This Copy of Windows is not Genuine

Coincidently or not, two customers in succession entered the shop with this message suddenly appearing on Windows Vista and Windows 7. Thanks to internet searches that included this and this in the SERP, I ran from the command prompt as administrator "slmgr -rearm". This seems to switch off the software licensing flag, at least until it comes back on.

Fake Anti-Virus

At my day job, a customer brought in a laptop and requested a diagnostic as it had recently slowed down and there were unwanted URL requests when opening a browser. I found this error when attempting to download external tools: "This file contained a virus and was deleted." I immediately suspected that the virus was blocking removal attempts. Luckily, I had these tools already on a USB flash drive. Here is what I did to start fixing the problem.

Confirmed that safe mode also infected

Confirmed that customer had data backed up

Advised that the best approach would be to reinstall Windows

Confirmed that customer had no installation disks

Warned the customer that a surgical approach has risks.

Risks accepted in writing

Ran msconfig to limit start up programs and services

Reset browsers to default

Ran regedit to adjust values

Adjusted internet options to allow certain websites

Copied Malwarebytes, ADWcleaner and HitmanPro from my USB flash drive

Ran all these tools.

Opted to not try combo-fix on my own

Downloaded Nexus client.

Connected to remote engineers who finished the cleaning with licensed and proprietary software.

Sites that helped me

Malwaretips

TechSupportAll

Eclipse Juno and the Android Dev Tool Kit Error

Using the Android SDK manager in Eclipse, I updated my installation with Android SDK 24.0.2. Upon restart, a message warned that the SDK requires the next iteration of the Android ADT plugin. Installing new software through the Help option will not work unless you first uninstall the current ADT plugin through Help > About Eclipse > Installation details. See the screen shot below.

Computer Forensics

21 popular computer forensics tools.

Notes on Security Panel

In November, I attended a Security Panel hosted by Tech in Motion in Santa Monica, CA. The following are notes to myself

Panelists:

Spokeo

Card

Gem

"If a product is free, then you are the product."

"Apple is good at changing consumer behavior."

"Credit card fees are high because of the inherent risk of using them."

Bitcoin is peer to peer

Credit card (magnetic) vs cell phone(trust chip).

SpiderOak

One time pad

"People, process, technology."

Encrypt in transport vs securing data at rest

Box vs DropBox

Two factor authentication

PCI vs HIPPA

Bitcoin is decentralization

SpiderOnFire is dead drops and dead letter boxes in the sky.

About the data

Big data brokers

Widespread Augmented Reality uses disposable anonymous handles stored in your head and messages embedded in image files.

Custom Android Image Button with Animation

If using an image button with a custom background, then the usual touch animation is lost. In order to affect an animation upon touch or click, I created one custom_background.xml that references two backgrounds: a touched background and a default background.

Default background XML in drawable folder (rect_drawable.xml):

Touched background XML in drawable folder (rect_drawable2.xml):

This is the background referenced on each button (custom_back.xml):

The image button's XML would look like this:

My PHP Code for Resizing Images into a Second Directory.

function compress_image($orig_url, $new_url, $quality) {
$info = getimagesize($orig_url);
if ($info['mime'] == 'image/jpeg') 
$image = imagecreatefromjpeg($orig_url);
elseif ($info['mime'] == 'image/gif') 
$image = imagecreatefromgif($orig_url);
elseif ($info['mime'] == 'image/png') 
$image = imagecreatefrompng($orig_url);
imagejpeg($image, $new_url, $quality);
return $new_url;
}
$sql = "SELECT
`idtags` as `id`,
`lat`,
`lng`,
`height` as `elevation`,
`title` as `title`,
 '0' as `distance`,
 '1' as `has_detail_page`, 
`url` as `url`,
`created` as `when`,
`private` as `priv`
FROM `tags` order by `created` desc;";
$result = mysql_query($sql) or trigger_error 
('JSON download error'.mysql_error(),E_USER_ERROR);
for ($i = 0; $i < mysql_num_rows($result); $i++){
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
$imgUrl = $row['url'];
$title = $row['title'];
$url = str_replace("%3A",":", $imgUrl);
$url2 = str_replace("%2F","/",$url);
$name = substr($url2, 29);
$url4 = "myNewImageFolder/".$name;
compress_image($url2, $url4, 75);
}