hpHosts release delay

Apologies for the delay in the latest hpHosts release folks. My offline life has taken alot of my time recently, so the hpHosts release is rather late.

I have just begun the validation process and currently we've got just over 1100 domains not resolving.

The next release of hpHosts will be out on Wednesday.

hpHosts website back online

I'm pleased to announce, the hpHosts website is now back online, along with vURL Online and the intranet.

Still waiting to come back are the hpHosts forums and fspamlist website. These will be back within the next day or two.

In addition, thanks to TeMerc, there's also a new hpHosts mirror at;

http://temerc.com/hphosts

Unfortunately, thanks to FastHosts, the it-mate.co.uk websites will take a while longer to come back online as I've got to move them to a new registrar and find new hosting, which is going to take time and money - neither of which I have at present.

Another new hpHosts mirror

I'm pleased to announce, with the help of Jean (montanamenagerie.org), we've got another mirror for the hpHosts files;

http://hosts-file.montanamenagerie.org/

Special thanks to Malwareteks.com

With special thanks to MalwareTeks, the hpHosts downloads have a home whilst I sort the main server out :)

http://www.malwareteks.com/forum-t680.html

http://hosts-file.malwareteks.com

I've not put an actual page there yet, so it'll lead to a 403, but the files themselves are available, for example;

http://hosts-file.malwareteks.com/hphosts.zip
http://hosts-file.malwareteks.com/hpHosts-Setup-Win32.exe
http://hosts-file.malwareteks.com/mac_hosts.zip
http://hosts-file.malwareteks.com/hosts.txt

FastHosts: How to annoy a customer in one easy step

Helping out a friend today, I decided to snag one of my programs to help cleanup his computer. Woops, FastHosts had other ideas. At first, I thought it was a problem with his connection, so decided to check it when I got back home.

Nothing - or rather, not what should be there. Wanting to know what happened, I checked my e-mail - nothing. Usually if FastHosts shut something down, they tell you about it first, so I checked the sites DNS and WhoIs records, but they were fine too. This was becoming curious.

I resided to calling my friend Andrew at Inspiratech (FastHosts reseller that I got the domain + hosting from), and he informed me that at around 11:00 this morning, FastHosts had shut down my domain due to an abuse report.

What Andrew hadn't been told, is that they'd also shut off not only FTP access to the sites, but e-mail access aswell, effectively crippling me from receiving e-mail. Nice one FastHosts.

But the plot thickens. Not only had they not contacted me to simply ask I remove the offending file from the server, but they'd indirectly stopped Andrew from informing me of this, and further, have annoyingly, redirected all of the sites - to sedoparking.com!!!



Nice one, disable a domain because of an abuse report, don't let the domain owner know - and then redirect all traffic to one of the worst pay per click piles of excrement I've had the displeasure of discovering!, just so you can make some extra cash from scamming users.

In short, the sites they have disabled are;

it-mate.co.uk
bughunter.it-mate.co.uk
clif-notes.it-mate.co.uk
comicfan2000.it-mate.co.uk
freeware.it-mate.co.uk
guestbook.it-mate.co.uk
hb.it-mate.co.uk
mj.it-mate.co.uk
multi-av.it-mate.co.uk
respect2glory.it-mate.co.uk
sandbox.it-mate.co.uk
support.it-mate.co.uk
surl.it-mate.co.uk
temp.it-mate.co.uk

Basically, everything except;

avant.it-mate.co.uk

Quite why they've left this one is a mystery, and to be frank, I couldn't really care. But an answer from FastHosts, along with their re-enabling the domains, would go a long way to restoring my faith in their being anywhere near competent. Especially considering this is not the first time they've done this to someone's domain. Previously, they shut down WebGrid, then re-enabled it, just to shut it down again without notice (and bear in mind - there was NOTHING THERE TO CAUSE IT TO BE SHUT DOWN!!!). They've also previously, shut down two other sub-domains I ran (though years ago now), apparently because they were too popular (or as they put it, using too much bandwidth (fine, let me know and I'll move the damn things some place else!!!)).

One has to wonder what kind of idiot is in charge of these kinds of things at FastHosts - they're in dire need of a staff transplant.

The Real Truth Behind The MakeUseOf.com Domain Crack

I've been seeing some crazy rumours flying around the web since last night (particularly on Twitter) about Make Use Of so this blog post is to put down the whole truth and put those stupid rumours to bed once and for all.

