Our UK SBSC losses are Australian gains

July 30, 2008 Leave a Comment

Robbie Upcroft went back to Oz a while ago to carry on working with SBS partners down under after a stint at Microsoft UK. While over here he was a key part of expanding the Small Business Server community, working to set up local user groups, and it sounds like he is carrying on where he left off.

Another of the movers and shakers who made a huge impact to SBSC was the UK SMB girl herself, Susanne Dansey. After becoming an MVP just over a year ago for her contributions she upped and left us for foreign shores. Her passion and enthusiasm for technology and business are sorely missed, but now she too is bringing them to bear in Australia, joining the fun there in the run up to the launch of Cougar (SBS 2008 ) and EBS.

Susanne is blogging again as well, so with her and Robbie and other renowned SBS MVPs such as Wayne Small on the case, it looks like they have a great opportunity to make the most of the buzz. Good luck to all of them, and we hope to see you in the UK sometime soon, even if only for a flying visit!

Filed under Industry News, Small Business Server, Windows Server 2008 Tagged with , ,

UPS_Invoice email trojan variant claims to be from Customs Service

July 24, 2008 18 Comments

In the last hour I found in my inbox a variation on the UPS_Invoice trojans of last week. This new email claimed to be from “Customs Service” with the subject “Customs – We have received a parcel for you” and the following text:

Good afternoon,

We have received a parcel for you, sent from France on July 9. Please fill out the customs declaration attached to this message and send it to us by mail or fax. The address and the fax number are at the bottom of the declaration form.

Kind regards,

Rolland Hanna

Your Customs Service

This content was so close to the UPS_Invoice one that it seems obvious it originates from the same source.

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Filed under Security and Malware Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Follow up post about UPS_Invoice trojan

July 15, 2008 14 Comments

I’ve now had a chance to take a slightly closer look at the four copies of this Trojan Agent HFU that I received in the last 24 hours, as discussed in my previous post here. I’ve posted some details of file names and sizes along with MD5 hashes for people to be able to compare their versions against.

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Filed under Security and Malware Tagged with , , ,

UPS_Invoice.exe trojan received by email

July 14, 2008 37 Comments

This lunchtime I received an email as follows:

From: United Parcel Service [someone@not_ups.com]

Subject: UPS Paket N2410170593

Unfortunately we were not able to deliver postal package you sent on July the 1st in time because the recipient’s address is not correct.

Please print out the invoice copy attached and collect the package at our office

Your UPS

Attachment: UPS_Invoice_317.zip

Of course this was extremely suspicious. I had no recent dealings with UPS, the email clearly did not really come from them anyway (it was not even spoofed to appear to be from their domain), and why on earth would they need to send me a file, let alone a zipped one? The misspelling in the subject also smelled of an automated message (although Paket is the correct spelling for the German word for packet). I smelled malware and wanted to find out more.

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Filed under Security and Malware Tagged with , , ,

Using Field Chooser to find out when an Outlook appointment was created

July 4, 2008 2 Comments

Ewan Dalton posted a tip for finding when an appointment was created on his blog “The Electric Wand”. This involves dipping into the developer tools to have a look at the actual fields that Outlook / Exchange uses to store the data about the calendar entry, as opposed to the standard stuff that gets displayed through the default form view.

However, he posted a comment a day or so later with a much faster method which is probably less scary to the average user (no mention of words like “developer ribbon”, “forms” and so on). Simply using the field chooser in the search results window means that you can see the created date (and any other additional information you want) at a glance. I thought it would be useful to expand this and give a quick tutorial, since being familiar with the Field Chooser in Outlook is useful in lots of other ways such as:

  • You might want to see the size of emails so you can sort the large ones to the top to delete first, reducing the size of your email file the most amount with the least effort
  • Maybe you have filed sent and received items together which relate to a particular topic or project, and you want to show both the To and From fields in this folder view
  • It is easy to accidentally drag and drop a column heading away which removes it completely, so you need to know how to get it back

So, let’s have some show and tell:

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Filed under Exchange, Office System Tagged with , , , ,

Simple online content management from Texty

July 3, 2008 2 Comments

I found this online Content Management System (CMS) tool today which you can use to maintain the content of a web page without any great knowledge of how to write code.

Texty: The Simplest CMS

The principle here is that you put a script on your page which pulls the information from Texty’s database. You edit the content in that database through a simple online user interface, much like editing a blog post, for example. This is great for small organisations who may be prepared to pay a small amount to a web design firm for a basic site (or an off-the-shelf template) but do not have the skills to maintain well-written HTML themselves. So clubs, societies, and small (or even large) not-for-profits could all benefit from a simple system to help them manage the content of pages which change frequently, such as news or upcoming events listings. Some commercial firms might also welcome the convenience, although I suspect that many smaller businesses simply don’t feel the need to change their website content all that often. The other benefit may be that it is easy to allow multiple people to produce content without fear that they can cause problems for one another.

Why not get a blog instead?

For many people a blog is a handy way to post short pieces of news or information without having to write underlying code. However, the popular free offerings only give limited control over the appearance of the site from a selection of templates.

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Filed under Utilities + Tools, Web publishing Tagged with , , ,

System Administrator Appreciation Day 2008

July 2, 2008 1 Comment

image

SysAdmin Day – last Friday in July every year

From www.sysadminday.com:

If you can read this, thank your sysadmin

A sysadmin unpacked the server for this website from its box, installed an operating system, patched it for security, made sure the power and air conditioning was working in the server room, monitored it for stability, set up the software, and kept backups in case anything went wrong. All to serve this webpage.

A sysadmin installed the routers, laid the cables, configured the networks, set up the firewalls, and watched and guided the traffic for each hop of the network that runs over copper, fiber optic glass, and even the air itself to bring the Internet to your computer. All to make sure the webpage found its way from the server to your computer.

If you are not sure why you should show your appreciation, gratitude and even love for your SysAdmin, why not watch the System Administrator Song from Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie

Make sure you don’t forget SysAdmin Day this year or ever again

ICSfile

Click to download a calendar entry (.ics file) and add it to your diary (eg in Outlook or Lotus Notes) to remind you every year.

<update> Just found this SysAdmin day cartoon – maybe you should set it as your desktop background to remind you to celebrate on the day.

If you are a SysAdmin, are you celebrating this day? What gifts would you most appreciate from your colleagues?

If you are not in IT, how will you be showing your SysAdmin that you care?

Filed under Trivia and fun stuff Tagged with , ,

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