OT computer issue

[gfretwell]

Yeah, the joke in the 90s was people were getting those yellow envelopes in the mail that said "You may have already won the Malcolm Baldridge Award"

[Diesel]

Point is, if they wanted to make the effort, you've made it easier. And didn't even realize you had. Confusing WPS for that of WPA2 tells me a considerable amount of the PC related IT knowledge you don't have, as well. No offense. But, I didn't start off by declaring how many years I'd been doing PC level work professionally. I guess you thought the number would be impressive on it's own and your knowledge wouldn't be subject to question as a result. I've met many people with that mindset and, I've schooled each and every one of them.

[gfretwell]

I am not a wiz about remembering which is the good by acronym but I know the difference when I set it up.

We were talking about hardware tho, not WiFi jargon. I just gave you my experience. I had a dead Aptiva supply, verified with my scope. I plugged in another one, the start line was ground and it did not start. I put in another one and it worked. Then I figured out the supply was a Dell. No smoke, no drama.

[notbob]

No. The traces were good, it's jes them memory stick connectors had been cheapened to the point were they didn't work fer dammit. The finger contacts wouldn't exert enough pressure to ensure a viable connection. We finally got Dell to admit it was they who replaced the memory stick slot finger strips with cheaper one's. Since our test rigs were not Dell PCs, with cheapo memory connectors, the sticks all worked jes fine. ;)

nb

[Diesel]

WPS isn't your encryption algorithm. it's actually something else entirely. Designed to make life easier for you, in fact. As with many things designed to make life easier, it can be abused.

A major security flaw was revealed in December 2011 that affects wireless routers with the WPS PIN feature, which most recent models have enabled by default. The flaw allows a remote attacker to recover the WPS PIN in a few hours with a brute-force attack and, with the WPS PIN, the network's WPA/WPA2 pre-shared key.[4] Users have been urged to turn off the WPS PIN feature,[5] although this may not be possible on some router models.[6]

Offline brute-force attack

In the summer of 2014, Dominique Bongard discovered what he called the "Pixie Dust" attack. This attack works only for the default WPS implementation of several wireless chip makers, including Ralink, MediaTek, Realtek and Broadcom. The attack focuses on a lack of randomization when generating the E-S1 and E-S2 "secret" nonces. If the attacker can figure out those two nonces, they can crack the PIN within one minute and 30 seconds, depending on the device. A tool called pixiewps has been developed[18] and a new version of Reaver has been developed to automate the process.[19]

Since both the access point and client (enrollee and registrar, respectively) need to prove they know the PIN to make sure the client is not connecting to a rogue AP, the attacker already has two hashes that contain each half of the PIN, and all they need is to brute- force the actual PIN. The access point sends two hashes, E-Hash1 and E-Hash2, to the client, proving that it also knows the PIN. E-Hash1 and E-Hash2 are hashes of (E-S1 | PSK1 | PKe | PKr) and (E-S2 | PSK2 | PKe | PKr), respectively. The hashing function is HMAC-SHA-256 and uses the "authkey" that is the key used to hash the data.

The WPS PIN may or may not (depending on router and firmware) be something you can change.

Dell doesn't actually make their own power supplies. it's.. outsourced, rebadged, rebranded, however you prefer to put it.

That's good. Question though. How do you know the start line was ground if you didn't know the pinout configuration to the board you were trying to use it with? Did you assume it was standard? Or did you manually force it to ground? it doesn't really matter, I'm just curious more than anything else.

As I'm sure you understand, If you did happen to run across something that wasn't standard wired and tried to use a standard power supply on it, you do run a very real risk of toasting the board and/or the power supply. The reason is quite simple. Some pins expect to see +

5/-5 volts and others expect to see +12/-12 volts. Swapping those is very bad for the board. That was the only point I was trying to make.

I can think of a few reasons why the power supply may have refused to start, though. One, you didn't short PS start line to a ground, or, you did, but the PS noticed something was seriously wrong; ie: dead short on it's side, right off the bat and refused to continue with power on sequence as a result. I have seen a few capable of doing that.

