Tips-Tools

Technical tips and utilties that I found useful.

Exchange Server Deployment Assistant

by

Here is another great tool from Microsoft. This is the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant. It is for Exchange 2010 deployments. It can assist you in creating a step by step plan for your Exchange deployment. It can help with On-premise, Cloud, or Exchange Hybrid deployments. This tool will also help you with upgrade scenarios. Basically … Read more

Blue Screen of Death when booting Hyper-V VHD in VirtualBox

by

 I had some virtual machines running on Hyper-V. I wanted to run some of these on VirtualBox for mobility reasons. VirtualBox supports running Virtual Machines from VmWare or Hyper-V. VirtualBox can boot VHD’s (Virtual Hard Disks) directly. You do not need to convert the virtual hard drive format. I copied the VHD’s too %systemdrive%:\Users\USERNAME\.VirtualBox\HardDisks on … Read more

Scan a file using multiple anti-virus engines

by

I came across a site called www.virustotal.com. This site lets you upload a suspicious file to be scanned by multiple virus engines. This is a great tool. I have learned that not any one anti-malware or anti-virus program can catch all viruses. This is the best way to check out a suspicious file without loading multiple anti-virus programs on a computer. Yes this site is completely free and that is why I wanted to share it. This is from the site itself:

VirusTotal is a service that analyzes suspicious files and URLs enabling the identification of viruses, worms, trojans and other kinds of malicious content detected by antivirus engines and web analysis toolbars.

  • Free, independent service.
  • Runs multiple antivirus engines.
  • Real time automatic updates of virus signatures.
  • Detailed results from each antivirus engine.
  • Runs multiple web site inspection toolbars.
  • Real time global statistics.

    •  

    Here is a list of the virus engines that Virus Total uses when it scans:

    Read more

    Step-by step guide on how to protect your network from spam

    by

    Intro

    Spam, or more accurately Unsolicited Commercial Email, is still on the rise, with some estimates measuring it at 90% of all email traffic. It’s a nuisance for users, a storage nightmare for admins, and often a vector for phishing attacks and malware. Using a defense in depth approach, this article provides steps an email administrator can take to protect their network from spam.

    Step one-user training

    Users should be educated on how their actions can lead to or reduce the amount of spam destined for their inbox. Using corporate email for personal use, subscribing to mailing lists, registering their email address for promotions and giveaways, and forwarding chain mails are all vectors that can lead to spam. Consider disabling html support to prevent downloads that can confirm an address is valid, as well as to reduce the risk of email based malware.

    Step two-web content

    Spammers frequently scan websites looking for embedded email addresses in contact information. Raise awareness with your web developers and establish a policy that all email addresses in web pages should be masked using JavaScript or other encoding that allows a person to click or read the address, but makes it more difficult for a spider to harvest it. Use contact forms when possible instead of displaying email addresses.

    Step three-tighten up your SMTP gateway

    Disabling the verify command (VRFY) on your SMTP gateway makes it that much harder for spammers to check for valid email addresses. If supported, implement a delay before your server responds to a request with its banner. Legitimate email servers will wait for the 220 response before trying to send email, while many programs/scripts used by spammers will not. Your server can then drop email from this misbehaving sender. If your SMTP gateway supports Quit detection, configure it to drop email that it receives from a host that don’t close the session properly. Legitimate email servers end a session with the QUIT command, but many programs/scripts used by spammers don’t.

     

    Read more