August, 2009

Trojan that targets Skype users.

An Australian website posted that the Skype Trojan can log VoIP calls. Here is an insert

“An infected machine will use the software that handles audio processing within a computer and save the call data as an MP3. The file is then sent over the Internet to a predefined server where the attacker can listen to the recorded conversations.”

It is also possible that this trojan can affect other popular VoIP applications, although this isn’t proven.

The Trojan is named Trojan.Peskyspy. So to all you Skype users do some reading and research on how to protect yourself. Here are some articles that you all can browse through.

Trojan.Peskspy | Symantec

Trojan.Peskspy Blog by a Symantec Employee

And here is an interesting story about how Trojan.Peskspy attacks Skype encryption though Windows API.

Happy Surfing!

NS

Mac Os “Snow Leopard”

Apple’s Mac OS X 10.6 brings Grand Central, OpenCL, full 64-bit mode, QuickTime X, and Exchange support to Mac users. Snow Leopard may not warrant too much excitement, but it’s still worth the $29(US) upgrade price.

CNET has a nice little video review about the highly anticipated upgrade, check it out here.

Veeam Backup and Replication 4.0

The soon to be release #1 Backup solution for ESX 3.5 and vSphere is better than ever! Read below for all the new features. If you would like to be notified when Veeam Backup 4 gets released go here.

• Native support for thin-provisioned disks for faster full VM backups and restores, to reduce the amount of storage required to host your production VMs.

• Ability to leverage ESX4 changed block tracking for lightning-fast incremental backup. For instance, if a VM only had 5 percent change since the last backup, the incremental backup time will be 20 times faster.

• Support for the new vStorage API – a VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) replacement. With VCB being discontinued, the vStorage API is the recommended API for VMware vSphere backup going forward. For example, the backup of vSphere

Fault Tolerant VMs will only be possible using the vStorage API. While Veeam is still committed to supporting VCB as long as our customers will require, native support for the vStorage API makes Veeam Backup & Replication the most future-proof solution currently available on the market.

• Support for virtual applications (vApp) for more flexibility with your job setup.

Near-real-time replication at a fraction of the cost In our continuing effort to provide the best VMware replication capabilities on the market, Veeam Backup & Replication 4.0 now leverages the new vSphere ESX(i) 4 functionality to provide much faster replication cycles. You can now schedule replication jobs to run as often as every few minutes, allowing you to achieve very low recovery point objectives in case of disaster, thus providing near-CDP (continuous data protection) protection at a fraction of the cost.

Unlike competitive solutions that require replicated VMs to run with open snapshots (which prevent Live Migration and DRS)

Veeam Backup & Replication does not have this requirement and instead uses new vSphere ESX(i) 4 APIs to achieve fast replication cycles. Veeam Backup & Replication also provides the ability to fail over to both current and earlier points in time in case of software corruption – functionality not available from other vendors.

Other Enhancements

Numerous additional enhancements requested by our customers are also included to make Veeam Backup & Replication even easier and more convenient to use:

General

• Hot VM copy. Veeam Backup & Replication 4.0 now features a new job type supporting scheduled full-image copies of running VMs to allow hot mirroring of your production environment to test lab storage, for datacenter migrations, or for ad-hoc backups.

• Safe snapshot removal. Veeam Backup & Replication now implements a safe snapshot removal technique to prevent production applications from timing out during helper snapshot commit. This makes Veeam Backup & Replication the only truly production-ready application able to perform hot image-level backups and replicas of large VMs with high disk I/O loads without affecting production applications.

• PowerShell access. You can now control all aspects of Veeam Backup & Replication via PowerShell scripts. This allows you to automate all Veeam Backup & Replication activities, such as job creation and control, changing settings and so on.

• New transactional backup storage, providing for better reliability, performance and improved compatibility with thirdparty hardware storage devices.

• Backup and replication jobs can now automatically fail over to network mode if direct storage access (SAN) mode is not available due to the storage infrastructure issues.

• VM log files are now automatically excluded from backup and replication to increase backup speed and decrease the Backup

• Backup storage disk space monitoring. The backup file location is now continuously monitored, with warnings logged whenever backup storage goes low on free disk space, providing advanced backup storage capacity planning.

• Full backup every N cycle. You can now configure jobs to optionally create full backups at defined intervals, instead of performing forever-incremental backup with synthetic building of the full restore file. A full backup can also be initiated manually from the user interface.

Replication

• Replica seeding. You can now optionally perform initial replication over removable storage, instead of having full replication traffic go over WAN.

• Disk exclusion for replication jobs. Similarly to backup job disk exclusion capabilities, you can now exclude specific disks from replication jobs as well.

User interface

• VM exclusion. Veeam Backup & Replication now provides the ability to exclude specific VMs or virtual infrastructure objects from your container-based backup and replication jobs for added flexibility.

