Interesting Fact: Bogon IP Addresses

Steve Gibson from GRC was talking about these “bogon” ip addresses that are still unused on the Internet. He estimates that approximately 40% of our current IP address space is bogon, or simply reserved and unallocated.

If you just look at the first byte or octet of the IP Address, ie n.*.*.* , anything that starts with the below numbers are bogon:

0
1
2
5
7
23
27
31
36
37
39
42
48
50
77
78
79
89 through 123
127 – (local host range)
173 through 187
197

As Steve said, we are not running out of IP Addresses. I guess we just need to start utilizing all the ones we have available to us.

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A Faster, Denser Hard Drive Debuts

The reorientation of hard drives has begun: The first drives to use perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology to pack more data into less space are out. And our tests reveal that they not only boost storage capacity but perform faster as well.

In our tests of the Seagate Momentus 5400.3 and its non-PMR 5400.2 predecessor, the PMR unit showed a modest boost overall, completing its runs in about 7 percent less time; results just for sustained throughput were even more impressive with a 15 to 17 percent gain. The PMR drive’s greater areal density has little effect on seek speed, a component of many of our tests, but helped when our tasks focused on sustained throughput with sizable files.

PMR aligns the magnetic markers on a hard-disk surface in a different way to increase areal density so you can store more data on every platter. Existing technology was approaching its areal density limits, and drive manufacturers spent several years working to overcome the problem. The result for you is more and cheaper room for your data–which is no small concern in a world moving to high-definition media.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,124925,tk,dn032406X,00.asp

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Dell Snaps Up Alienware

Dell has agreed to purchase high-performance PC vendor Alienware, the two companies announced Wednesday.

The acquisition will “complement Dell’s own line of high-performance computers,” while giving the Alienware products the benefits of Dell’s “supply chain and operational efficiencies,” the companies said in a statement.

Details

The purchase, which was rumored for weeks, is expected to clear regulatory requirements in 30 to 60 days. Ultimately, the acquisition will shorten the time it takes for customers to get their hands on Alienware’s sleek gaming workstations and laptops.

It can take from four to six weeks for customers to take possession of some of Alienware’s products, said Mark Vena, an Alienware spokesman. For Dell that lead time is generally less than 10 days, he said. “They’re absolutely world-class in that area.”

Dell already sells high-end workstations under its XPS brand, but with the Alienware acquisition it gets something that the Round Rock, Texas-based company would have had a hard time creating on its own: gamer cachet.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125190,tk,dn032306X,00.asp

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Put Your Antispyware Apps to the Test

Does your antispyware software really work? With security experts warning of “rogue” antispyware products that sometimes do more harm than good, two security researchers have decided to take matters into their own hands.

They’re working on a new software product, called Spycar, that will test the effectiveness of antispyware applications. “We decided the best way to do that would be to write a suite of tiny custom programs that each do a tiny spyware-like thing,” says Tom Liston, a senior security consultant with Intelguardians, based in Washington, DC.

Liston is developing the software with Ed Skoudis, also an Intelguardians security consultant.

Spycar will contain about 25 small programs, each of which engages in the kind of nasty behavior normally associated with spyware. For example, it will add favorites to Internet Explorer, or add a file to the machine and change the computer’s Registry so that the file launches at startup. The software will then undo all of the changes it has made after the testing has been completed.

“You could really test and see if your antispyware is doing the things that it should be doing,” Liston says.

And that is becoming an increasingly important concern for many Internet users. While many antispyware products can identify malicious code when using signatures, a kind of digital fingerprint that alerts the software to unwanted code, Liston says the apps don’t do so well when trying to identify unknown software, like that contained in Spycar, that behaves like spyware. “Not too many of them are catching behavior-based stuff at this point,” he says.

Liston likens the state of antispyware products to the antivirus market several years ago: overly reliant on signature-based techniques and lacking in standard testing tools.

Setting a Standard

Security giant Symantec agrees with him, at least when it comes to antispyware testing tools.

“We would love to see the antispyware industry evolve to the point where there are standardized tests,” says David Cole, director of the company’s security response group. “We’ve evolved to that point on the antivirus side.”

