*SOLVED* Avira Antivirus June 23, 2010 Update is Alarming Warcraft III Players?

Just this day, I was on the internet cafe business owned by my family. Since i am the one who configured everything, my job is to maintain it also. From the operating system setup, online and offline games, up to the security, tweaks and auto-maintain features of the workstation.

I use the Avira Anti-virus 10 on the net cafe. Not to say it's free, but it also provides concrete protection (as for my experiences and for the independent antivirus testing organizations). Most of our customers are gamers. Warcraft III: Frozen Throne and the DOTA (Defense of the Ancient) are some of the most-played games since 2004.

Since i have set the Avira Anti-virus to automatic update it's viral definition, for the past months on business, i can't compare it's stability with regards to viral protection.

Just this day, one customer complained to my cafe attendant that Warcraft III: Frozen Throne is showing an error. To be exact, it's an file-missing error that the FrozenThrone.exe could not find the war3.exe. I decided to turn off my stable cyber cafe manager I then boot up another unit beside the customer to see if another computer was also having that error. If not, i could transfer him and fix it. But after launching the Frozen Throne shortcut on my desktop, i got the same error too. Until i decided to let the other computers boot up and try if it's getting the same. Well as i've suspected, they are on the same page of the book.




I turned on my Acer Aspire 4520 laptop and check for an existing topic on the internet and for me to isolate from the network i have directly connected the modem on my laptop, but got no luck. Since i am using Microsoft Windows 7 operating system, it alerted me that my antivirus was out of date. The last virus definition was dated 2 days ago so i begun updating. After a couple of seconds, notifying that my virus definition was updated, Avira Guard notified me that he found a Malware on my system. I also installed Warcraft III on my laptop for my pastime so indeed i am infected with this Malware.



It's an TR/Patched.IV.43 and the access to that file was denied. I am pretty sure that my network is clean. I did isolation per computer units then fire up a complete system and hardisk scan, and yet i only got this malware alert. Furthermore, I also tried reinstalling the client while isolating the computer out of the network. For the past years i am also playing Frozen Throne and DOTA, my trust is with them.



To releave the business out of this false alarm, and since avira is not keeping off the trail of Frozen Throne, and my customers are craving to play DOTA, the only thing i did is put the war3.exe process on the exceptions. You could found the exception option on the expert mode of Avira Antivirus. Lying beneath the Scanner > Scan tree



PS: As far as i can remember, one of my google searches give me a result that this TR/Patched.IV.43 has a variant of war*.* filename (Where * asterisk is a wild card character). If this post mislead the fact, feel free to complain below and enlighten the readers. Thank you!

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Benefits of Using Web Proxy Server

There are, in fact, many benefits of using a web proxy server.

Some of the more common ones involve maintaining your privacy and getting around blocks placed upon your IP address, such as the ones placed on school computers.I wouldn't recommend using a proxy service to get around blocks - they are there for a reason - but for many other legitimate uses they can be a real boon.

In simple terms, a proxy works thus:

You want to connect your computer (1) to another computer or website (2) but you either cannot, or you want to do so privately.
In this case you would then use a proxy (3) to connect to computer or website (2), thereby gaining access without the computer or website the other end knowing it was you that had made the connection.

Here are a few reasons why you might want to do something like this -




Improved Security

If you visit a website that you think may pose a risk to your computer for some reason then using a proxy can give you an added layer of protection, much like using a firewall does.

You will not connect directly to the website in question and so you will have a further degree of protection from any malware that the site may try to infect you with.

Hacking Protection
Using a web proxy server between your computer and the web will prevent hackers from obtaining your IP address, thereby drastically redusing the risks of them being able to gain access to your cache or hard drives.

Website Filtering

The ability of a proxy to filter certain sites is quite variable so you will need to put in a little research time to take advantage of this feature.

Big players who use proxies to block certain sites include the United Arab Emirates and, more famously, China who block large parts of the world wide web from their citizens.

