VirusScan 8.0i Central reporting

Investigate McAfee Alert Manager for use as a central VirusScan reporting tool … ReTS#3540

McAfee Alert Manager v4.7.1
McAfee Alert Manager is a central collection point for alert messages generated by McAfee AntiVirus scanning products in response to virus detection, virus definition file updates, and other significant events.

I’ll use REDMOND for the initial install and config. with the reporting being emailed to virus@edfac

Note that you configure your client ant-virus software to point at the server where Alert manager is installed. You do not configure Alert Manager to point at your client systems.

Client configured for \\REDMOND as the Alert Manager server

A quick test via the EICAR test file [3] shows that things appear to be working;

	From: virus@edfac.....
	Subject: VIRUS: Alert Manager
	To: virus@edfac......

	The file C:Documents and SettingsdcrDesktopeicar.txt is infected
	with the EICAR test file Test. No cleaner available, quarantined successfully.
	Detected using Scan engine version 4400 DAT version 4615. (from CF22877W IP
	128.250.151.108 user CF22877W running VirusScan Enter 8.0 OAS)

Next steps;
i) Configure the labs to send to REDMOND
ii) Determine the alert level at which to send Alert (Severity 3+ ?)

i) Configure the labs to send to REDMOND
Can use a REG file to push settings …

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARENetwork AssociatesTVDShared ComponentsAlert ClientVSE]
"SuppressAlertsBelow"=dword:00000001
"bLocalEventLog"=dword:00000001
"LocalConfig"=dword:00000001
"RemoteConfig"=dword:00000001
"Centralized Alerting Path"=""
"Alert Manager Server Path"="\\REDMOND"
"AlertType"=dword:00000004
"Alert Manager Logical Name"=""

[1] AMG471_ProductGuide_EN.pdf [NAI]
[2] Release Notes for McAfee(R) Alert Manager(TM) Version 4.7.1 [NAI]
[3] The Anti-Virus test file [eicar]

Spooks Night!!

Dead body mistaken for Halloween decoration
Frederica, Delaware
October 28, 2005 – 11:42AM [The Age]

The apparent suicide of a woman found hanging from a tree went unreported for hours because passers-by thought the body was a Halloween decoration, US authorities said.

The 42-year-old woman used rope to hang herself across the street from some homes on a moderately busy road yesterday, state police said.

The body, suspended about 4.5 metres above the ground, could be easily seen from passing vehicles.

State police spokesman Jeff Oldham and neighbours said people noticed the body at breakfast time but dismissed it as a holiday prank. Authorities were called to the scene more than three hours later.

“They thought it was a Halloween decoration,” Fay Glanden, wife of Mayor William Glanden, told The Wilmington News Journal.

“It looked like something somebody would have rigged up,” she said.

- AP

The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) league table for 2005

The University of Melbourne has been ranked the top Australian uni in an international survey.

The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) league table for 2005
27-oCT-2005

Top 20 universities as listed by the Times Higher Education Supplement. Last year’s rankings are in brackets.

1. Harvard University US (1)
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology US (3)
3. Cambridge University UK (6)
4. Oxford University UK (5)
5. Stanford University US (7)
6. University of California, Berkeley US (2)
7. Yale University US (8)
8. California Institute of Technology US (4)
9. Princeton University US (9)
10. Ecole Polytechnique France (27)
11. Duke University US (52)
12. London School of Economics UK (11)
13. Imperial College London UK (14)
14. Cornell University US (23)
15. Beijing University China (17)
16. Tokyo University Japan (12)
17. University of California, San Francisco US (20)
18. University of Chicago US (13)
19. Melbourne University Australia (22)
20. Columbia University US (19)

[1] The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) league table for 2005

Wake On Lan – Student Labs

A little scripting project on REDMOND to wake machine in the labs using Gammadyne Corporation’s WOL.EXE (v1.2). This is a fall back if other WOL tools fail.

