee’s antivirus solution. To my amazement, it works perfectly! I simply changed my user agent variable to report that I was running Firefox on Linux rather than (Firefox/Internet Explorer) on Windows. Viola! Case closed.

I am still unable to use BitTorrent and I am still being logged by IT, but as far as I know, they don’t check logs unless something is amiss. Or so I hope. However, if I owned a house at the moment and paid for any form of connection, I would still be logged by my ISP. Still, on the other hand, campus IT is so much more terrible and evil than any ISP could ever be. If all of IT decided to pack their bags tomorrow, I would be right there with them to wish them good riddance.

Amendment: If you wish to view your user agent string, please click here.

For detailed instructions on how to change your user agent string, please check the comments.

Hey everyone! I am on Vista right now. I’ll post my opinion on it at the bottom, but without further delay, pictures!

Did I mention that you can also view live video in a view such as the one above?

Click on them to enlarge them. Now, I know that I am a Microsoft hater and a Linux fan, but I am going to give my unbiased opinion. It’s short:

1) Looks pretty, but if you want pseudo-3D effects, XGL with beryl (formerly compiz-quinnstorm) is better. Aero does the basic effects that anyone would enjoy. XGL+beryl is excessive for some, but is highly customizable.

2) Uses a lot of RAM. The Linux kernel is designed to keep files in RAM even if you close the program, but it drops them immediately when space is needed, so RAM usage is always high, but that is different. Vista runs my games just as well as XP did, but uses a lot of RAM. Do they do the same thing now? I doubt it, because I close something and it removes the RAM that was allocated. Not a big deal for me, as my games run the same as XP.
3) A little buggy. It crashes about as much as Windows 98 did for me. Maybe slightly less, but it is still in Release Candidate stage. Microsoft told us that RC1 would go final and now that RC2 will do the same, but I think there will be at least one or two more.

4) They added a feature to stop the annoying security center popups! That made me really happy. I don’t use virus protection or a firewall. I generally scan using an online scanner. I never come up with anything either. I backup often.

5) They added User Account Control, which asks you every time you change something critical in the system or do anything potentially hazardous. (e.g. open an executable or install a program) It’s a good feature in theory, but very annoying when installing things.

Also, my bet is that something like the blaster worm will be released in mass that will effect people using a beta version of Vista (I hear it’s active until June 1, 2007), forcing users to upgrade. I don’t plan on buying Vista until games are Vista-only. I won’t rant about that now; I’ll save that for another time. Bye for now!

Microsoft has released Windows Vista RC2 to the public! I think it was an accident. Microsoft released RC1 to the public (just sign up on their website), but announced that RC2 would be closed. I’m 45% on my download right now. We’ll see if it works. I signed up and got my RC1 key. Reportedly, your RC1 key works with RC2. I had no idea that Vista was out to the public until I heard about this recently. Check it out yourself! (this page links to the pages to get it for your architecture)
In other news, I have setup XGL (3D desktop) on my Gentoo Linux partition and I have it running fairly well, with only a few glitches. More on that after I install Vista.

Hi! I’m back from the beach. I don’t have much to say about it, except we had a great time. We rented a jet-ski, so that was awesome. We also ate a lot of good seafood.

Anyways, I made a video while I was in Pensacola. Being the geek I am, I wanted to burn it to a DVD. It’s always a pain and takes forever to create and customize your DVD, but Power Producer 2 Gold makes it really easy with their “Right-to-Disc” feature. Just a couple of clicks and I have my DVD. It records to the PC from the camera and burns the video to DVD simultaneously. It’s a great time saver for those DVDs that don’t require editing. You can set a start and end time, but not multiple ones. Other than that, it is great.

Well, I’m going to leave you all now. I have to clean my room a little bit, as my girlfriend arrives tomorrow and I have to get up early to pick up some flowers for her and drive to the airport.

Clete R. Blackwell II
Edit: I hail the feature and then I go and put it in my DVD player and it won’t load. Possibly more news to come.