On a more personal note, you could employ a proxy service to prevent your kids watching porn or your employees from accessing social networking sites such as Facebook, Friendster, Plurk and Twitter.



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How to Fix Cyber Cafe Pro Runtime Error

Cyber Cafe Pro (CyberCafePro) is one of the most popular cybercafe management software packages available. Here is a short review of the software.

CyberCafePro is aimed at Internet Cafe, Cyber Cafe, and Internet Gaming Cafe owners for easy management of cybercafe security, pricing, timing, POS, chat and more. The software is flexible on many configurations, running over standard peer-to-peer networks including Wireless LANs (On any Windows OS). From managing your customers point-of-view, it is not intrusive to your system files but locks control of the computer except for programs you allow customers to run.




Your cybercafe is unique, so your software should be customizable. With CyberCafe Pro, you can customize most aspects of the client interface, as well as languages for both the server and the client software. Because of the software's flexibility, it is a very popular option among cybercafe owners, and often referred to as the world's no.2 Internet cafe management software package (after Internet Caffe software).

Other features in the Cyber Cafe Pro include:

• Multi-Location Account/Timecode Usage
• Unique Employee Logins
• Employee Restrictions
• Reporting by Employee
• Other Product Sales
• Sales Reports
• Receipts
• Cash Drawer Setup
• Print Monitoring
• Discount Plans
• Tax Setup
• Inventory System
• Reservation System
• Block Internet Explorer Functions
• Disable File Downloading
• Disable Hotkeys
• MSN Messenger Security
• Unlimited Accounts or Timecodes
• Grouped Accounts/Timecodes
• Overtime Mode Option
• Bulk Pricing
• Pricing Options, such as Basic Pricing, Bulk Pricing & Scheduled Pricing
• Manual timing of Laptops, Xbox, PS2 etc...
• Sales Reports
• Auto-Email Reports
• Shutdown All Computers feature
  

Runtime Error 339

NOTE: This commonly occurs on versions 5.x. If you're using later or latest version (v6) you won't might encounter this problem but worth sharing your experiences.

With all of these tremendous gifts of Cyber Cafe Pro, there is a known bug on it commonly encountered with Windows XP Service Pack 3.



And this error is so annoying. Well, the best way you opt to do is to remove the current copy and have a fresh install according to many forums. But it won't actually solve the problem.

The solution is so simple. Since these dependencies SHOULD be on the system's root directory (\WINDOWS), the installer wrongly copied the dependencies to another CCP folder on System32 causing the application to miss these important files. Therefor, you need to copy all the contents of that folder (\WINDOWS\System32\ccp4) to the system's root directory (\WINDOWS). That's it! Enjoy using Cyber Cafe Pro!


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Squid Proxy: How To Make a Transparent Squid Proxy Server on Ubuntu

Squid is a fully-featured HTTP/1.0 proxy which is almost HTTP/1.1 compliant. Squid offers a rich access control, authorization and logging environment to develop web proxy and content serving applications.

This is a short guide on how to set up a transparent squid proxy server on an Ubuntu Distro. Squid is a caching proxy for the Web supporting HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. It reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages. Squid has extensive access controls and makes a great server accelerator.

So Let's Install Squid!

The first step is to install squid 3

apt-get install squid3

Edit the squid 3 configuration file in your favorite editor

sudo vi /etc/squid3/squid.conf

And set the transparency and the allowed hosts

http_port 3128 transparent
acl our_networks src 192.168.0.0/24
acl localnet src 127.0.0.1/255.255.255.255
http_access allow our_networks
http_access allow localnet

where 192.168.0.0/24 is the IP range of local network. Probably you need adjust the swap size

cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid3 7000 16 256

where the first number denotes the size of cache in megabytes. Save you changes and restart the squid proxy by

sudo /etc/init.d/squid3 restart

For more detailed configuration read the manual of Squid or check the configuration examples on Squid wiki page.
Remember, the memory and processor usage of squid is a function of swap size.
Last but not the least we need to redirect the HTTP traffic to your new shiny proxy

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth1 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.1:3128
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 3128

where eth1, eth0 are the LAN, WAN devices and 192.168.0.1 is the IP address of your LAN device.