The trick is that Packets cannot be broadcast across the Internet, only a LAN. To get around the subnet issues REDMOND needs to think that the VLAN is the subnet and hence although REDMOND’s actual netmask = 255.255.255.192 to make the VLAN the subnet we will need have the mask set as 255.255.255.0

	>wol 001143a5949c
	Wake-On-LAN Utility 1.1
	Copyright (C) 2000-2003 By Greg Wittmeyer
	All Rights Reserved

	Wake-up packet sent successfully

WOL.exe sends a “Wake On LAN” packet to the NIC with the matching Ethernet Address (EA). The script is pretty crude, as there is just a list of the EAs by subnet … I am testing the theory first – pretty can come later *chuckle*

Things went well for DM109, DM204, DM208 and DM211. Not so well for the DELL GX280’s in AH222 … a bit more testing and it appears not to be a subnet related issue. Something is rotten in the land of AH222 as even locally in the lab you cannot WOL the buggers

 

Fig1. Properties tab with ‘both’ enabled

Even if the WOL is enabled via the properties tab on the NIC (WinXP), it also needs to be enabled via BIOS.

	BIOS
	   |---Power Management
                  |---Remote Wake Up  [ON]

After these are changed for AH222 things should be ok And on a test GX280 things look OK

 

 Fig2.Magic packet on port 12287

 

The next thing is to find out what other services I may have broken with the change of netmask … tomorrows project

 

[1] WOL.EXE [Gammadyne Corporation]

Googlemaps + Geocaching.com

About Google Earth KML
KML files are specially formatted files for Google Earth that contains data to allow them to be viewed in the Google Earth desktop application. The data from Geocaching.com includes the type of listing (Traditional, Multi-cache) and other data to help you browse caches in a dynamic mapping interface.Please note that the coordinates used in Google Earth are only an approximation and can be up to 100 ft from the actual location. Do not use the coordinates in Google Earth for cache hunting. It is merely a viewing tool for getting a general idea of the cache location. [1]

… where ever I may roam.

From the Google Earth Blog:

Garmin Supports Google Earth
September 26, 2005
Garmin has released a beta of their MapSource software which supports Google Earth directly! From the menu “View -> View in Google Earth” and you can see your tracks, waypoints, and routes in GE directly. [MapSource version 6.9.0.2 Beta as of September 30, 2005].
Changes made from version 6.8.0 to 6.9.0.0 Beta: Added the ability to view the data contained in the current document in Google Earth

[1] About Google Earth KML [geocaching.com]
[2] Google Earth Tips Archive [Google Earth Blog]
[3] KML Tutorial [Keyhole/Google]
[4] KML Documentation. [Keyhole/Google]

AccessGrid continued …

I have been testing (playing with) AccessGrid from my laptop; I have set up a user Darren Robertson that seems to be working ok via the USyd bridge into the “Asia Pacific Access Grid Lobby” (the joys of Unicast *chuckle*). The certificate process was pretty quick and easy, suprisingly so.

And now we have a success via the Unimelb-AGN/Melbourne Bridge bridging into the “UMelbourne” venue.

The image from the laptop is not too good. I am using an old Logitech QuickCam Express and it has pretty poor picture quality … I think we’ll need to test a few other imaging devices (DV-Cam on firewire?)

Wollemi Pine$

Wollemia nobilis

 Dinosaur trees attract a mint
October 24, 2005 [The Australian]

BUYERS from around the world have paid more than $1 million to own a species of tree thought to have been extinct until a small grove was found in Australia a decade ago, auction house Sotheby’s said today.

The Wollemi Pine, thought to have been extinct for two million years until 15 of the trees were discovered growing in a valley west of Sydney in 1994, is believed to have existed since the Jurassic period 200 million years ago.

Cuttings from the grove, whose exact location remains a tightly kept secret, were used to produce the 292 trees, which were sold at auction Sunday in the first sale of its kind.

The 148 lots attracted bids of $1,059,162 a spokeswoman for Sotheby’s said – an average of $3,627 dollars a tree.

The most expensive lot was a replica of the entire secret grove, grown from cuttings of each of its 15 wild plants, which sold for $149,187.50, far surpassing its estimated price of $30,000 to $50,000 dollars. …

[1] Dinosaur trees attract a mint [The Australian]
[2] Secret life of plants – mystery man buys first Wollemi [Sydney Morning Herald]

Slap Face (Virus)

Well it’s become a day for working from home … Kira has been in sick bay this morning an needs to go home.