Yesterday, while monitoring Twitter, I began noticing a couple of people on my Twitter stream saying that the Make Use Of domain was "parked". For anyone not familar with the terminology, this is basically when the whole site goes offline and the domain is basically redirected to some "static page" filled with paid links. It took a while for me to see the parked domain on my screen but eventually Make Use Of went offline for me and I immediately lost my appetite for dinner.

Read the full story at;

http://makeuseof-temporary.blogspot.com/2008/11/real-truth-behind-makeuseofcom-domain.html

Review of Malware Forensics Posted

Amazon.com just posted my five star review of Malware Forensics. From the review:

Malware Forensics is an awesome book. Last year Syngress published Harlan Carvey's 5-star Windows Forensic Analysis, and now we get to enjoy this new title by James Aquilina, Eoghan Casey, and Cameron Malin, plus technical editing by Curtis Rose. I should disclose that I co-wrote a forensics book with Curtis Rose, and I just delivered a guest lecture in a class taught by Eoghan Casey. However, I still call books as I see them, regardless of the author. (Check out my review of Security Sage's Guide to Hardening the Network Infrastructure for proof.) I can confidently say that anyone interested in learning how to analyze malware, or perform incident response, will benefit from reading Malware Forensics.

For links etc, pop over to the Tao Security blog;

http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2008/11/review-of-malware-forensics-posted.html

$10 Coupon on 1 GB WinPatrol Flash Wristband

Bill is once again, bringing you a fantastic offer, for lovers of WinPatrol everywhere. This time, in the form of a $10 (approx £5) rebate when you purchase the WinPatrol wristband.

I'll refrain from rambling too much, and just let Bill tell you the details;

On my recent trip to the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference I brought some of my WinPatrol Flash wristbands to giveaway. It turned out I didn’t get a chance to give out as many as I had expected so we can afford a special offer for Bits From Bill readers.

Good until November 15th, the coupon code “Windows7” will get you $10 off when ordering the 1 GB Flash memory wristband. Retail price is $24.95. (Approx. 12 EUR down from 19.5 EUR)

Read the full details, and purchase the wristband, courtesy of Bill's blog;

http://billpstudios.blogspot.com/2008/11/10-coupon-on-1-gb-winpatrol-flash.html

Full Circle Magazine - Issue 18 is out!

Not only is issue 18 finally out, but FCM has also just passed the 1 million download mark - way to go folks!.

I've been an avid downloader of this since around issue 8-9 or so (I say downloader as whilst I've got them all downloaded, I've not had time to read them all), and absolutely love the one's I've read.

Issue 18

This month:

* Command and Conquer - Package Management.
* How-To : Program in C - Part 2, Secure Network Drive
* Using GIMP - Part 7 and Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.
* My Story - Ubuntu And Me
* Review - Urban Terror
* My Opinion - How Many Distros Is Too Many?
* MOTU Interview - Stephan Hermann
* Top 5 - Mind Mapping Applications

Get it while it's hot!
http://fullcirclemagazine.org/issue-18/

Issues 0 - 16
http://fullcirclemagazine.org/downloads/

Issue 17
http://fullcirclemagazine.org/issue-17/

Forums:
http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=270

Wiki:
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuMagazine

WinPatrol and Windows 7

Hot off the press, courtesy Corrine, Security Garden, comes the fantastic news that my favourite system monitor, WinPatrol, runs just fine and dandy on the new Windows 7 (I'm still pondering why they chose that name, but I'll leave that to speculation as it'll likely change before it's final release).

Corrine tells us that Bill has just returned from PDC2008 with a pre-beta, and well, I'll let you read the results from Bill;

I was pleased that my 1st install of Windows 7 went well. Keep in mind everything below is related to the current alpha build of Windows 7. The final release is more than a year away

I’m thrilled to report that WinPatrol works great and plays well with Windows 7. In fact, immediately after the install Scotty notified me that someone was trying to reset my Auto-Update settings. This is one of the unique settings that WinPatrol monitors and apparently Microsoft thinks everyone should be auto-updating.

Read the full story on Bill's blog;

http://billpstudios.blogspot.com/2008/11/winpatrol-exposes-new-windows-7.html