vector Archives - The Silicon Underground

Simple tips to prevent ransomware

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 12:00:23 +0000

Last week at work, I noticed some odd events in an event log, and when I investigated them, I found they were part of a failed ransomware attack. This got me thinking about how to prevent ransomware at home. Ransomware,

The post Simple tips to prevent ransomware appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

How to mitigate MS15-078 or future Microsoft font driver vulnerabilities

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 11:00:26 +0000

Microsoft rushed out an out-of-band patch, MS15-078, to deal with active exploits in their font driver yesterday. Since pushing out patches takes time, my boss asked me what we could do to mitigate the issue in the meantime. The biggest

The post How to mitigate MS15-078 or future Microsoft font driver vulnerabilities appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

Port 2381: What it is and how to manage it

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 28 Jan 2015 11:00:38 +0000

I was doing some scanning with a new vulnerability scanner at work. It found something listening on a lot of servers, described only as Apache and OpenSSL listening on TCP port 2381. The versions varied. Luckily I also had Qualys

The post Port 2381: What it is and how to manage it appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

If you need a vector drawing program, Microsoft Expression Design is free now

Dave Farquhar — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 15:53:32 +0000

For some reason, Microsoft decided several years ago that they needed to market a vector drawing program. It flopped. There may have been several reasons for it, but I’m sure one of the reasons was marketing. At any rate, they

The post If you need a vector drawing program, Microsoft Expression Design is free now appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

Workable two-factor authentication

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 13:15:32 +0000

I’m several months late to this party, but I just saw Marcel’s post on Google’s two-factor authentication with a smartphone. He’s right. It works until someone steals your phone. Once someone steals your phone, you’re in a world of hurt.

The post Workable two-factor authentication appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

End of the innocence for Mac security

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:14:08 +0000

Antivirus vendor Kapersky has identified a new trojan horse targetting Macintoshes. It spreads a botnet based somewhere in China via an infected Microsoft Word document, typically sent as an e-mail attachment. The spin is that if you don’t use Word

The post End of the innocence for Mac security appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

Was CP/M overrated?

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:17:09 +0000

Veteran tech journalist Dan Tynan recently published a list of 10 overrated technology products, and CP/M was on his list. But was CP/M overrated? I want to dig into that question a bit. I think everyone knows the story of

The post Was CP/M overrated? appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

Graphics software for Windows revisited

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 02:10:36 +0000

My girlfriend was asking me about graphics software today. She'd been trying to use Paint Shop Pro as an inexpensive alternative to Adobe Illustrator and, predictably, was disappointed.

The GPL alternatives to Illustrator still lack at least one crucial feature (bitmap pattern fills) but I remembered reading about Serif DrawPlus.

The post Graphics software for Windows revisited appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

A first look at Inkscape

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 22:56:10 +0000

I've been playing with the Windows version of Inkscape, which bills itself as an open-source SVG editor. It doesn't bill itself as an Illustrator/Corel Draw/Freehand killer, but as a simple vector drawing program, it works.

It takes getting used to. But I think I like it.

The post A first look at Inkscape appeared first on The Silicon Underground.

Free graphics software for Windows

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 23:25:00 +0000

Even people who use Windows exclusively have probably heard of The Gimp, which Linux and Unix users often proclaim as the "free alternative to Adobe Photoshop." While Photoshop is in no danger of being displaced in the industry, Gimp is certainly more than adequate for most use.

But installing it in Windows has never been easy, unless you knew a well-kept secret: the URL for Installers for Gimp for Windows. (The Windows page at gimp.org is pretty intimidating.)

The post Free graphics software for Windows appeared first on The Silicon Underground.