Slap Face (Virus)
erythema infectiosum
(Fifth Disease)

Internationally: Worldwide, epidemics of erythema infectiosum tend to occur in the late winter or early spring, with cyclical peaks of incidence occurring every 4-7 years. Approximately 60% of adults are seropositive for PV-B19 by age 20 years. Infection rates vary from 20-50% in schools and households during outbreaks.[1]

Medical Care: Since erythema infectiosum most often is a benign self-limited disease, reassuring the parents often is the only intervention necessary. For patients with arthralgias or pruritus, symptomatic relief can be obtained using oral analgesics and antihistamines or topical antipruritic lotions.[1]

Victorian statutory requirement
Notification and school exclusion are not required.[2]

Infectious agent
The causative agent is human parvovirus B19.[2]

The incubation period varies from four to twenty days.[2]

Children with erythema infectiosum are most infectious before the onset of the rash and are probably not infectious after the rash appears.[2]

 

[1] http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic136.htm
[2] Erythema infectiosum (human parvovirus infection or slapped cheek disease)
[3] Slapped cheek infection information sheet

Access Grid

A new project;

I have been speaking with ****** about our Dean’s desire to develop an access grid node in a new video-conferencing room in the Alice Hoy building, after seeing his submission to Lindenderry that such a facility be developed. …

Access Grid Logos at this site courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory

The Access Grid® is an ensemble of resources including multimedia large-format displays, presentation and interactive environments, and interfaces to Grid middleware and to visualization environments.

These resources are used to support group-to-group interactions across the Grid. For example, the Access Grid (AG) is used for large-scale distributed meetings, collaborative work sessions, seminars, lectures, tutorials, and training. The Access Grid thus differs from desktop-to-desktop tools that focus on individual communication.

The Access Grid has issued over 3,400 certificates to users across 47 countries. Each institution has one or more AG nodes, or “designed spaces,” that contain the high-end audio and visual technology needed to provide a high-quality compelling user experience. The nodes are also used as a research environment for the development of distributed data and visualization corridors and for the study of issues relating to collaborative work in distributed environments.

Prerequisites
=============
The Access Grid Toolkit requires Python verson 2.3 and wxWindows python
bindings version 2.5 or greater. For information about where to get
these applications, please see the “Links” section below. Special
dependencies for specific platforms are listed in their respective
install instructions.

Windows 2000/XP Install
=======================
Download and install the following packages in the following order.

ActiveState Python 2.3 (which includes the Win32 Extensions)
wxPython-2.5+

or

Python (2.3)
win32all (ver 154+)
wxPython (2.5+)

Reporting Bugs and Feature Requests
===================================
If you have found a bug either in the packaging of or the running of the
AccessGrid Toolkit, please go to http://bugzilla.mcs.anl.gov/accessgrid
to report them.

Links
=====
All of the needed packages can be found from the Access Grid research page
at: http://www.mcs.anl.gov/fl/research/accessgrid/software/index.html

My test install order:
1. install Python (ActivePython 2.3.2 Build 232)
2. install wxPython 2.5 for Python 2.3 (WIN32) 2.5.1.5-Py23
3. AcessGrid Toolkit 2.4 Final1 (Py-2.3)

Connecting:
The APAG Venues are at https://vv2.ap-accessgrid.org:8000/Venues/default [4]

[1] http://www.accessgrid.org/
[2] AG Wiki
[3] http://www.hpc.unimelb.edu.au/agn/
[4] http://portal.accessgrid.org/nodes
[5] http://www.ap-accessgrid.org/
[6] Monthly Index of ag-tech Mailing List

JOTA/JOTI 2005

JOTI

JOTA/JOTI 2005: another big success
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 11:24:10 +0000
From: jotiorgteam
Entries in Contacts Database:
Year 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
————————————————————
Groups 472 561 472 621 547 853
Single scouts 936 1159 1589 2700 3176 4814
Countries 87 98 93 105 120 128

E-Mail Addresses / Entries in Guestbook / Sent JOTI Validation Cards:
Year 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
——————————————————————
E-Mail Addresses 629 829 1159 990 1115 1504
Entries in Guestbook 421 377 421 481 754 1087
JOTI Validation Cards 2146 4125 5013 6867

You can see a detailed statistic for 2005 at
https://base.jotijota.org/joti/stats

2005-joti.kml

 

[1] http://staff.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/~dcr/scouts/joti/
[2] http://www.joti.org/
[2] https://base.jotijota.org/joti/kml?all=1 Google Earth (kml)