Yet another QuadCore

Yesterday I assembled another QuadCore computer, this time it is the one from Andreas, a friend.

However, the components are nearly the same as last time, except CPU, power supply and harddisk + multi dvd burner:

• AMD PHENOM 9600 4x2.3GHZ Black Edition AM2+boxed
• Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Single-Slot, 512MB GDDR4, 2x DVI, TV-out, PCIe 2.0
• Gigabyte GA-MA790X-DS4, 790X
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB
  
• Kingston KIT 2048MB DDR2 1066
• Power supply 550W with 14cm fan
• SAMSUNG SH-S203D SATA black bulk DVD Writer

This time the boot process and the setup were not the problem, the problem, in the end, was the DDR2 RAM. Seems that it is unstable with the full 1066MHz, after manually changing it to 800MHz it worked, before that it crashes all the time. We have to bring it back and get new one for those.

For more detailed information on some of this components, look down to the other assemble thread.

Not more news for now, ... before the assembling I was at another job interview, after the assembling I have been to a grillfest organized from our organisation HagenbergerCircle. And yes, I still write on my master thesis.

Regards

Security Forum

Every year, the Hagenberger Circle hosts the Security Forum. I'm a member of this organization and therefor I was there too, of course.

This year I was a bit late, because I thought it will be on the next day *gg*. But finally I arrived, ready for the lunch break. I met a lot of nice people and I talked a lot. Actually I liked those conversations more than the presentations. This year the mix of the presentations was not that good. Too much management presentation, but not security management, I mean business economics. (my opinion)
And I think the topics have been too shallow. That was also some feedback I got from some other visitors. But next year it will get better, that's for sure.

However, I visited the OSSTMM and the Business Malware presentation. In the first presentation the time was way too short to get an impression. The presenter always said how important Security Performance Indicators are, but unfortunately he never showed how this indicator looks like. So there where more questions marks afterwards than before. The Malware presentation from Kaspersky was interesting, but one of those presentation with to much economics in it.

To get an impression how this years Security Forum looked like, here some photos:




You can find more pictures and the presentations on the Homepage of the SecurityForum.

Alumni Party

On Friday (28.03) we had our yearly alumni party. This year again Michi organized it. It was again a very nice evening, even when a lot of people left quite early.

There were about 70 alumni from "Computer and Media Security (CMS)" and "Secure Information Systems (SEC)". At the beginning we saw a presentation about news from our University and our organization, the HagenbergerKreis (Hagenberg Circle).

Nothing really new for me, because I'm still in Action. Yet so far I'm "just" an alumni for CMS and not for SEC. The only really interesting news came from Robert, our boss of those two degree programs. He was not allowed to say much, so I have just a clue what it can be. If it is like I think, it will become big ;)

After the presentation we had a buffet. And spent the rest of the evening with celebrating and talking. I like to see, because it is really interesting, what the other alumni become, in the economy. Such an event is always good for networking, especially at the moment.

For me this evening ended at 5 o'clock in the morning.

Michi can handle the organization of the party, but unfortunately he can't handle his camera *gg*. He made a lot of photos, but the memory card was broken and even recovery didn't help. So there are no photos at the moment, sorry.

Presentation for PCClub and new technical stuff

First of all, last Wednesday we did a presentation (in the name of our organization Hagenberger Kreis) for the PC-Club in my hometown. It was the second presentation about IT-Security. This time we had the topic Backup. First I was afraid that the topic is too small and we can not fill the planned 1-1,5h. But as it is, when it comes to presentations, in the end it took 2,5h.

First we presented basics like medias, where and what to backup and so on. Also we explained in details what is and how works incremental, differential and full-backup.
At the end we presented two tools to backup.

The first one was the Vista integrated backup and restore center. For (semi-)professionals I would recommend not to use it. Because it has some really weird things implemented. First of all it is not possible to choose a backup strategy. (increment, differential, full) Vista makes first a full backup and afterwards only incremental backups all the time. So it is not possible to make a full backup every Sunday and in between incremental.

But the weirdest thing is, that you can't really choose a directory or file to backup. Because the only choice you have is to choose a partition or disk and afterwards choose which kind of file types you want to backup. That it definitely strange !!! You don't believe me? Have a look!