With that said, I've also seen some that didn't do that and if told to come online, you best make damn sure everything else is as it should be; as it's going to send power and/or burn itself or something else out trying. I've shown you some pin layouts where they differed from being standard. You would toast the board if you sent

12 volts to a 5volt spot on it. Even with a tolerance for slightly higher/slightly lower voltages, the tolerance isn't great enough to let you slide by over half the expected voltage in either direction.

I'm glad you didn't burn anything out, but, that's more luck than it is anything else in your case. Others have actually toasted their boards by swapping power supplies, thinking everything was standard about the ATX connector.

[gfretwell]

WiFi is not the most likely way to break into a PC when you are out in the country. I doubt there are 2 people within a mile of me who even understand you should change the password from something other than the default admin/admin and strangers parked in the neighborhood will be noticed. The fact remains most attacks are shit people click on or email attachments they open. In my case, you won't get much anyway. You will be sifting through a terra byte of ripped movies, stolen music and pictures you could see on my web site. If I am doing things like my taxes, it will be on a PC that is not networked to anything, running off a thumb drive that gets pulled out and stored with my tax records.

I knew it was supposed to be #14 because that was the IBM (and most of the world) standard. I did not screw with Dells much then. I still am not a huge fan but the place where my wife works loves them so I have a few now. Like the other poster pointed out, they are using the standard configuration these days. Dell laptops are OK but they still use a lot of non compatible parts even across their own models.

I had 3 Dell laptops with different problems and I could not find enough compatible parts between them to get one working without buying something even though they looked very similar. I really think of PCs as Bic lighters anyway. I get them for free most of the time and I don't spend a lot of time or money fixing one. My biggest use is as MP3 players and movie streamers.

[Diesel]

Many attacks are setup that way, yes. Many of those can be mitigated by not having the user who's logged in have Admin rights...Granted, some attachments may perform privilege escalation and make the limited user login a mute point. Privilege escalation vulnerabilities aren't reliable, because, it only takes one update to close it.

Remote attacks are still viable depending on the target, though. If your modem/router combo allows your ISP to update it remotely, that's a possible entry vector.

That's assuming I wanted something data wise from your machine/network. I may instead, want your network to join a botnet and assist me in a DDoS. I might also just be looking for some storage space and a speedy connection to the internet for dumpsite/temp storage pass on purposes. I might also be looking to 'borrow' your networks resources to participate in hacking other systems. If tracked back and all affected networks cooperated, it could be tied to your network, not me. I doubt your router is keeping connection logs. It's not always about taking a copy of your data. It just depends on the hackers intentions.

Most laptops do have some proprietary aspects to them. It's not Dell specific.

I understand that point of view. Many of the laptops present here use the network to pull music and movies from one or more servers on the network. Some are used more productively, but, the entertainment options are certainly there for the user.

[gfretwell]

No and I am not letting them inject me with the ebola virus either. I keep all updates turned off and I selectively apply things I am sure I want/need

I have a DSL connection. I assume they want something faster since I am surrounded by cable connections running much faster with little security. If you hack my DSL modem, you are still another router away from your first PC. Then there is some software you need to get through.

True and that gets you back to my first assertion. Laptops are not the first machine I would buy to use if I am not walking/flying around with it. I use the latitude because the application is not speed intensive and it runs with "night light" amounts of power.

I keep most of my content sync'ed on the client machines and the network is just there to enable the sync. DASD is cheap.

[Diesel]

You seem to be confused again. Remote updating of your router has nothing to do with Windows or Windows updates that you keep turned off. You wouldn't be selectively applying these, you probably wouldn't even be aware of this happening. If the modem/router combo is the one your ISP provided, it's mostly likely remote updatable by them. Again, that has nothing to do with Windows updates. It's not something YOU can usually turn off, either.

Is the software Windows based? [g] I think you may be over estimating the security your network is affording you. Or rather, the security you think it's affording you.

Of course not. People buy laptops for the portability aspect. Not to become a server. it's the wrong tool for the job in that situation. I could use a flathead to get a philips screw out, but, it's not the right tool and could damage the screwhead.

It would defeat the purpose if I foisted the content onto each client that wants to use it. Although, they are welcome to make local copies of anything they have access to. Sounds like i'd only need to break into one or two boxes and be able to acquire everything on the network; since you're keeping copies of the data on each one...