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Cyber porn and adult stuff - are some of the materials on the internet that are easily available for us. Just type anything in Google search box. You will be surprised on how many thousand pages of content that Google could gives you.

I was not bothered to look for solution on blocking porn from my internet browsing activities while I was single, but after having children, it seems that I could not avoid from having one.

My 4 years old boy now is more brilliant than his mother on using computer. He could switch on my home PC (which I installed Ubuntu Gutsy), type in the user name and password - and know how to get to YouTube for his favorite Jay Chow’s Initial D video clips. I know, if I don’t educate and control some of the content in the internet to get to his viewing, sooner or later he will surely be exposed to stuff that is not suitable for him.

As I use Ubuntu on my PC at home, Net Nanny will be out of the question. ParentalControl Bar, a free public service that helps concerned parents prevent their children from accessing adult-oriented Web sites was only made to be use with Internet Explorer 7. As Firefox and Ubuntu hardcore, I could only find one solution to get porn and adult content out of my son’s eye view for this moment - OpenDNS.

I have been using OpenDNS for different purposes for the past 3 years, which are navigating the Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliably than ever before, but I just notice recently that they could also provide content filtering, phishing protection, adult site blocking and domain blocking.

As it is free and open source, I just get it set up on my Ubuntu PC and after some registration and follow their how-to guide, I now have secured my Firefox browser for my son’s browsing activities.

Yes, I know that blocking this adult content from my son is not going to be the total solution for him. I still need to educate and teach him on the lesson, as he will surely be exposed to those thing one day in the future.

drizad :: Apr.13.2008 :: Security :: No Comments »

I have experienced the same problems few months back. Somehow or rather, I received this annoying “HTTP Error 403” every time I tried to log in to my admin site of my blog.

Upon investigating, the problem lies on our Malaysian internet provider, Tmnet Streamyx, as they provide random dynamic IPs that apparently was blacklisted.

The solution for this problem was just restarting the ADSL modem/router and create a new connection. Tmnet Streamyx will then assign your computer with a new IP that (hopefully) is not blacklisted.

Yesterday, the same problem happened. Every time I tried to log in to this blog, I received another “HTTP Error 403” message. I thought the problem lies with Tmnet again, but after restarting my router few times, I still got the same problem.

I could also not be able to access my blog from my desktop PC at home.

One of my colleague, said it may be because of Sabah IP address which are blocked due to some technical problems with Tmnet.

Anyway, this morning, I tried to log in again, and now I found out that there is another additional technical support information from Bad Behaviour:

This may also occur with old versions of Bad Behavior. If you do not see any blacklist providers listed below, and you are the site administrator, try updating to the latest version of Bad Behavior.

Aah… That might be the cause for my problem for merely 24 hours!

True enough, when you head to Bad Behaviour website, they confirmed that the problem are caused by their plugin:

Within the past two days users have found themselves blocked from their own sites while using recent versions of Bad Behavior. A third party blacklist which Bad Behavior queries recently began sending false positives for any IP address queried, causing everyone using Bad Behavior to be blocked. This issue is fixed in Bad Behavior 2.0.11.

So, if you have the same problem, just head to Bad Behaviour, download their latest fixed plugin, and replace the folder in your Wordpress plugin folder.

I got my admin site of my blog almost immediately!

Cheers!

drizad :: Dec.07.2007 :: Security :: No Comments »

I have used few antivirus before. My first antivirus was Norton, which comes pre-installed with my Acer notebook 3 years ago. When the registration for Norton expires 3 months after that, I looked for an alternative - cracked version of Norton which eventually gone corrupt (as they detect that my antivirus was an illegal one), and I have to re-install my Windows.

I started looking for other antivirus, and proprietary antivirus was not an options, as I don’t like paying for a software. I used free version of AVG for a couple of years, until I found out that it has some limitation on removing one particular virus at that time (Brontok C, if you have heard of it…).

I then tried ClamAV, an open source antivirus, which did a very good job at removing viruses, but the lack of its ability to do some of the features that I wanted, has made me change to avast.

Until few days back, when I decided to blog about the best free alternative for proprietary software around the internet, I found out that Moon Secure Antivirus one of the option for you to use for your computer security.

The Software:

Developed by 3 developer, Moon Secure Antivirus is written for Windows (95/98/NT/2000/XP). It aims to be the best Free Antivirus for Windows under GPL license. It offers multiple scan engines, Net shield, Firewall, On access, on Exec scanner and rootkits preventions plus features from Commercial Antivirus applications.

The size of the installation package is 10.3MB, and after installation, the application occupies 18.22MB of your hard disk space. Installation process was flawless, although with another antivirus is running in the background (I forgot to disable my avast). After the installation, your computer will be automatically secured by the antivirus.

Problems arise when I get to know Moon Secure Antivirus more. Clicking Moon Antivirus folder from my All Programs button will only show “Uninstall Moon Secure Antivirus”, and you can only execute the application for a scan from the running process of your applications on the taskbar. Right clicking the Moon Secure Antivirus button will show this:

You have to update your virus definition database first, before you can start scanning for virus. Oh, don’t forget to disable any other antivirus that you have before scanning with Moon Secure Antivirus, as the process will be terminated prematurely, as it can conflict with other antivirus program. My avast stopped Moon Secure Antivirus scanning process while the latter do the scanning.

After the virus database has been updated, this screen will show:

After that, I did a scan on my hard disk. The graphical user interface (GUI) was very minimal, with only 3 menus in the menubar; Options, Logs, and Infected Files. I notice that you need to run the update before you do the scan. Otherwise, you may get an error message.

How good?

I can’t really tell how good the antivirus is, as after scanning all my hard disk, it does not find any virus. It passes the test with a test virus from eicar.org. It managed to disinfect the test virus, but not delete it.

One more thing. Using Moon Secure Antivirus as your computer antivirus will trigger off your Windows Security Center. It does not recognize Moon Secure Antivirus as a “valid” antivirus to be used for your system. Just declare to your security center that you are using your own antivirus and will be monitoring your computer yourself.

So, if you are looking for a free and simple antivirus solution, Moon Secure Antivirus can do the job well.

drizad :: Sep.02.2007 :: Security :: 2 Comments »