september 2004 - Posts
Exchange Server All-In-One Tools Download
Date Published: 9/21/2004
Version: 06.05.7408
Overview
This package contains all the Exchange tools packaged together in a single download.
Tools that have been updated since the release of this package are noted with an asterisk and can be downloaded separately from Microsoft Exchange home page.
Download tools here...
Exchange Server 2003 Security Hardening Guide
Date Published: 9/21/2004
Version: 2.0
Overview
This guide is designed to provide you with essential information about how to harden your Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 environment. In addition to practical, hands-on configuration recommendations, this guide includes strategies for combating spam, viruses, and other external threats to your Exchange 2003 messaging system. While most server administrators can benefit from reading this guide, it is designed to produce maximum benefits for administrators responsible for Exchange messaging, both at the mailbox and architect levels.
This guide is a companion to the Windows Server 2003 Security Guide. Specifically, many of the procedures in this guide are related directly to security recommendations introduced in the Windows Server 2003 Security Guide. Therefore, before you perform the procedures presented in this guide, it is recommended that you first read the Windows Server 2003 Security Guide.
Download guide here...
This tool is really cool... sometimes... ;-)
Overview
The Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer programmatically collects settings and values from data repositories such as Active Directory, registry, metabase and performance monitor. Once collected, a set of comprehensive ‘best practice’ rules are applied to the topology.
Administrators running this tool will get a detailed report listing the recommendations that can be made to the environment to achieve greater performance, scalability and uptime.
Download it here...
German teen who made Sasser worm hired by computer security firm
Eighteen-year-old Sven Jaschan has been taken on by the Securepoint computer firm based in Lueneburg, northern Germany and is being trained to make firewalls, which stop suspect files from entering computer systems.
Read the rest @Yahoo! News
Man Held in England in Cisco Code Theft
A 20-year-old man has been arrested in England in the theft of the proprietary software blueprints used by Cisco Systems Inc.'s networking equipment, police and the company confirmed.
About 800 megabytes of the software blueprint, or source code, for Cisco's Internetwork Operating System appeared on a Russian Web site in May. It was quickly removed at Cisco's request. The company said the theft was not the result of a software or service vulnerability.
Read the rest @Yahoo! News
Overview
A common problem for administrators of IIS servers is configuring and troubleshooting SSL enabled websites. To assist in administrators efforts, Microsoft has designed a tool - SSL Diagnostics - to aid in quickly identifying configuration problems in the IIS metabase, certificates, or certificate stores.
This tool allows users to review configuration information in a easy to read view mode or to run the tool silently with only the creation of a log file. During use, administrators can simulate the SSL handshake to find errors. They can also quickly "hot swap" certificates for testing purposes.
These packages come in two forms: Express and Full. The express will only give the pertinent tools for administrators to use SSL Diagnostics while full install installs the same files with the appropriate documentation. Included in the full install is a SSL Frequently Asked Questions that can assist in the learning of SSL for administrators.
Download it here..
Quote from friend and coworker David:
Jonas, Živa and si.blogs have been mentioned in an article about blogs in Delo magazine, which is the biggest daily newspaper in Slovenia. Turn to page 19.
Read the rest @vidmar.net/weblog
Go to Adobe Acrobat Reader program files folder plug_ins and move all plugins except the following: EScript.api, EWH32.api, IA32.api, Search.api, Search5.api to Optional folder in Adobe Acrobat Reader program files folder.
Have fun ;-)
As enterprises continue to register Sender Protection Framework records, hoping to thwart spam and phishing attacks, spammers are upping the ante in the war on spam and registering their own SPF records.
E-mail security company MX Logic Inc. will report this week that 10 percent of all spam includes such SPF records, which are used to authenticate IP addresses of e-mail senders and stop spammers from forging return e-mail addresses. As a result, enterprises will need to increase their reliance on a form of white-listing called reputation analysis as a chief method of blocking spam.
Read the rest @eWeek
But did anyone really expect that SPF will prevent all spam? Well… maybe someone did… but that’s because of lack of understanding how SPF works. What I really like about SPF is that it protects innocent domains from spammers, virus/worms writers abusing them.
As matter of fact SPF is not antispam product at all. It only allows you to be confident in genuineness of domain and sender from that domain.
Police in Germany have arrested a 19 year-old from Helmstedt for hijacking the site of eBay Germany about a week ago. Visitors to eBay Germany were redirected to a site hosted by internet provider Intergenia AG. Initially, phishers were suspected of the domain hijack.
The boy admitted he requested a DNS (domain name server) transfer for several high-profile sites, including Google.com, Web.de, Amazon.com and eBay Germany. While most of these transfers were denied, somehow eBay slipped through. It remains unclear how the domain could have been transferred without the consent of the existing holder.
Read the rest @The Register
I usually hate default path (C:\Documents And Settings\%username%\) in command prompt. One of the solutions to change that is by modifying the following registry entry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\AutoRun
In my example I have cd\tools which automatically change my path to C:\tools (cd\ will make your root drive (normally C:\) the default folder in command prompt.
If you want to change this behavior only to current user than change the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\AutoRun
This works on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, but I haven’t tested on other versions of Windows.
Ericsson, the inventor of Bluetooth, has ended years of aggressively positioning the short range standard for dominance and has stopped developing new products. This is a sign that the market has become one for volume suppliers, not innovators, but it highlights a broader sense that, while the current generation of Bluetooth will achieve a large base, the next generation will be pushed into niches by emerging alternatives —if they can avoid Bluetooth’s many mistakes.
Read the rest of article @The Register...
Quote:
What system software do you use?
PCs use Microsoft (Windows) XP companywide.
That`s explain whay they are so damn good! ;-)
Read the rest of article @CNET. Tnx David for this post ;-)
Overview
Are you planning to deploy Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003? Are you concerned about availability, fault tolerance and performance? If so, it is critical that you understand how to optimize your storage system for Exchange Server 2003, regardless of the size of your organization.
Disk subsystem bottlenecks cause more performance problems than server-side CPU or RAM deficiencies, and a poorly designed disk subsystem can leave your organization vulnerable to hardware malfunctions. Specifically, your disk subsystem is performing poorly if it is experiencing:
- Average read and write latencies over 20 ms.
- Latency spikes over 50 ms that last for more than a few seconds.
High disk latency is synonymous with slow performance. To reduce costly disk latency issues, at a minimum, you should:
- Invest in high performance disks and spindles.
- Consider performance before capacity.
- Align your disks by using DiskPar.
All of these topics are discussed in this guide. In general, to optimize your storage system and avoid high disk latency issues, you need to understand:
- The causes of Exchange disk I/O.
- How to calculate your disk I/O requirements.
- How to optimize your specific storage architecture.
- How to verify the performance of your storage system.
Download guide here...
Overview
The Exchange SDK Development Tools offer the following features to help you start building solutions on Microsoft® Exchange 2000 Server and Exchange Server 2003:
- Exchange Explorer
- Exchange Application Deployment Wizard
- Exchange Store Event Sink Wizard for Microsoft Visual Basic® 6
- Managed Exchange TreeView Control
Download it here...
Windows Media Player 10
Windows Media Player 10 is the all-in-one media player that provides the best experience for discovering, playing, and taking your digital entertainment anywhere--on Windows XP-based PCs and the widest choice of portable devices.
Download it here...
Is Linus Torvalds secretly working for Microsoft? That sounds crazy until you consider that lately, the free operating system he created, Linux, has been helping Microsoft close deals.
Read on...