“The App-ID capability, while quite impressive, wouldn’t be of much use without the PA-4050’s other neat trick: SSL decryption. Using a man-in-the-middle attack for the power of good, the PA-4050 proxies SSL connections and generates a new certificate on the fly that it sends to the client, impersonating a secure server. Because the firewall has the network traffic in plain text in between decryption and re-encryption with its self-generated certificate, it can apply the full range of security policies to the traffic. In order for this to be transparent to users, IT will need to distribute the firewall’s root certificate to all client computers, a process that could be automated.”

Every ISP, proxy, or whatever is a man-in-the-middle.

You sure you know what you’re saying?

There are many apps and hardware made just for capturing keys and re-issuing. Its used by law enforcement to play back your encrypted streams at their leisure. Or can even be used by the ISP itself.

“A lot of proxy servers from IronPort, Secure Computing, Blue Coat and others do the same thing”

This isn’t anything new either. Its kind of old.

below link is about the Microsoft kill switch, Bill Gates tested his kill switch on the Zune 30GB recently
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/06/microsoft_windo_1.html

For the lazy, although it is more secure to get the files directly from their separate websites.
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/super-ubuntu-200811-ubuntu-based-linux-including-favourite-applications.html

One last thing, if you want to transfer any files from Windows to Linux. You need to have an external hard-drive formatted to Linux, and not Windows, to put the data into. A FAT32 hard-drive formatted to Linux is usable by both Windows and Linux, but if it is formatted to Windows (default) it is not usable by Linux. External Flash Drives (aka Thumb Drives) do not have this issue. All of them (yes even the ones Window owners use) are formatted to Linux by default.

Thanks again!

Thanks!

They just need encouragement and to see for themselves that Linux is a very good alternative, if not replacement, to Windows.

Upon re-reading my lengthy reply to your question, I don’t think I have really answered your question. Unfortunately, if your family is not really interested in learning more about Linux, I think any attempts to switch them over to Ubuntu permanently may not work. Better the devil you know than the one you don’t, etc.

My reasons for using Linux are low-cost, much better security than Windows, easy to install OS, and software updates (security & such) are less likely to bork my machine than Windows updates.

So what’s wrong with 60 !? (:deeply insulted:) (j/k)

Cheers!

It will be a while yet before I am 60, I’ll have you know! *thwap* (j/k)

I went into Ubuntu cold turkey, didn’t know anything about Linux other than what I had read prior. I also didn’t know anything about Windows other than you had to be very careful security-wise (antivirus, firewall, spyware, etc). If I can learn to use Ubuntu, anybody else can too. I have spent a lot more time reading howto’s than I expected to, but I like computers and it beats working around the house.

I am quite comfortable with Linux myself. My family is anything but tech savvy, so thank you for your input. It’s not easy when they just want it to work and have is simple, but don’t want to learn. You are way more advanced than they are and clearly willing to even teach yourself.

I forgot about the youtube videos for them. Ubuntu is what I gave them but you are right, the LiveCD just won’t win them over. I use Ubuntu 8.04 myself through VMWare. About all I do is development on it, oh and play intelligent games. I found games that test and build logic/math/memory skills. And a version of “asteroids” for old times sake (Atari 2600 – oh man the memories). Not that I really need it with Ubuntu but I too have a firewall (Firestarter), as editing IPTables is not something I care to think about, even though I understand them when I view them. I’d rather code or test my memory.

I’ve had similar issues with ATI and wireless USB adapters. It wasn’t so bad though as I found the info online (basically add your vendor ID and subsystem ID to the driver’s list, recompile and you’re somewhat golden — USB adapters are less than fun as they ‘drop-out’ on you).

They enjoy it when I am there but when I am gone, it’s back to XP or Vista (depending on the family member).

Thank you for your struggles, I’ll use your suggestions as an example to my family members to encourage them. Can I exaggerate? Maybe say you’re in your 60’s and never owned a computer but wanted to learn, and once you saw the information and videos and how you feel after learning, you were so excited now you’re a hacker? Just kidding.

