Updated Exchange Stuff

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…

Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer Tool

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…

Daily news… ;-)

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

SSL Diagnostics

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..

si.blogs in Delo newspaper

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

Speed up Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0

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 😉

Spammers Skirt IP Authentication Attempts

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.

eBay domain hijacker arrested

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

Change default path in Command Prompt

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_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftCommand ProcessorAutoRun

In my example I have cdtools 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_USERSoftwareMicrosoftCommand ProcessorAutoRun

This works on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, but I haven’t tested on other versions of Windows.

Change default path in Command Prompt

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_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftCommand ProcessorAutoRun

In my example I have cdtools 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_USERSoftwareMicrosoftCommand ProcessorAutoRun

This works on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, but I haven’t tested on other versions of Windows.