• Multiple job creation wizard enhancements. Creating jobs is even easier than before with the new ability to search for objects based on a few letters from the name, seeing the size of your selected scope of objects, and the ability to estimate the required disk space for backups given your retention policy.

• Ability to change backup and replica destinations on existing jobs so you can move the destination without requiring a full backup from scratch.

• Ability to disable jobs. You can now temporarily disable a backup from running on schedule with a single click, without having to open job properties or clear the schedule.

• Ability to customize VM attribute used to store backup results (backup date and time, backup console name, and path to the backup file containing the specific VM) upon successful backup.

• Ability to perform Windows file-level restore directly to running Windows guest with a new built-in file-level restore.

• And many more minor enhancements requested by our valued customers.

Windows 7 and RDP Color Depth Setting

With Windows 7 comes Remote Desktop v6.1.7600.

I have seen a lot of posts where people want to reduce the color depth to 256 colors, which is not allowed via the Display Tab - Colors. Doing some research i found that if you have a “saved” rdp connection, you can open it in notepad and modify a specific field to allow you to run in 256 colors or 8-bit.  See below for the example text, the rest is easy

Here is an unmodified RDP File, i only included the first 4 lines, as that is all that is relevant.

screen mode id:i:1
desktopwidth:i:1152
desktopheight:i:864
session bpp:i:15

Notice the session bpp:i:15, change the 15 to an 8(as below) and save the file. Re-run the RDP connection and you will now be in 256 colors or 8-bit.

screen mode id:i:2
use multimon:i:0
desktopwidth:i:1152
desktopheight:i:864
session bpp:i:8

Blackberry Storm 2 (ODIN)

Well it was bound to happen, a leaked video made its way onto the Internet. If you currently use the Blackberry Storm, or any Blackberry for that matter check out this video. The person in the video states that even with the old OS, the phone performs faster and is much more responsive. Check out the video and article here.

Office 2010

Yes, yes, old news, but i came upon an article on CNET where they preview Office 2010. Included in this article is a video review of Microsoft’s, latest Office suite. One comment that I smirked at was the fact that one of the editors installed it a while ago and stated, “I wish Outlook/Office 2010 tech preview would do something weird and dumb so I could write about it. Sadly, it just works.” check out the video review here. Also check out the screen shots, if you haven’t already. There is also a newer review that you can check out, that’s where i got the “it just works” tag-line from

NS

Facebook Lite to challenge Twitter

Okay I know this isnt exactely tech news, or news about Vmware, or anything else. BUT it is news about two of the most popular socializing networks, Facebook and Twitter.

Picture this a stripped down version of facebook, where you can do everything you need to stay in touch with your friends, post to peoples wall, check out pictures, and message people, all while suppressing the games and videos that annoy people.

They may be catering to low bandwidth people also, but i think its a move to make it quicker and easier, while keeping all the core components. I say do it.

Facebook Lite was exposed to the masses when invitations to try out the new version were sent out. The new URL did not work of course… but it will eventually, the URL took keep a lookout for is lite.facebook.com.

NS

Microsoft and SQL Server 2008 R2

I’m not a huge SQL Guru by any means, but I do have a few clients with SQL Servers hosting their data, which is critical to their business, so I am letting everyone know that Microsoft delivers SQL Server 2008 R2. I have attached some inserts for you to read. Then you can goto the full article

“The updated database software lets businesses build their own business intelligence capabilities. It includes a new version of its report-making software, Report Builder 3.0, that can incorporate maps.

“Report Builder 3.0 supports geospatial visualization to produce new insights and discoveries by combining geospatial data with business information,” according to Microsoft.”

“New wizards enable administrators to quickly set up a multi-server management environment in minutes–no professional services required,”

And now onto the originating blog post.

More news on Project Natal for Xbox 360

CNET got up close and personal with Xbox 360 Project Natal, the CNET editor went to Redmond and got to try out Project Natal himself. Here is an isert from the article…

“Although Microsoft demonstrated Natal at this year’s E3 trade show, the software maker hasn’t said when the technology will be available. The company has said that Natal, which incorporates face, voice, and gesture recognition technologies, will be sold as an add-on to the current Xbox 360 console.”

Check out the full story here. Also check out Microsoft’s Official page. The video is pretty impressive… there is also a YouTube portal to all the Project Natal videos here.

Enjoy!

NS

Windows 7 is almost here….

If you still haven’t tried it out, or watched videos of Windows 7, the real successor to Windows XP you should do so as soon as possible… CNET has an excellent article with embedded videos, here is an isert from the website.

“Luckily for Microsoft, Windows 7 is more than just spin. It’s stable, smooth, and highly polished, introducing new graphical features, a new taskbar that can compete handily with the Mac OS X dock, and device management and security enhancements that make it both easier to use and safer. Importantly, it won’t require the hardware upgrades that Vista demanded, partially because the hardware has caught up, and partially because Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make Windows 7 accessible to as many people as possible.”

Read the full story here, trust me its a great read.

NS