Jon, my garden is frozen solid! It’s winter here, you know. Will contact you later by e-mail and thanks for offering.

Robert,

This is a big topic, maybe too big for a comment thread. The only distro I have experience with is Ubuntu (6.06 and 8.04).

Briefly (ha!): ubuntuforums.org is a big help. ATI video cards are apparently harder to set up than Nvidia (I have N.). Video cards appear to be a bit of a problem in general.

You can ask to have free Ubuntu CDs with current version of OS shipped to you, and your family members can try it out as a “LiveCD” without installing (don’t really recommend this, it is too frustratingly slow for my taste), or can be used as a dual boot if somebody can install it as such for them. I had never installed an OS before I used U, and U is very easy to install if you use the default values.

I know there have been problems in the past with wireless, but I don’t use wireless, and this may not be the case now. Ubuntu has made many leaps and bounds in the 2 years I have used it. I knew nothing about OS (Windows or Linux) when I switched to LInux, and it was very difficult at first, but I have had a lot of fun with all the different programs that are available (free!). Older computer hardware tend to be more compatible with Ubuntu than the newest hardware, in my experience.

Make sure your family can play MP3s, movies (VLC is good). Adobe Flash is a problem for me (AMD64 CPU) – both 9 and 10 don’t play certain websites properly, don’t know if this is a Flash problem or a website issue. Kilz’ Flash thread is a lifesaver (Ubuntu Forums). I can see YouTube videos. I have tried the open source flash a couple of years ago, but ran into trouble with other files that were needed to run it, not sure how useful the open source flash is at this point. Media codecs are very easy to download in current versions of U, even the closed source ones.

I use a HP LaserJet 1018 printer, can’t use U’s drivers, don’t know why – this applies to other HP and other brands as well – see http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/. The script for my printer works well.

Firefox is fun to use (extensions!), and Thunderbird has an appointment calendar extension (Lightning, I think) which I like. Tabbed browsing in Firefox is much nicer than in IE – tell your family this!

Use the KDE desktop environment if your family likes the way the Windows desktop looks.

Security: I use ClamAV without GUI, but not sure if this is the “best”. I use it to scan downloaded documents. I have also used Firestarter as GUI to configure IPtables (firewall), but know very little about how to do this.

Best advice: if your family is willing to try Linux but is not very knowledgeable about computers in general, make sure that their access is restricted to only what they need to use, so no inadvertent changes are made. Also, somebody (you?) may need to spend a fair bit of time reading the distro forums, assuming that your knowledge is as low as mine . There are numerous videos on YouTube and elsewhere for learning Ubuntu as well.

Good luck!

setup anon hosting + anon email with SMTP (use an open wifi hotspot not your own with any form of secure non proxy) +

Setup a mailing list on your anon host, use your anon email to send emails from your mailing list which you then forward to an anon remailer encrypt the hole msg with PGP and then have the remailer send to your preferred destination.

Done 100% anon. As long as the open wifi you used didn’t somehow catch you on camera (e.g. Starbucks) then this is pretty damn difficult to track down. have I missed something?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_remailer
http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&words=remailer
http://sourceforge.net/search/?words=remailer&type_of_search=soft&pmode=0&words=mailing+list&Search=Search

Congrats on learning Linux! I’ve been trying for some time to get my family into it, but breaking their Windows addiction is pretty tough.

Any advice on how to convert my Windows family to Linux? Any pitfalls you find so I can understand them and help my family re-use older machines and be safer when using their computers?

How’s the garden? Meanwhile, if you’re around later, email me. Setting up a router is one of the few things I am able to do.

Cheers!

I’m going to try to figure out the multi-account setup with forwarding and such to see how I can do that. I want to learn for myself so I remember, if stuck, I’ll post a question.

Thanks Jon for sharing. Maybe others now feel free to ask some questions too or maybe now they know a little more how to protect their systems.