Technology Bytes

Via Be Geek

Even though this was a fundrasing episode, we didn’t have to do any fundraising as we met our $1,500 goal prior to airtime. This was due to a generous matching pledge by a listener named Ian and the efforts of our fans via Twitter and Facebook.

Technology Bytes Podcast for Feb. 24, 2010 [ 1:59:22 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

During the KPFT pledge drives, Technology Bytes is responsible for raising a certain amount of money toward the overall station goal. This usually equates to about $1,500 during each show we broadcast during the drive.

We have always said that once we make our goal for any given episode we’ll stop begging for money and just do a regular broadcast.

If you are a regular listener of Technology Bytes you may recall that during the last KPFT pledge drive, we raised our $1500 goal in the first 45 minutes. This was unprecedented, and obviously very exciting for everyone involved. It also meant that we had a one hour and fifteen minute oasis of non-fundraising programming in the middle of the KPFT pledge drive.

Fast forward to the current pledge drive. Last week we met our $1,500 goal, but it took us up to the final minutes of the show to do it. This is pretty common. In looking ahead to the second fundraising episode we pretty much expected the same thing. That is, until we got the following e-mail:

I would like to make a significant donation to your show. I notice that
sometimes large on-air donations are followed by fallow periods. I wonder
how best to maximize my contribution. I’m thinking that a matching
contribution until the show’s record completion time (45 mins?) might work
well. So I would contribute $750 in the record breaking scenario, and less
otherwise. What do you think?

E-mail were exchanged to validate the claim and we’re pretty confident that this is a legitimate offer.

So basically, this listener will match up to $750 in pledges that come in under the 44 minute mark to help us meet our $1,500 goal AND break the record.

That means if we raise $750 in under 44 minutes we’re done for this fundraiser. And it doesn’t have to go down to the wire, either. If we raise $750 in the first 10 minutes, we’re done.

OOOH! Here’s a thought. Let’s take this one step further!!! If you call 713-526-5738 RIGHT NOW and make your pledge and specifically state that it is for Technology Bytes, we might make our goal before the show even begins. But you have to make sure the volunteer that answers the phone knows you are pledging for Technology Bytes and not for the current show so the amount will be credited to our show.

Another option, make an online donation!

Make your pledge NOW and donate whatever you can. We can do this and we can do this quick.

We get a lot of e-mail and phone calls from people who are buying new computers with Windows 7 and the most common question we’re asked is “How do I transfer my files and data from the old compute to the new one?”

If you are not connected to a network or you find setting file sharing and so forth just a little too intimidating, Startech has an easy to use and very affordable option called the USB Easy Transfer Cable.

Simply connect one computer to the other using your USB ports and transfer files easily from one computer to the other at speeds up to 480Mbps.

While working on a co-worker’s computer that was infected with spyware I was able to remove just about everything using the tools I outline in Jay Lee’s Patented Spyware Removal System save for one persistent troublemaker that was redirecting every Google search through something called Triplexfeed.

Malwarebytes didn’t detect it. Spybot didn’t detect it. Combofix didn’t detect it. I couldn’t even see it as a BHO using HiJackThis. It was simply invisible to me, but each and every Google search popped up a window that clearly showed my Web browsing traffic being redirected.

I did a little research and was able to figure out I had come across a nasty TDL3 rootkit.

From Rootbiez

TDL or TDSS family is a famous trojan variant for its effectiveness and active technical development. It contains two compoments: a kernel-mode rootkit and some user-mode DLLs which performs the trojan operation (downloaders, blocking Avs, etc,.). Since the rootkit acts as an “injector” and protector for the ring3 bot binaries, almost technical evolutions of this threat family focus on rootkit technology so as to evade AV scanners. As in its name, TDL3 is 3rd generation of TDL rootkit, still takes its aims at convering stealthy existences of malicious codes. Beside known features, this threats is exposed with a couple of impressive tricks which help it bypassing personal firewall and staying totally undetected by all AVs and ARKs at the moment.

Thanks to Daejin Media I got tipped to a program called Hitman Pro 3 – Second Opinion Malware Scanner.

Hitman Pro 3 scanned the infected system, detected about 5 things and removed them and had me reboot at which point it scanned again and found two more. After the second re-boot the system was free of the hijack.

It doesn’t install anything on your computer, either. Just a single executable that scans your computer and cleans up the mess. Hitman Pro is FAST, too. I had everything cleaned up in about 10 minutes.

Part of the magic of this program is how it uses a scan cloud to determine if suspicious files are, in fact, dangerous or not.

From the Hitman Pro Web site:

For the files that are classified as suspicious, the Hitman Pro client sends a request to the Scan Cloud for confirmation if these files are indeed malicious. The Scan Cloud is a cluster of multiple computers, residing on the Internet. The Scan Cloud will respond to this request with the answer:

* Safe
* Malicious
* Unknown

When the file is unknown, the Hitman Pro client uploads the file to the Scan Cloud where the file is scanned using the anti virus programs of 5 different vendors. Each of these anti virus programs analyzes the file and responds with “safe” or “malicious”. Click here for more details about the Scan Cloud.

Hitman Pro is not free. They do offer a 30 day free trial, though. After that the price is subscription based.

Not since discovering Spybot Search & Destroy have I been THIS enthused about an anti-spyware tool.

Discussing the Apple iPad and mobile computing in the first 1/2 hour. Great conversation. Also went back to original intro and bumper segments.

Technology Bytes Podcast for Feb 3rd, 2010 [ 1:59:22 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Technology Bytes will not be on the air Wednesday January 27th so that KPFT can bring you coverage of Barack Obama’s first ever State of the Union address. We’ll be back NEXT Wednesday.