In fact, the Spycar name is a play on a popular antivirus testing tool created by EICAR (the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research).

Symantec and other major security vendors banded together earlier this year to develop standard ways of testing their antispyware products, something that they say will eliminate customer confusion in this space. Information on this effort can be found here.

It’s no surprise that customers are confused. Literally dozens of antispyware products have been classified as rogue antispyware by Spywarewarrior.com, a Web site that serves as a clearinghouse for information about the spyware problem.

One of these alleged “rogue” products came under scrutiny in January, when Microsoft and the Washington state attorney general sued antispyware software vendor Secure Computer. Their complaint alleges that Secure Computer’s Spyware Cleaner software not only failed to remove spyware as advertised, but left its users less secure. The White Plains, New York, company pulled Spyware Cleaner from the market soon after the suit was filed.

While Spycar won’t help users remove rogue antispyware products, it will give customers of those products a sense of whether they have a problem, Liston says.

Spycar will be available free of charge in May. More information will be made available on the company’s Web site at that time.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125138,tk,dn032006X,00.asp

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Hackers Get Intel Mac to Run Windows XP

A contest to see who could first get Windows XP working on an Intel Mac has been won, according to the contest’s coordinator, Colin Nederkoorn. The “Windows XP on an Intel Mac” page provides a link to a download that includes software and instructions for use.

Nederkoorn first put the contest together after he ordered an Intel-based MacBook Pro for work.

“I told my boss that this would replace my IBM desktop and I could boot Windows XP on it,” he said, and to put his money where his mouth was, he put up $100. He suggested that others with an interest in seeing a dual-boot Macintosh do the same.

To date the contest has raised over $13,854 in donations, including significant additions from Digital Express, Delicious Monster, and Uneasy Silence. Nederkoorn says that any further donations will go to support an open-source project created to maintain the work that has already been done.

News that Windows XP was working natively on an Intel-based iMac first came to light several days ago, when two enterprising users who go by the monikers “narf2006″ and “blanka” posted pictures to an account on the Flickr photoblog service purportedly showing Windows being installed on the system. A video followed, and the solution has since been verified by Nederkoorn and his testers.

Not a Simple Install

Getting Windows XP to work on the Mac is not a plug and play process. According to the documentation included with the file download provided on Nederkoorn’s Web site, users must create an install CD themselves using a PC equipped with a CD-R drive, Microsoft’s Windows XP SP 2 CD-ROM and Nero CD burning software. Step by step instructions for creating the disc are included.

Users must also reformat and repartition their Intel Mac’s hard disk drive to include a separate partition where Windows XP can be installed, then go through a multistep process to make sure the software is installed properly and the Mac can recognize it.

Once that’s done, users will be able to switch between Mac OS X and Windows after rebooting the Mac.

Nederkoorn notes that with this process in place, all three current Intel-based Mac models can run Windows with the exception of the 20-inch iMac, but he suggests that a fix will be ready by the time a download is available. He also offers a variety of caveats. Native graphics drivers aren’t in place yet, for example, so video performance is limited–a blow to Mac gamers who had hoped for a solution that would let them play Windows games on their new Mac hardware.

“There is no chance you could play a game using this solution, aside from Minesweeper,” says Nederkoorn. “It looks like a fix for this may be a ways off yet.”

The Apple Remote and the iSight Webcam don’t seem to work yet, either.

Windows XP already can function on Intel Macs, but only through the use of machine emulators, which work more slowly than many users would like. The most popular emulator, Microsoft’s Virtual PC, does not yet support Intel-based Mac hardware, and Microsoft has not yet indicated if or when an Intel version might be released.

Hope that Macs might support Windows out of the box dwindled last week during the Intel Developers Forum, when a Microsoft rep told attendees that Windows Vista will not support EFI, the boot technology Macs use, at least until a server version is ready in 2007. And even then, Microsoft said the support will be restricted to machines that use 64-bit processors. Apple’s current crop of Intel Macs use 32-bit processors.

To claim the contest prize, the winners had to avoid using emulation. They also had to avoid using virtualization software such as VMWare, which allow multiple operating systems to work on a single computer simultaneously.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125111,tk,dn031606X,00.asp

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