After all, probably you feel the need to monitor the performance of your proxy. Unfortunately, most of the squid log parsers in the Ubuntu repository are configured for Squid 2.x. Nevertheless, squid 3 uses the same log format, so you can change the log file path in your parser config file (sarg, calamaris, etd.) or simply link the log directory of squid 3 to the correct path

ln -s /var/log/squid3 /var/log/squid

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Remote Control PC with Hamachi

Hamachi is a centrally-managed zero-configuration virtual private network (VPN) freeware application capable of establishing direct links between computers that are behind NAT firewalls without requiring reconfiguration (in most cases); in other words, it establishes a connection over the Internet that very closely emulates the connection that would exist if the computers were connected over a local area network. Currently available as a production version for Microsoft Windows and, as beta, for Mac OS X and Linux.

How It Works
Hamachi is a centrally-managed VPN system, consisting of the server cluster managed by the vendor of the system and the client software, which is installed on end-user computers.

Client software adds a virtual network interface to a computer, and it is used for intercepting outbound as well as injecting inbound VPN traffic. Outbound traffic sent by the operating system to this interface is delivered to the client software, which encrypts and authenticates it and then sends it to the destination VPN peer over a specially initiated UDP connection. Hamachi currently handles tunneling of IP traffic including broadcasts and multicast. The Windows version also recognizes and tunnels IPX traffic.
Each client establishes and maintains a control connection to the server cluster. When the connection is established, the client goes through a login sequence, followed by the discovery process and state synchronization. The login step authenticates the client to the server and vice versa. The discovery is used to determine the topology of client's Internet connection, specifically to detect the presence of NAT and firewall devices on its route to the Internet. The synchronization step brings a client's view of its private networks in sync with other members of these networks.




When a member of a network goes online or offline, the server instructs other network peers to either establish or tear down tunnels to the former. When establishing tunnels between the peers, Hamachi uses a server-assisted NAT traversal technique, similar to UDP hole punching. Detailed information on how it works has not been made public. The vendor claims "...to successfully mediate P2P connections in roughly 95% of all cases ..." This process does not work on certain combinations of NAT devices, requiring the user to explicitly set up a port forward. Additionally 1.0 series of client software are capable of relaying traffic through vendor-maintained 'relay servers'.

In the event of unexpectedly losing a connection to the server, the client retains all its tunnels and starts actively checking their status. When the server unexpectedly loses client's connection, it informs client's peers about the fact and expects them to also start liveliness checks. This enables Hamachi tunnels to withstand transient network problems on the route between the client and the server as well as short periods of complete server unavailability.

Each Hamachi client is assigned an IP address from the 5.0.0.0/8 address block. This address is assigned when the client logs into the system for the first time, and is henceforth associated with the client's public crypto key. As long as the client retains its key, it can log into the system and use this 5.x.x.x IP address.

The 5.0.0.0/8 network is used to avoid collisions with private IP networks that might already be in use on the client side. Specifically - 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12 and 192.168.0.0/16. The 5.0.0.0/8 address block is reserved by IANA and is not currently in use in the Internet routing domain, but this is not guaranteed to continue. The IANA free pool is expected to be exhausted by February 2011.^[1] If this range is allocated, Hamachi users will not be able to connect to any Internet IP addresses within the range as long as the Hamachi client is running.

Additionally, using a /8 network prefix creates a single broadcast domain between all clients. This makes it possible to use LAN protocols that rely on IP broadcasts for discovery and announcement services over Hamachi networks. Hamachi is frequently used for gaming and remote administration. The vendor provides free basic service and extra features for a fee.

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