Mrs. Ruth Madoff

West, Liverpool,

London.

My Great Compliments,

I’m Mrs. Ruth Madoff, 67, wife to Mr. Bernard L. Madoff, of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, who pleaded guilty to operating a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, is worth up to $826 million, according to a document filed with a federal court on Friday 13th March 2009.

My husband pleading stealing billions from investment from his clients and he was ordered to jail Thursday 12th March 2009, after pleading guilty to all 11 criminal counts in one of Wall Street’s biggest swindles.

Now the Federal investigators in the USA are working around the clock to freeze all my assets, fearing that I’m trying to flee the country which I have done shortly after my husband was sentenced, I have $93 million in my name beyond their reach.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is working with federal prosecutors in Manhattan to prepare a filing asking a judge to formally freeze all of my assets as soon as possible.

My husband deposited the sum of (USD$17.000.000.00 Million) in a Finance Firm in Europe some years ago in my name, I need you to collect this funds and distribute it to both of us since the Federal investigators are working around the clock to freeze all my assets. Meanwhile all documents related to transfer of this fund to your account is with my attorney Mr. Peter Chavkin, who is willing to help us process the release order from the UK bank.

Presently, I’m in a hard out here in UK as the Federal investigators as well the Securities and Exchange Commission is looking for me to freeze my entire asset as well prosecute me like my husband.

Please reply back to me on this e-mail as I will like if you contact my attorney directly so that he will direct you on the way forward. Please due send to me all your contact details as I will like to speak with you before we commence on the transaction.

Please keep this confidential. You can read my story on this website: http://www.nypost.com/seven/03152009/news/regionalnews/ruth_in_crosshair_159631.htm

God bless you.

Best Regards,

Mrs. Ruth Madoff

Now I know its not a whole lot to be excited about, but the main thing that has made me the happiest is faster network browsing! Yes, I know, small little improvement but the speed of browsing files stored on a my network is considerably faster. Windows XP used to take forever to “explore” the network if you tried to browse by Workgroup and always seemed to have troubles accessing various computers over my wireless network. Windows Vista was a bit faster and was much better at discovering the computers on a network. It would still tend to hang occasionally as it tried to load folders from networked computers especially if they had a lot files. Now, Windows 7! MAN! It is fast at browsing my network and makes it much easier to access files across the network. It copies large files much more efficiently over the wireless too and never hangs when exploring folders.

Thank you Windows team for speeding up the networking features on Windows 7!!

In Vista, if you click on the clock in the bottom right corner of the task bar, then a little calendar widget pops up with a cool analog clock on it like so:

What I realized is that if you click on the Month name it will “zoom out” the scope of the calendar. So if you click on where it says “March, 2009″ you will end up with a month view of the year instead:

You can keep clicking on the text between the arrows and it will continue to zoom out until you have reached a point where it shows just sets of years. Pretty cool little feature in my opinion! I used to just click the little arrows a number of times to get to next year and now I know to “zoom out” the scope of the calendar in order to get to next year. I feel a little stupid for not noticing the feature before whatever. I’ll get over the stupid feeling quickly.

So how would you hack these passwords? Well, its not really true hacking but simple copying and pasting of a couple files and you can access anybodies saved Firefox passwords. Wait, WHAT? Firefox creates a profile directory on your computer that stores the various information about your Firefox setup like bookmarks, plugins and history. There are two files that are used to store the passwords.

1. key3.db – This file stores a copy of the encryption key used to encrypt the saved passwords.
2. signons.txt, signons2.txt, or signons3.txt – These files store the saved passwords and as you can tell they are plain text files containing the encrypted passwords and logons. The signons.txt file is from early versions of Firefox 2 and signons2.txt is used in Firefox version 2.0.0.2 and later. You should find the signons3.txt file if you are using Firefox 3 or later.

Ok, so where are these files found? These files are stored in the profile directory which can be accessed by browsing to the profile folder based on which operating system you are using:

• Windows Vista and XP:    %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
• Mac OS:    ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/

You can visit this Mozilla support page if you need help finding your profile directory.

Now that you have found the profile directory that contains the saved passwords, these two files could be copied to another computer for viewing and accessing the passwords. Lets say that someone wants to gain access to your passwords. I am in no way condoning the stealing of someone’s passwords but I’m just telling you so that you can be aware! If they gain access to your computer for even a few seconds, a skilled, mischievous person could copy the two password files to a thumb drive or even access your computer over a wireless network if you are not running some type of firewall. By copying these two files they could then view your passwords using the method I am about to explain.

Lets say that you have gained access to these two files in some sort of a legitimate manner and you are not trying to steal someone’s passwords. For example, you could just want to move your passwords from one computer which could be done through this method:

1. Create a new profile using the Firefox Profile Manager so that you don’t mess up any of your settings. To open the profile manager, type “firefox.exe -profilemanager” into the “Run” dialog on your Start Menu on Windows or type “/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox -profilemanager” into Terminal on your Mac computer. If you need help opening the profile manager, visit this Mozilla support page.
   