Weird!!
However, the restore function has the possibility to restore only one file or a directory. (why not the backup function !!!??)

The second tool was one of my favourite -> Cobian Backup.
It is freeware and it is really good. It has everything you need, except backup on DVD. You can find it here Cobian Backup.
The feature list is really very nice and the upcoming version, which should be published soon, has even more features. But read the feature list on your own, I give you just some key words: FTP, encryption, compression, password, timestamps, files/directories/partitions/disks, and so on and on and on.....

Ok, let's move on to the new technical stuff.
Truecrypt released a new version. Version 5 brings some new stuff, but the most important thing is the pre-boot encryption.
Finally a free software encryption tool has a pre-boot feature. This means that you have to enter a pass phrase at the boot process and if someone steals your PC or hard disk, he can't do anything with it, because it is encrypted. Very nice!!
I will do it as soon as possible, but first I will do a backup of my important data, because there is always a small risk with this kind of software. In the worst case, you can't access the PC on your own *gg*. But it should work, I will give you some Input as soon as I know.

Vista User Account Control issue:
When I put my PC into my domain and "transfered" my local user to a domain user account, I had a problem with the UAC. Everytime it asked me to enter my Admin and password. Not like before just to click at continue, this time I really have to type it all the time.
I lived some time with this issue, until I solved it yesterday. I played with the user accounts and recognized, that my domain user is not in the list of the local users. So I made a new user. There you can say that this user is part of a domain. After I did that, everything worked find as before.

Security Präsentation beim PC-Club Steyr

Am Mittwoch war es soweit. Nach relativ langer Vorbereitung haben da Georg und ich im Auftrag des Hagenberger Kreises eine Präsentation zum Thema "IT-Sicherheit für den Heimgebrauch" abgehalten.

Inhaltlich ging es um:

• IT-Sicherheit allgemein
• Antivirus
• Firewall
• Spyware
• Passwörter

Zu jedem Thema haben wir Live-Vorführungen von kostenlosen Tools gemacht. Die Präsentation hatte 70 Folien und war für 2 Stunden geplant.
Tja, geplant ;)
Durch das große Interesse und zahlreicher Fragen, waren es im Endeffekt dann 3 (!) Stunden. Wobei sich da Georg und ich oft zu intensiv mit Fragen beschäftigt haben, wir werden das bessern.

Es war ein toller Abend, das Interesse war groß, das Feedback war sehr gut und zum Abschluß gabs beim Gasthaus Holzer noch ein Gratisbierchen. Freue mich auf eine weitere Zusammenarbeit der beiden Vereine und hoffentlich noch eine Verbreitung in anderen Bereichen (Schulen, Firmen, Vereinen) unseres Mottos "Förderung der digitalen Sicherheit".

Die Präsentation wird bald auf einer eigenen Unterseite des Hagenberger Kreises zu finden sein, leider ist die noch nicht fertig, wird aber im Juli noch passieren. Der Unterpunkt wird dann im Menü unter "Treffpunkt Sicherheit" zu finden sein.

Fotos werden auch kommen, unsere sind noch nicht ausgewertet aber der PC-Club hat hier welche zum angucken.

Öffentlichkeitsarbeit des HagenbergerKreises

In einer der letzten Sitzungen wurde beschlossen, dass wir mehr im öffentlichen Bereich aktiv tun wollen, um das Sicherheitsbewusstsein zu fördern. Das SecurityForum richtet sich ja hauptsächlich an Unternehmen, daher die Initiative im Bereich der eher Privaten.

Alles ging dann ziemlich rasch, erste mögliche Zielgruppen definiert und Kontakt aufgenommen. Und siehe da, das Interesse scheint relativ groß zu sein. Mein Ansprechpartner war der Computer Club Steyr und die haben die Idee durchwegs positiv aufgenommen.

Wenn alles so läuft wie geplant, sollte es Mitte-Ende Mai in Steyr unseren ersten Vortrag zum Thema Clientsicherheit (Virenschutz, Firewall, usw...) auf Basis von Freeware Software stattfinden.

Auf weitere zahlreiche Interessenten und eine erfolgreiche Initiative !!!!