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Geoffrey Chapman

Quicken UK Personal Finance

qw2k43We have for more years than we care to mention used a personal Finance program to track all of our finances.  The package we have used in known as Quicken developed by Intuit. Unfortunately back in 2005 they decided that it was not economical to continue with the UK version and thus it is many years since we last updated the package.  In fact it is even longer than that since the version we use is/was dated 2001.

This isn’t quite as bad as it sounds since financial accounting hasn’t significantly changed over time and crediting and debiting amounts from an account still functions exactly the same.  However the program runs/ran upon Windows XP, and even Microsoft have officially ceased XP support.  We have even resorted to having a virtual machine just to run our old version.

This situation is not ideal but the main competitor Microsoft Money was also withdrawn in 2005.  There are a few alternative from smaller producers available, but familiarity with Quicken is not one of their main considerations, not surprisingly.

In the States the version of Quicken is 2015 version, so we decided to see if it were possible to upgrade.

The first thing we discovered was that the file format of the Quicken data file has changed so even if we wanted to migrate to the latest US version we would have to go through an intermediate step to convert the files.  Fortunately Quicken UK provide a free upgrade to Quicken 2004 R2, which can convert the file.  We installed the update and the file was successfully converted. We performed the conversion on our virtual XP machine, after ensuring suitable backups etc., were taken.

We then wondered whether we could run this upgraded 2004 version on Windows 7 native.  We found this post which mentioned that many people were able to use it on Windows 7. The posts were dated 2011 but with nothing to lose we installed the upgrade on Windows 7.  It installed fine but when we tried to run it we received the error that the file MFC70.dll was missing.  Again we found a post that provided a resolution.   In our case we merely changed the install file to be XP compatible and reran the install. This time it ran successfully after reinstalling.

Then we loaded out backup QData file and we were back on track.

OK we have no official support for such an old version but it functions well, and having never had the need for support in over 20+ years, it is not a major consideration. Updated share prices and the ability to download from Financial institutions were both features that we rarely used so  that they will (probably) not work is not a concern.

Next we have to look at obtaining and using the US 2015 version.  In theory we should be able to use the US version by specifying our default currently as Sterling.  We would probably not be able to use the Cloud storage and a few other ‘features’ either which begs the question is this something worthwhile doing?

The first problem is going to in obtaining a version from the US, since they are reluctant to send a US version out of the States, since we do not have a US Zip code. Amazon state that the product is only available to to customers located in the United States and who have a U.S. billing address.  Since we do not this is a potential show stopper.  EBay appear to have a few sellers but with postage such a large contribution to the total cost there has to be  cheaper option.

So currently we have managed to ‘upgrade’ our version to the last UK supported version and can run it upon Windows 7, which is a cleaner solution that using a virtual machine with the 2001 version.  This is progress and moves us further forward with a good working base but we are not running the latest US version which was our original intent. Something to look at again when we have some more time.

 

Tags:
Quicken Personal Finance program Windows 7
Geoffrey Chapman

Problem with HTTPS Everywhere and Google Translate

We recently noticed a small problem where we have HTTPS Everywhere installed within our Firefox Browser and we were trying to view a translation using Google Translate.

The translation page would display correctly yet only the page headers would be shown. The actual translation was not visible.  Inspection of the Java Console revealed an error:

Error: Load denied by X-Frame-Options: https://translate.google.com/translate?client=tmpg&depth=1&hl=en&langpair=en%7Cfr&rurl=translate.google.com&u=http://macrotoneconsulting.co.uk/ does not permit cross-origin framing.

The actual HTTPS rule was already disabled within the HTTPS plugin so we were puzzled as to why it was failing.  We tried disabling the HTTPS Everywhere plugin completely and the translation would work. So it was almost as if even though the actual rule to convert the http to https redirect was disabled it was trying to use the rule!

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Tags:
browser
Geoffrey Chapman

Canvas Fingerprint code tracking

fingerprintThe topic of the moment appears to be ‘Canvas Fingerprinting’ with a number of articles available on the web. It is the latest development in use for tracking the movement of users on the web. You do not need to click on a widget to be tracked, just visiting the site is sufficient.  It exploits the subtle differences in the rendering of the same text to extract a consistent fingerprint that can easily be obtained in a fraction of a second without the user being made aware.

A research paper concluded that code used for canvas fingerprinting had been in use earlier this year on 5,000 or so popular websites, unknown to most of them. Most but not all the sites observed made use of a content-sharing widget from the company AddThis.

The mechanism: Canvas Fingerprinting works in a similar way to cookies, by keeping a record of which sites are visited. When a browser loaded the AddThis widget, JavaScript that enabled canvas fingerprinting was sent. The script used a capability in modern Web browsers called the canvas API that allows access to the computer’s graphics chip, which is intended for use with games or other interactive content.

An invisible image is sent to the browser, which renders it and sends data back to the server. That data can then be used to create a “fingerprint” of the computer, which could be useful for identifying the computer and serving targeted advertisements.

But of several emerging tracking methods, canvas fingerprinting isn’t the greatest: it’s not terribly accurate, and can be blocked.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recommend their own ‘Privacy Badger’ or the Disconnect add-on.  

The list of sites that still track you is at this address.

So much for privacy.

Tags:
cookie website Privacy Tools security
Geoffrey Chapman

Pavlovian approach to Password Management.

Engineers as Stanford recently unveiled a new password policy that shuns one-size-fits-all security.  This has been followed a system proposed by Lance James, the head of the cyber intelligence group at Deloitte & Touche.   This proposes a system that provides rewards or penalties based on the passcode choices people have made.

