[Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus]

A few months ago I posted that “there was an awful lot of money to be made by servicing Windows 7 due to the high number of users sticking with it after Jan. 2020…”

Looks like I was right…something like this happened with Win 98SE after 2006 EOS; don’t remember if it was 0patch or someone else, but they kept cranking out security patches for free for individuals for quite a while afterwards. (Note I use EOS instead of EOL…plenty of “life” left in 7!)

I said it was a potential goldmine, and so it is at $25 for Pro, times how many million?…(and home users for free? Wow.).M$FT’s usual business decision not to do something similar points out, once again, their blurry vision of the future, pure wrong-headedness, (“CEO’s are never wrong!”) and the train wreck Win 10 has become.

Hey, Nadella: how’s that Windows Phone  and Surface thing working out for you?

(shakes head)

https://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2019/09/20

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

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SueW, LHiggins, AJNorth

[Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus]

Erg, Addendum! Hold the presses! “He that seeks, shall find.”

They have this stuff buried pretty good in the menu; I DID find the switch, flicked it, and now Gibson is happy.

Still, being a tyro at networking, I do have to ask if this is going to cause problems with my ISP…the default level for ping was “low”…significance? I was unaware anything else but “off” and “on” was available. And I DON’T want to have to deal with my ISP if I don’t have to, see above.

Also, I’m uploading a few screenshots of the sub-sub-sub menus in this router with this post; (NOTE: The screenshot shows the ping set to “on”; I set it to “off”-it’s the only adjustment I made.) If anyone sees something that would improve security, let me know. I’m very green at this.

The idea is to keep my ISP happy (firmware and security upgrades) and balance that with security.

Many Thanks!

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

• This reply was modified 5 days, 12 hours ago by  Nibbled To Death By Ducks.
• This reply was modified 5 days, 12 hours ago by  Nibbled To Death By Ducks. Reason: Sheer Ignorance

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[Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus]

Thanks, Zero! I figgered that was the case. (And #1952573, there is no such switch in the router interface.)

I didn’t _want_ to accept the company modem, but my old beloved Linux-based Linksys wasn’t on their list of approved modems, and I can’t buy a new one currently (senior on fixed/inflation-declining income).

I have read that the old bugaboo about Ping! is no longer as critical factor, as attacks seldom use it, and Gibson’s using it as criteria no longer is as relevant as it used to be. Questions:

1. IS the old bugaboo about Ping being an issue is no longer a factor?
2. Will enabling the blocking of ICMP v4 and v6 at the computer firewall do me any good? My instincts tell me that it would, but it also might keep the ISP from diagnosing any issue that may arise. (I have RDP and all remote control disabled on this machine, so I don’t know what good having them poke around in my machine would do them…and I don’t want them in there anyway…)
3. Does anyone know if this Sagemcom a NAT router?

Inquiring minds want to know… :p

P.S. I would rather eat worms than call my ISP unless I couldn’t deal with it myself…I don’t speak the dialect they use at their call center in Chennai…plus having to go through 12 layers of Tech Support…it feels like I’m playing a 2-hour CG game...”I am the Gatekeeper, are you a Keymaster?” Maybe I should just tell them “I’m a God” next time…(Apologies to Ghostbusters.)

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

[Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus]

With the power going out around here on an average of once a month…the question would be moot if I didn’t have it all going into a 500 watt UPS/Line Filter!

Seriously, unless there’s something really haywire, leave it. I left my old Linux-based Linksys on for months without any hassle.

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

[Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus]

Here I am, 6 days late and a dollar short,  “The Battle of Life,” having consumed me….just missed this Code Red. God, we created the Internet…like the Talking Heads verse, I often say,

“My God, what have we (I) done?” Right along with Tim Berners-Lee, I imagine.

Small password suggestion: Choose a nonsense phrase or peculiar word, have Google Translate it into some obscure language, and add odd characters, or “Squirrel noises”, ha-ha.

I’m just lucky I had Classical and Church Latin, Ancient Greek and Coptic beaten into my head in grammar school. All passwords are written in Coptic, and the book is metaphorically in the basement  closet behind the sign, “Beware The Leopard”.

Or, as Zippy The Pinhead said, “Civilization is fun! Anyway, it sure keeps me busy!”

