This past weekend my wife’s iPhone was stolen from a store in Secaucus, NJ. While in store, she placed it down to try on a pair of shoes and then moved an isle down to take a look at another item which was long enough for the phone to “disappear”. Once she realized that she was missing her phone it was too late. The phone was gone, it was nowhere in sight. We traced our steps back and looked everywhere, I called it several times, but it was nowhere to be heard either. Then I remembered that I installed Find My iPhone on both phones and have tried tracking it from my phone. After a couple of failed attempts to locate the lost (stolen?) iPhone it finally displayed on a map, it was somewhere in the parking lot. We ran out to try and get a better location when all of a sudden it started moving. Its next stop was a Walmart parking lot in and this time we were able to narrow it down to within a few parking spots. Unfortunately, several cars were leaving that area as we arrived and the phone was on the move once again. Here’s where the fun really begins.

After a brief detour to fill my car’s gas tank and to drop my wife off to enjoy a sunny day by the pool (no sense in both of us spending time on this potentially useless chase) I was back on the trail of the stolen iPhone. Now, the app was showing it to be at a church’s parking lot in Fairview where it actually stayed for quite a while (at least it felt that way considering I was refreshing the screen every 30 seconds). This was good news as it gave me time to catch up, but as I was within a few blocks of that location, it started moving again – this time, heading back down towards Route 3. If you are familiar with that area (Fairview and North Bergen) you know that quite a few streets are one way which made my tracking a bit more difficult, but I finally caught up to my “blinking dot” in Union City, NJ.

License plate is obscured to protect the not-so-innocent

At a particular intersection, the app was showing the phone right in front of me (and as I remembered seeing this Volvo leaving Walmart’s parking lot) it all made perfect sense – I found him. The driver (who I also recognized from Secaucus) fed a parking meter and walked into a bar. So did I…

Bar where we had our chat

After a brief conversation (where he tried to come off as a good Samaritan) he was very apologetic and accommodating in returning the phone to me. It was in the trunk of his car under a bunch of towels and blankets – luckily none of them could interfere with the GPS signal.

iPhone recovered!

While the search lasted a bit longer, the actual conversation was very quick. Within a couple of minutes of arriving at the GPS location I had my wife’s phone back. All in all, a very happy ending to this escapade (for me at least).

In short: If you own an iPhone (or any other iOS device) make sure you install this app now. As you can see, it can be very useful in getting your stuff back.

Approximate path traveled by the iPhone - Secaucus to Fairview to Union City (NJ)

Find My iPhone app (along with Google Maps app) was instrumental in recovering the stolen iPhone, but I would like to see it further developed to include the following:

• Real-time updates as the phone moves
• Show both devices on the map, my current location and the location of the device being tracked, then provide directions – similar to their (Google) Maps app

Post from: Milos Topic

How I tracked and recovered a stolen iPhone

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Geotagging and location based services are all the rage these days. While they are very useful at times, these features should not be taken for granted nor should they be enabled on all of your devices and applications. Certain parts of your life are meant to be private and they should remain that way. Geotagging every move online for all to see could pose serious security and safety concerns.

Post from: Milos Topic

Geotagging your life online? Be careful.

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Internet is filled with dozens of online backup/storage services which provide different levels of functionality, reliability, security and space to users. In order to cut through some of this clutter here are four online services that I have used and found to be reliable, functional and secure.

While putting this short list together I focused on three requirements:

1. services had to provide a FREE option
2. even that free option needed to be SECURE*
3. and it should be available to both major OS platforms, Windows and Mac

While I didn’t focus on their support for mobile clients and saw those options as bonus features most of these services also work on mobile platforms (some with native apps) such as Android, Blackberry and iOS.

So without getting into details on what I like (or don’t) about each of these services here they are (in alphabetical order):

• Dropbox 2 GB free
• Mozy 2 GB free
• SkyDrive 25 GB free
• SugarSync 5 GB free

If you know of other FREE and SECURE online backup solutions please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

* While security is always questionable and could be discussed at great lengths, these services provide default encryption to all users which is a step in the right direction.

Post from: Milos Topic

4 FREE and SECURE online backup services

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Facebook is finally catching up to some of their perpetual security concerns and is strengthening their privacy policy and therefor the settings as well. It took a while but as of this morning (when I noticed the change) privacy settings have been tightened a bit and are finally working as expected. It will take some time for majority of folks to review their current settings and tweak their profiles as desired, but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Considering the size of their social network (350 million) and ever growing popularity worldwide it is important to seriously evaluate all aspects of security from profiles to servers, routers, including physical access at their company.
In today’s world you can never spend too much attention on security.

Post from: Milos Topic

Facebook’s new privacy settings

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I‘m on a search for a few replacement windows and have been looking all over north New Jersey for a place that can provide them in less than the standard 2-6 weeks time frame. One of the places recommended to me was “Air-Chek Window Depot” in Clifton, NJ.

First thing I did is went online to see if they had a website and to get their address and contact info. They were the first hit on Google and while they had the info I was looking for I remember thinking that they should probably have a better, more modern website with less clutter and pages of plain text. I went there and they said that they would take two weeks as well so I kept looking. Now, two days later and unsuccessful in locating a place that has the sizes I need in less than two weeks I decided to go back to them and place the order but I forgot their hours so I went back online only to see that they were hacked.

They seemed like nice people and I feel bad for them, but hopefully they have someone who will be able to recover their online presence soon. Unfortunately, this is another example of why it is important to keep your website secure, up to date, backed up and monitored regularly. This can happen to anyone so don’t take your online security for granted.

