Teaching the newbies…

// July 22nd, 2010 // No Comments » // SEO

and getting PREE Corp a number one ranking on Google.

I office out of the Idea Finishing School space in San Antonio. I have a desk set up in the “school room” and most of my day is spent working on different sites that CFO Rudy owns. In all, I work on about 6 sites daily. We also brainstorm on other things, like now he’s started an app company, so in addition to laying out the site, I also get to help with the actual apps. It’s definitely keeping me on my toes.

Right now, one of the “students” of the Idea Finishing School is PREE Corp. They are  4 grad students from UTSA who have invented a phone charger that works by harvesting Wi-Fi signals and using those to charge your  iPhone. Last week, I was in charge of helping them set up a temporary website, so they would at least have something out there. There had been a bunch of press releases and they were showing up on the IFS site, but they didn’t have anything of their own to show off. So, we grabbed a WordPress site and started putting up some stuff. Matthew, who is one of the PREE Corp people and is also officing here right now and I played around with it so I could teach him all the back end stuff. He had never used WordPress before, but I assured him it was super easy and Google loves it.

Today, Matthew was so excited, because last week, PREECorp.com didn’t show up anywhere. Today, they were number one on Google. Admittedly, there’s not a lot out there about PREE Corp, so he should rightly be number one. But, it was pretty cool that in only a week, with some SEO tweaking, he got that coveted number one position.

So, make sure when you’re working on your site, if you’re using WordPress, have the SEO pack installed. Use that extra bit to make sure you’ve got all your keywords included. Use that description section. Make sure you take advantage of using tags. It really does make SEO so much easier for your site.

Now, we just have to make sure we keep up with the PREE Corp site so he stays number one. We don’t want some press release pushing us off the position.

LOL, Matt was just walking out the door for the day and said my blog post here better not push his PREE Corp off number one, since his only competition was my blog posts on IFS and the press releases…..

Make sure Adobe is up to date

// July 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

When we owned Complete Network Care, we sold Watchguard products. I still get all their emails, so I thought I’d pass them on. They have some great information.We still use the Watchguard Firewall for our email server. If you want one, or want to know how they can help you, get in touch with my buddy Will over at Alamo Technology Group.  He’s an authorized distributor.

Out-of-Cycle Adobe Reader Update Fixes Zero Day Vulnerability

Severity: High

June 30, 2010

Summary:

• This vulnerability affects: Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.3.2 and earlier, on Windows, Mac, and UNIX computers
• How an attacker exploits it: Typically, by enticing your users into viewing a maliciously crafted PDF document
• Impact: An attacker can execute code on your computer, potentially gaining control of it
• What to do: Install Adobe’s Reader and Acrobat 9.3.3 updates as soon as possible (or let Adobe’s Updater do it for you).

Exposure:

A few weeks ago, we released an alert warning you of an Adobe Flash update that fixed a zero day vulnerability that attackers were exploiting in the wild. In that alert, we also mentioned that Adobe Reader was susceptible to the zero day flaw as well, but Adobe had not had time to patch it, and were planning to release a Reader update on June 29th. As promised, yesterday Adobe released an update for Reader and Acrobat that fixes seventeen security vulnerabilities (number based on CVE-IDs) in their popular PDF reader, including the zero day flaw in Reader’s Flash component (authplay.dll).

The 17 flaws differ technically, but most of them consist  of buffer overflow and  memory corruption vulnerabilities that share the same general scope and impact. If an attacker can entice one of your users into downloading and opening a maliciously crafted PDF document (.pdf), the vulnerability can be exploited to execute code on that user’s computer, with that user’s privileges. If your user has local administrative privileges, the attacker gains full control of the user’s machine.

Since attackers have actively exploited this Flash-related Reader vulnerability in the wild for weeks now, we greatly encourage you to download and install this Reader update as soon as possible. Also note, Adobe typically sticks to a monthly patch cycle that falls on the same day as Microsoft Patch Day (the second Tuesday of the month). However, since they chose to release this Reader update early due to its critical nature, they will not release any Reader updates on their normally scheduled patch day, July 13.

Solution Path

Adobe has released Reader and Acrobat 9.3.3 updates to fix these vulnerabilities on all platforms. You should download and deploy the corresponding updates immediately, or let the Adobe Software Updater program do it for you.

• Adobe Reader 9.3.3
  • For Windows
  • For Mac
  • For UNIX
• Adobe Acrobat
  • Standard and Pro for Windows
  • Pro Extended for Windows
  • 3D for Windows
  • Pro for Mac

For All WatchGuard Users:

Many WatchGuard Firebox models can block incoming PDF files. However, most administrators prefer to allow these file types for business purposes. Nonetheless, if PDF files are not absolutely necessary to your business, you may consider blocking them using the Firebox’s HTTP and SMTP proxy until the patch has been installed.

If you decide you want to block PDF documents, follow the links below for video instructions on using your Firebox proxy’s content blocking features to block .pdf files by their file extension:

• Firebox X Edge running 10.x
  • How do I block files with the FTP proxy?
  • How do I block files with the HTTP proxy?
  • How do I block files with the POP3 proxy?
  • How do I block files with the SMTP proxy

• Firebox X Core and X Peak running Fireware 10.x
  • How do I block files with the FTP proxy?
  • How do I block files with the HTTP proxy?
  • How do I block files with the POP3 proxy?
  • How do I block files with the SMTP proxy?

Status:

Adobe has released patches that correct these vulnerabilities.

References:

• Adobe’s Reader Security Bulletin for June

This alert was researched and written by Corey Nachreiner, CISSP.