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

[Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus]

woody wrote:

The first half of that I tried to cover with this:

Why the hokey old-fashioned site?

A friend of mine, who passed away many years ago, created it. We’ll update it one of these days. In the meantime, up at the top you see my current recommendation for installing patches, using the MS-DEFCON system. On the left side of the main page, you see tech news; on the right, you see pointers into the Lounge — the question-and-answer part of AskWoody.com. To follow along with the latest news, read the left side of the page. To ask (or answer!) questions, start on the right.

I just added a section on Susan’s Patch Watch.

Extended the “post” section to include the tips.

Keep ’em comin’!

“Hokey and old Fashioned,” eh?

What a “Ween of Blathers!” (Scottish-look it up.) Bananas!

How about “Conservative”, “Universally Accessible,” “Low Attack Surface” and “CPU/user efficient and friendly?”

Honestly, when HTML 5 first came out of a thoroughly industry-whipped W3C, I was running into sites that sucked 90% of my CPU on the index page, and was intended to make two guys in a rented broom closet with a high-speed connection look like The Next Big Thing. “Now Hiring!!”

Two months later, the “company” folded, and all 5 employees were let go.

Moral: When building a website, if deciding whether to ram the throttle to the firewall or ride just below cruising speed, do the latter. “Them’s that knows don’t have to bleat and holler.”

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

3 users thanked author for this post.

Tom-R, geekdom, woody

[Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus]

Checking in after 24 hours….

No apparent ill effects. (Everything else in life went south today, but the machine, no.)

Again, thanks to all; this board is golden. I hereby dub it “Guardian Angel of PC’s!”

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

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jburk07

[Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus]

Reporting in:

I was REALLY hesitant this time, seeing all the horror stories…but went ahead this PM and installed KB4474419 first, rebooted, no issues.

Then I installed the Rollup, KB4512506, and a weird thing happened:

The machine booted, got to the desktop, and then spontaneously rebooted.

It has NEVER done this on an update/rollup, or any other time I can remember.

After that, things quieted down. Checked the local Task Manager, nothing there as usual, blank. There’s 39 items down in the “Active Tasks Box” (including RAC), but as I checked out of the Customer Experience” thing, all should be good, right?

I kept hunting round in different dark corners of the machine, But it seems to be running “hot, straight, and normal” (as the old submariners used to say).

But I am a bit nervous right now (Subconscious: “Now? I thought your Amerindian name was ‘Nervous Elk?'”), and I have the feeling I might be treading on thin ice.

Or the tail of the tiger.

Or both.

Will advise again in 24-48 hrs or sooner if something breaks.

“It’s all happening here!” (It sure is, you *&^%$##!!!)

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

• This reply was modified 1 week, 6 days ago by  Nibbled To Death By Ducks. Reason: Typo

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Charlie, jburk07

[Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus]

geekdom wrote:

So that’s what happened to the quality control team…

Yup, they got over 40, went out the door, and these are the replacements.

“O Tempora! O mores! O &^#$!”

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

[Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus]

I.

Am.

Positively.

Ill.

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

[Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus]

Used Chrome until I got tired of having to manually flush all the tracking goop a few times a day*; coupla weeks ago switched back to Firefox with two extensions, uBlock** and Adblock Plus. Results:

Chrome: 547 MB of RAM
Firefox: 447 MB RAM
Firefox uses 27% less RAM on my system.

System stats below. Also keep in mind the more extensions you add, the more RAM it’s going to take up.

*Firefox has this wonderful little switch in it that blows it all away when you close the browser.

**Tried NoScript, but had to abandon it-uBlock uses lists, and just about every site you hit needs JavaScript to run properly… whitelisting every site. uBlock seems to have fairly large and correct lists.

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

1 user thanked author for this post.

rc primak

[Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus]

All I can contribute is that I used a XP workstation well past EOL as long as browsers and AV supported it, and for online banking/financial, for quite a few years, and never had an issue. Moral: An informed user, good system sanitation and good habits will keep you out of trouble more than a modern, patched system and ignorance will.

Yesterday my wife’s Android 8.1 phone freaked out due to a False Positive; we ran the offender thru Virus Total; only 2 out of 59, Eset and AVG rang it up. She runs Eset. (The file had caused issues with their defs last year, too.) It was the system component “Settings.apk” that registered.  After following all the required instructions for submitting a false positive in great detail, we got back an email saying: “Can you provide us more informations (sigh) about this .apk file?”….)