Post from: Milos Topic

Keep your websites secure

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In today’s world where network and system security is of great importance and we live and operate behind firewalls, VPNs, SSH, encryption, anti-virus software and many other tools that help make us more secure, it is often difficult figuring out that winning combo to stay safe online and protect your personal information.

One component that in a sense started it all, but is now often overlooked (especially by non-Windows users thinking that viruses and malware don’t apply to them) are Anti-Virus products. Today, they go beyond simple signature scanning and early days of amateur heuristics behavior; most of them also include HIPS (host-based intrusion prevention system) and can even blacklist/white list applications, files and directories. Having said that and considering that many of the above mentioned technologies work on protecting your data while it travels from and to your computer it is still important to have a good local solution for when unwelcome code enters your file system. Over the past several years I have tested numerous AV products and while they performed most functions as advertised I didn’t find any of them to be impressive (Kaspersky being the exception in this case). They are either memory/processor hogs; too slow in updating they definitions or cause more problems then solutions they provide (anyone remember few years back Norton locking down your system and outbound ports if something wasn’t to its liking?).

Here’s where my question comes in. As I look to test new products for both internal use and to recommend to clients I want to make sure we use the best solution currently available. Based on your knowledge and experience even if it is derived from simple observations of what was installed by your IT department what anti-virus software keeps your data secure? Ideally, I’m looking for a solution that works equally well on Windows and OS X based systems. Furthermore, if it worked on popular Linux distros (Ubuntu, SUSE to name a couple) as well I would be grateful.

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Anti-Virus software

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Recent phishing schemes targeting Microsoft’s Hotmail, Google’s Gmail, Yahoo and other e-mail providers represent a new larger wave of an ever-present problem and it once again emphasizes the importance of educating your users, clients and staff how to recognize threats and stay away from them.

Basic things to remember:

- Your bank, IT staff, utility company or any other service provider will NEVER ask for your login credentials of any kind (password, PIN, social security number…). They simply don’t need to do that as other means of accessing your account (should there be a need for it) are already in place.

- Don’t open attachments you don’t expect/need or know where they came from. Same goes for links, don’t get click happy by clicking on every link you see. Also, when placing your cursor over a link you should look at the status bar (lower left hand corner to see if the two match).

- Don’t use public computers to access your financial (or other important) data. Why? Well, you simply don’t know who maintains those machines and how frequently; you don’t know what’s installed on them and if someone is capturing your keystrokes for later use.

- Change your passwords and change them often. Also, maintain multiple passwords for different account groups. You shouldn’t be using the same password for your banking that you use to access a simple news site. Furthermore, try not to keep your passwords simple and guessable. “welcome” ” password” “12345″ and other similar choices are examples of poor selection. I know what you must think, secure passwords are complicated and difficut to remember. Not true. All you need to do is try sentences.

Ex. “I was born on a Thursday” and then group them together “iwasbornonathursday” and if you really want to get fancy (read: SECURE) change some letters for numbers and you come up with “1wa5b0rn0nathur5day”. Simple enough and a lot more secure than “welcome”, isn’t it?

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Friends don’t let friends go phishing

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As I’m setting up the previously mentioned laptop I keep coming across minor tweaks needed to make everything work as expected. This is somewhat of an updated post back from 2007 (posted on a previous blog) when I first encountered WebDAV issues on Vista.

I wanted to map a new network location to our NetDrive, but as it didn’t work by default on a freshly installed Vista laptop I had to make the following changes:

1. Install Software Update for Web Folders (KB907306) (still not sure why this isn’t a required update)

2. Go to Local Security Policy –> Local Policies –> Security Options, click on Network security: LAN Manager authentication level and change it to Send LM & NTLM – use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated

That’s all, now I can establish a new network location (via WebDAV) to NetDrive by typing https://netdrive.montclair.edu/oneNet/NetStorage

Post from: Milos Topic

WebDAV connections on Vista

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On this morning’s news I head that over the past year some 10,000,000 Americans were victims of identity theft. That’s little over 3% of the U.S. population. Someone might say, well it’s only 3% which is not bad, but when you look at the number it is staggering, frightening even.

10 million people!

While there is no guarantee that it won’t happen to you there are steps you can take to minimize that possibility.

Additional resources:

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Prevent identity theft

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Photo Source: Edupics.com

Earlier today I attended a meeting with two very intelligent individuals who have significantly improved their respective areas with every day they have spent here. One of them used to work on my team, but has since moved onto bigger and “better” things at a different department and has made significant strides towards increasing their productivity and effectiveness. The other is one of the most knowledgeable Mac guys we have on campus and one of the nicest people to know and work with.

Today, we talked about our anti-virus enterprise vendor of choice and how to implement its Helpdesk Console locally (at a college level) in order to segment monitoring and improve the overall response time should an attack occur across our systems. We have talked about functionality, policies and settings and are all in agreement as to how to proceed and implement this important component in securing our campus infrastructure and faculty/staff/students’ data. The following step should take place next week when we begin the local implementation in our college and therefore take on additional responsibility in monitoring machines operating on our subnets.

While this might be a small step or a step already taken by some organizations, here it is that of necessity, importance and definite sign of progress. This is not the first major improvement taking place across our enterprise, but it is one of great importance towards achieving our overall goal of efficient, stable and secure operating environment.

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Progress is a beautiful thing

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