E-Musings Mon Immorata

Hacking Holes in Microsoft Genuine Advantage Proof-of-concept reveals a workaround, Firefox 1.1 Beta codename Deer Park Alpha 1 released, more cool Firefox extensions, a secure Windows FTP client and troubleshooting Pentium 4 processor meltdown I was sort of resigned to this being another boring week on the Internet. No new interesting software or services. Until I chanced across a very interesting post on a security list. Debasis Mohanty has developed a proof-of-concept that circumvents the Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation check. WGA is a new Microsoft program that attempts to limit file downloads from the Microsoft site to only "genuine" (read legal) copies of Windows 2000 and XP. The WGA validator is still in testing. And you can continue to download software without first validating your copy to see if its genuine or not. But Microsoft promises this will change by mid-2005. After which if you copy won't validate you can't download updates. I notice that Microsoft presumably in an attempt to ward off negative publicity is not promising to transmit a 'magic bullet' to kill your presumably pirated copy of Windows. Getting back to Debasis' doing, his code displays how the Microsoft WGA validation check can be defeated to allow products with WGA validation enabled to be installed on pirated Windows XP. You first run GenuineCheck.exe on a computer running an authentic Windows XP to generate a key code. This is then used to circumvent WGA checks on machines running pirated Windows XP. Microsoft claims that the Debasis' concept will stop working after a limited period of time because it uses a time stamp. But Debasis claims to have used his workaround to install software on a pirated Windows XP copy even 90 days down the pike! Click here for more on Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage and on Defeating Microsoft WGA Validation Check Proof of Concept. Besides this there's more interesting Firefox news. There's a new developer build titled Deer Park Alpha 1 containing the code base of what eventually will be released as Firefox 1.1. This includes numerous new features including SVG image support and an Opera-like Fast Forward and Rewind buttons to speed up navigation within a browser tab. Also new is an improved privacy feature dubbed "Sanitize" to zap away browsing history, cookies, cache, saved form information and other personal data. There's also a broken-in-Firefox reporting feature to 'phone home' about web sites that won't work in the browser. For more about this release, read the changelogs. But as I've remarked upon before, Firefox Developer Builds are strictly for the stout-hearted who want to remain on the cutting edge of technology. Yet don't mind their computers crashing every once in a while. There are also several Firefox Extension updates. Including SessionSaver that is now wholly automated. Plus improved Tabbrowser Preferences, FireFTP and ScrapBook and Download Manager. There's even an enhanced version of SmoothWheel to change how the mouse wheel interacts with Firefox. My favorite theme collection, PlastikFox Crystal SVG too has been updated. There are also a few more, quite offbeat extensions available at the Burning Edge. These include Thumbs that displays the first thumbnail image from each linked site in a porn gallery. Search Keys let's you open a Search Page result by keying in the page number instead of clicking a link. The extension works with Google, Yahoo! and del.icio.us. How Did I Get Here which gets you to the page from which you clicked a link to the current page. You can also "Go back" even after closing the original tab or find a site book marked earlier! There's also an excellent side-by-side Opera and Firefox comparison over at NewsForge. Which is an excellent jump-off point to learn about new open-source software and related happenings. And I have something new in software this week. Although this tool is only of help to those running Windows who need to interact with Unix-flavored servers using an SSH channel. The freeware WinSCP is an open source SFTP (secure FTP) client that uses SSH and also supports the legacy SCP protocol. From a user perspective there are many parallels with Total Commander's built-in FTP client. WinSCP can switch between a somewhat-limited Windows Explorer type view to an extended Norton Commander-style layout with double panes. It can also open multiple remote web sites (using a drop-down navigation box). WinSCP also supports standard Windows features such as drag 'n drop, icons and shortcuts. Included with the software is a copy of PuTTY for secure Telnet sessions. And finally a bit about hardware. Most of today's high-performance CPUs run at inordinately high temperatures caused mainly by over-clocking. However, as I learned by experience, the average desktop computer chassis doesn't seem to have advanced thermally since the days of the Pentium II processor! As a matter of fact I recently made a starting discovery vis-a-vis a Pentium 4 HT 3.0 GHz running on an Intel 865GBP motherboard. This system had been experiencing a condition best described as 'cooling fan howl' that would occur within 10 minutes of boot up! And continue even as the CPU over heated and the system hung. Some poking around within the case revealed that the thermal chimney fan was causing an airlock directly over the processor. The chimney exhaust was blowing outwards while the P4 cooling fan was using a downdraft into the heat sink and over the processor unlike previous Intel processor cooling fans that sucked air over the chip, through the heat sink and expelled it outwards. The result a sort of thermal no-air zone directly over the chip. Which naturally over heated. And by changing the chimney fan to blow air into the case I managed to get rid of the over heating problem vanished. Here's more on how to Correctly Assemble PCs with Pentium 4 Prescott processor. Did you know Intel built-in a chip Thermal Throttle feature to check how hot the processor runs?

Panopsys ThrottleWatch (Windows, 156 kB, freeware) reports on CPU throttling in Pentium 4, Xeon, Pentium M and Athlon 64 processors. It also graphs (and logs) fluctuations in the CPU core frequency and voltage caused by Intel's SpeedStep and AMD Cool‘n’Quiet Technologies. As the embedded download link is the article isn't working, visit Panopsys It's not surprising you didn't because it very poorly documented. There are more interesting hardware guides over at Hardware Secrets. And finally, have you succumbed to the lure of the iPod? If you have like so many other techies, you might be interested in a simple iPod manager that probably installed on your computers. It's called Winamp and with the ml_iPod plug-in can bypass a need to use iTunes to manage your music collection! Features include an ability to synchronize multiple iPods with Winamp, create smart play lists and copy songs from an iPod to a hard drive! If you download music from iTunes you need to remove Apple's Fairpla DRM (digital rights management). Just use the Hymn Project plug-in to do just that. For more details about teh software and download links read the complete story's over at Wired. That's it for this week. Enjoy the changing season, and we'll meet again next week. Click Here To Send Feedback