2. Once you have the profile manager opened, select “Create Profile…” and give the profile a meaningful name.
   
3. Then choose “Exit”.
   
4. Open up the Firefox profile directory as mentioned above and look for the profile with the same name after the period as the one you just created in the Profile Manager. It should be of the form “xxxxxxxx.profilenamehere” where the “X”s are random letters and numbers.
5. Copy the two password files, key3.db and signons3.txt that you obtained into this profile directory. If it asks if you want to overwrite the files, say “Yes” so that the empty files are overwritten by the ones that actually contain the passwords. This is why we created a new profile. Otherwise, you would be writing over the saved passwords stored in your Firefox profile.
6. Open up the Firefox Profile Manager again. This time, select the profile that you created and select “Start Firefox”. You should now be in Firefox and will be able to access the saved passwords. To view the passwords, go to “Tools -> Options -> Security -> Saved Passwords …”  and then choose “Show Passwords” at the bottom right of the passwords window.
7. Voila! You should now be able to see all of the passwords stored in the files that were copied from a different computer.

Firefox Profile Manager

Well, now, thats fun! Some dubious person who gains access to your computer for more than a couple seconds could potentially steal all of your passwords. This means that a “back-stabbing” friend, tech support guy from some company like Best Buy or the tech support guys at your workplace could steal your passwords without truly hacking anything. Scary? Yes! People are not aware of how exposed they are and they rarely take the steps to protect themselves.

So how do you avoid someone from easily stealing your passwords and accessing your accounts? The makers of Firefox are not stupid and have built in a feature that allows you to set a Master Password. By default, this Master Password is not set and most people never set a Master Password. (This is exactly what it sounds like by the way…a password for your passwords) You can enable the Master Password by going to “Tools -> Options -> Security” and selecting “Use a master password.”

By setting the Master Password, a mischievous person cannot gain access to your passwords. Even if they were to copy your passwords to a different computer, they would have to know your master password in order to select “Show Passwords” as mentioned in Step 6 of the directions above. Also, when they visit a website that a password has been saved for, they would be prompted to enter the Master Password. This means that you will also have to enter the Master Password the first time a saved password is requested by Firefox after opening your browser. Don’t think of this a nuisance but rather an extra layer of security protecting your online identity. Just imagine if some menacing person gained access to your email, Facebook, bank accounts and other important sites?

Ok, I think the point has been made. Set a Master Password in Firefox so that someone cannot easily steal your passwords and access your various online accounts from the privacy of their comptuer.

Anyways, time to talk about the title of this post! I have been looking for one of my flash drives all week and just could not find it. I threw some laundry in to the wash this morning and never bothered to check the pockets. I usually empty my pockets when I take my pants off so that I don’t let things go through the wash. Guess I forgot this time! My sister took my clothes out of the dryer and found my flash drive in there! Amazingly it made it through the washer and dryer without breaking! It does smell a bit like Tide detergent now but I plugged it in and it still works great. Therefore, my official recommendation on flash drives are these SanDisk Cruzer drives since they can put up with just about anything!

There are plenty of commercial solutions for locking down a browser and usually cost a considerable amount per computer. I decided to use freely available open source software to create the locked down kiosk solution that the project called for.

Naturally, I needed to start with a good solid web browser that would allow for the use of plugins and customization. Firefox anyone? I grabbed a copy of Firefox 2 since Firefox 3 isn’t quite ready for production use yet and went to looking for plugins that would help turn Firefox into a kiosk browser. I stumbled upon R-kiosk which was exactly what I was looking for! If you read through the comments on the R-kiosk description page you will see that there are a couple shortcomings. The most notable problem is that popup windows are automatically resized to take up the entire screen. Since the menu bar is hidden so that the user can’t simply hit the “X” users can get “stuck” on pop up screens! This is a major flaw in the plug in but rather difficult to avoid. Fortunately for my set up, I don’t have to worry about popup windows. The content that users can view is local to the PC and is not “live” internet content. Saman Sadeghi has an excellent tutorial about R-kiosk over at his website.

If you read the description for R-Kiosk you will see that it blocks many of the keys in Firefox in order to prevent users from doing certain things. It does work and prevents the user from right clicking and things of that sort. This is great but there are still a number of things that the user could do in order to get back to the computer. R-Kiosk doesn’t block things like the Windows key or other common key combinations like CTRL-SHIFT-ESC or ALT-SHIFT-ESC that would allow a user to exit the browser window or bring up the Task Manager. I needed to completely lock down the computers and only allow the user to do a small set of operations.