The example given is one as follows:

A user who picks "test123@#" might be required to change the password in three days under the system,. The three-day limit being based upon calculations showing it would take about 4.5 days to find the password using offline cracking techniques. Had the same user chosen "t3st123@##$x" (all passwords in this post don't include the beginning and ending quotation marks), the system wouldn't require a change for three months.

An interesting concept, and on that would avoid forcing users who have made a sensible password choice from being forced to change their passwords because some other less careful users choose ‘easier passwords’.

The full article is here.

Tags:
Privacy Password Control security
Geoffrey Chapman

Privacy Badger– an interesting Browser plugin

There is an interesting plugin for Chrome and Firefox currently in ‘Alpha’ release from the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) who brought us ‘HTTPS Everywhere‘ named ‘Privacy Badger’.

Privacy Badger is described as a browser add-on that stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look at on the web.  If an advertiser seems to be tracking you across multiple websites without your permission, Privacy Badger automatically blocks that advertiser from loading any more content in your browser.  To the advertiser, it's like you suddenly disappeared.

More details upon the EFF website.

Tags:
browser Plugin Privacy security
Geoffrey Chapman

Web access URL’s containing ‘RK=0/RS=’ string

We have noticed over the past few months an increase in the number of web access upon various URL addresses upon our site with a string starting ‘/RK=0/RS=’, followed by strings of other characters.  To us they are obviously some attempt to get access to information but we were a little puzzled as to how they might possibly work. The URL’s they are attached to are varied but seem to be upon a lot of Blog addresses. The RS= looks like it could be a regular expression for a pattern match of sorts, since some(but not all) are sometimes followed by a caret ^ but that is speculative.

They look to be a form of  SSI injection with the header, with the attempt to try and pass tokens into the URL for some purpose..

Apparently we are not alone and there is much discussion upon the web as to exactly what it is trying to achieve and who might be behind it, but no clear answer is currently known.

One way to remove them might be a simple .htaccess rule similar to the following:

RewriteRule ^(.*)RK=0/RS= /$1 [L,NC,R=301]

An alternative would be to block the IP addresses from which they are coming, but if they are not ‘hard addresses’ in the sense that they are not reusable,  then the risk is that you may end up blocking legitimate traffic.

Tags:
website SPAM logs links
Geoffrey Chapman

Longaccess: pass your digital assets to your heirs

longaccessOne question that is often asked is how one preserved ones’ digital assets and pass them on to your heirs.  We recently read about a new service that may offer a solution.

Longaccess promises to be a cold storage of sorts for your digital life. It's a cloud-based service that operates off Amazon's S3 data centres, but unlike other file lockers such as Dropbox or Google Drive, Longaccess aims to be less accessible, but more dependable. It describes itself as a ‘safe’ on the Internet, a location where one can store files fully encrypted and secured, safe and ready to be accessed for decades.

Longaccess is not a file syncing service, nor is it  a file sharing service.  It is a service for storing files for long periods of time. Files that are NOT updated, or changed at all. Every time a file is created and uploaded to a Longaccess Archive using the desktop application, one gets an Archive Certificate.  This is a simple text file, that contains all the information required to access the data in the future:

- Anyone with access to the Archive Certificate can access the corresponding Archive data: Nothing else is required, not even a username or password.

- Access to the Archive data is impossible without the corresponding Archive Certificate. No one, not even the owner, nor Longaccess, can decrypt the Archive without the Archive Certificate.

One can think of the Archive Certificate as a full entitlement to access the data of a specific Archive. If one gives a copy to someone else, they can also access the data.

There are a number of questions re cost etc. that immediately spring to mind, including how they can guarantee they will be around in a decade or so, question which they try to answer on their web site.

Sounds interesting and may well be a way to preserve those ‘old’ photographs for posterity.  One that may well be worth watching for a future opportunity.

Tags:
storage security website
Geoffrey Chapman

Mail ISO-8859-2 character sets

We recently received a report that the email fetching feature within our Joomla Issue Tracker component wasn’t handling the subject header and email body correctly for the ISO-8859-2 character set. This character set is used by a number of Eastern European countries, so we were interested in resolving the problem if we possibly could.

We tend to use the standard PHP imap routines and it was immediately obvious how we should handle the subject, but implementing a call to the imap_mime_header_decode method. This worked well and was a very quick fix.

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Tags:
Email Issue Tracker joomla PHP
Geoffrey Chapman

MariaDB and Joomla ?

MariaDBWe were looking at the possibilities of upgrading the version of MySQL we are using on out NAS system and were reminded of the existence of the MariaDB database as a possible alternative. Alternative because our NAS does not easily permit the upgrade of the MYSQL part of the system mainly because it is so tightly tied into the other features.

What is MariaDB one might ask. Well there is probably no better explanation that that upon the MariaDB web site.

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Tags:
database MySQL joomla Tools
Geoffrey Chapman

ICANN looking to handle DNS namespace collision risks

I note from this article that a draft of a report (PDF) commissioned by ICANN and carried out by JAS (Joint Applicant Support) Global Advisors includes a series of recommendations — ranging from alerting network operators by returning 127.0.53.53 as an IP address to, in extreme conditions, killing a delegated second-level domain — to deal with the issue of traffic intended for internal network destinations ending up on the Internet via the Domain Name System.

Instead of the familiar 127.0.0.1 loopback address for localhost, the report suggests "127.0.53.53". Because the result is so unusual, it's likely to be flagged in logs and sysadmins who aren't aware of a name collision issue are likely to search online for information about the address problems.

"Numerous experiments performed by JAS confirmed that a wide range of application layer software logs something resembling a 'failed connection attempt to 127.0.53.53' which is the desired behavior. We also confirmed that all modern Microsoft, Linux, Apple, and BSD-derived operating systems correctly implement RFC 1122 (albeit with variations) and keep the traffic within the host system, not on the network," the report states.

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