(It’s part of the OS, you silly person, “Settings”, get it???)  And oh, what lighthearted laughter and tears there were in the old manse when that one came in! Moral: AV companies are mortal too, screw up, and are often staffed by front-liners who’s knowledge of IT is lower than yours!

IMHO, again, An informed, and educated user, good system sanitation and good web/security habits will keep you out of trouble more than a modern, trouble-laden, patched system and ignorance will.

As far as EOL goes, 7’s market share at EOL is going to be higher than XP’s was at EOL…and MSFT back-watered and extended XP’s EOL. Sooooo…..

Seven Semper Fi!

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

3 users thanked author for this post.

Cesar, TaskForce141, PerthMike

[Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus]

“Question: why shouldn’t the Metasploit developers be sent to jail?”

That option SHOULD be in the mix when the FBI comes a-knocking at their door…and an offer to drop charges if they turn on the bad guys and work WITH the good guys.

“Or even a better question, in my opinion, could be this one: why do some (presumably) sane Internet security experts choose to divulge to the four corners of the Earth information that can help, in any way, cyber criminals, including operational demo malware, on potentially very serious security threats such as this one?”

Well, as someone famous once said, “Follow The Money”. 99.5% of the time in our society, there’s your reason.In this case it’s keeping people scared to death so they throw tons of money at AV and Anti-Malware vendors so they can sleep at night.

It’s a mutually beneficial and really sick game/loop in which, as Carl said well, we are not the Colonel, but the “Plucked Users”.

And once they get a definition in their system, look out, it’s there to stay. Recently my wife’s Android phone got a Sprint network update, after which the Eset vendor’s A/V scan threw a fit. The update tweaked the “Settings.APK” to allow a more convenient screen layout and a few network bug fixes. For the next several days I went to Virustotal.com and ran it through 60 engines. The hit rate was a consistent 8%, and has stayed there. I also went back and forth with Eset’s Eastern Europe HQ via email, (“We don’t have phone tech support for viruses,”) (Uh, you’re an AV outfit…) pointing out that it probably was a false positive, as 5 sparrows out of 60 do not Malware make.  No good. Downloaded several Big Name AV/Malware packs and ran them directly on her phone; all came up negative. The phone exhibits none of the symptoms they had their hair on fire about. I got so disgusted I actually joined the Virustotal.com community (not a bad thing to do, even if it IS owned by Gungle).

And “From so simple a beginning, endless forms most unpleasant and most awful have been, and are being, evolved…”

Yup.  I agree. In 1993 I was a founding member of an Internet Special Interest Group…(Anyone remember Mosaic? 2400 baud modems? Privacy? Unobtrusive banner ads?) I have Thoreau’s Walden on my shelf, and the urge to head for the back country and grow my own peas and learn how to play the flute is getting stronger every year. Until then, I thank the stars for this site.

I could be wrong.  I’m often wrong. Maybe in weeks to come it’ll blossom into a world-wide catastrophe, and Malwarebytes, Sophos, Bit Defender and 57 others will have egg on their face.

But I doubt it. Move over, Henry…

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

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Cesar

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OK, Alex, you got me there…this old machine has only 4 gigs of hard RAM…and so it matters to me, but not to thee.  🙂

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

[Nibbled To Death By DucksAskWoody Plus]

It IS disheartening, isn’t it? The worst part about it is that it’s all about fright tactics to up the click count, so they can squeeze more money out of their advertisers. “See? Look at how many more views we have!”

When push comes to shove, the love of money always seems to eclipse values, standards, even human life, more and more. But I digress…(a habit of the old. Sorry.)

I’d like to see a topic started (Gee, I might do it myself!) regarding what everyone thinks are credible security threat sources/sites and what are NOT, especially in the on-line Infosec pub world. (Woody’s would be right up there with the good guys!)

Win7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Dell Latitude E6330, Intel CORE i5 "Ivy Bridge", Group "Wait for the all-clear", Multiple Air-Gapped backup drives in different locations, "Don't check for updates-Full Manual Mode."
--
"...All the people, all the time..." (Peter Ustinov ad-lib from "Logan's Run")

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Lars220, WildBill, geekdom

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