In order to do this, I needed a way to control certain key strokes and prevent common ones like the Windows key from working. The best way I found to do this was a simple free program called AutoHotKey. Many gamers use AutoHotKey to create, well, hotkeys, for their games! I personally have used it to create custom hotkeys that make repetitive tasks easier to perform. I created a simple AutoHotKey script that monitors common shortcuts in Firefox and Windows and makes them do nothing which is exactly what is needed when locking down a PC! Here is a copy of the script that I created:

/*
Ignore attempts to launch multiple instances of the program
*/
#SingleInstance ignore
#InstallKeybdHook
 
/*
Disable a series of keys
*/
 
!F4::  ; Alt F4
!Esc::  ; Alt Escape
Lwin::  ; Left Windows Key
Rwin::  ; Right Windows Keyl
^Tab::  ; Ctrl Tab
!Tab::  ; Alt Tab
!+Tab::  ; Alt Shift Tab
F7::  ; F7
^+Escape::  ; Ctrl Shift Escape
!+Escape::  ; Alt SHift Escape
^A::  ; Ctrl A
^R::  ; Ctrl R
^P::  ; Ctrl P
^X::  ; Ctrl X
^C::  ; Ctrl C
^V::  ; Ctrl V
^T::  ; Ctrl T
!VK24::  ; Alt Home
SC135::  ; Firefox Quick Find
SC145::  ; Num Lock
 
SC03A::  ; Caps Lock
SC046::  ; Scroll Lock
!LButton::  ; Alt Left Click which starts download in Firefox
^LButton::  ; Ctrl Left Click which starts download
!MButton::  ; Alt Middle Click which opens a new tab in Firefox
^MButton::  ; Alt Middle Click which opens a new tab
+LButton::  ; Shift Left Click which opens a new window in Firefox
+MButton::  ; Shift Middle Click which opens a new tab
+VK0D::  ; Shift Enter which opens a new window
!+VK0D::  ; Alt Shift Enter which opens a new window
!VK0D::  ; Alt Enter which starts download
^VK0D::  ; Ctrl Enter which opens a new tab
^+VK0D::  ; Ctrl Shift Enter opens a new tab
^!VK0D::  ; Ctrl Alt Enter opens a new tab
^Escape::  ; Ctrl Escape
!Space::  ; Alt Space which opens menu bar
!+Space::  ; Alt Shift Space which opens menu bar
return
 
/*
Set Alt F9 to exit any open Firefox browser
*/
!F9::
 
IfWinExist, ahk_class MozillaUIWindowClass ; Firefox
 
{
 
WinActivate ahk_class MozillaUIWindowClass
 
WinClose, ahk_class MozillaUIWindowClass
 
}
 
return

As you can see, the top section of code monitors for all sorts of hotkeys and shortcuts. I’m sure that there are more that I didn’t come up and I’d love comments if there are anymore that would be helpful to block! The comments in the code make it rather self explanitory. The first section monitors for keystrokes and that has no action for each keystroke. Looking at the syntax of the AutoHotKey code, notice the “::” that comes after each Key sequence. Normally, the action for the hotkey would come after the double colons but my script assigns no action to each key stroke. You will notice that there are a number of characters that are used to represent certain keys in order to detect the keystroke. For example, the “!” is used to represent the Alt key. A full list of these character to key associations can be found at the AutoHotKey site. There is also excellent documentation available that can help your further explore AutoHotKey.

The second half of the code monitors for the Alt-F9 key sequence. This sequence was my testing “exit key” used to get me out of Firefox. This will be set to something more complicated, like a series of four keys, so that an administrator could make changes to the machine. If the AutoHotKey detects that Alt-F9 was pressed, it will check to see if any windows exist that belong to the MozillaUIWindowClass. It then closes them which would get an administrator the computer’s desktop.

Whew! That was a lot of information! I’m going to take a break now that I have explained a good amount about R-Kiosk and using AutoHotKey to limit key strokes. In the next installment I’ll talk about my modifications to the Firefox userChrome.css file which allowed me to hide all the features of the Firefox environment except for the back and forward buttons.

Now that I am back home and have a full desk to myself, I was able to redo my computer set up. I bought a second Acer 22″ monitor at the start of the year to use as a TV and later took it out of use when my room mate got a new 26″ LCD TV for us to use. Now that I have a new graphics card and two monitors I finally have my ideal dual monitor set up! Here is a picture:

I’m pretty excited that I finally am able to use this as my set up! It consists of 2 Acer 22″ LCD screens, my “Hackintosh” desktop running Mac OS X Leopard and a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse. I feel more productive already and I definitely enjoy being able to watch a movie or TV show on one screen while writing an e-mail or surfing the web on the other! I know that this set up will also help a lot when I am trading on the Forex market but I’ll write more about that sometime later. Overall, feels great to be home and feels good knowing that I have nearly four months of summer ahead of me!