Silicon Shecky

Ed Bott (@edbott Twitter) at ZDNet has been feeling the wrath for the MacFanatics after he reported, “According to a report from a Danish IT security company, an underground group has completed work on a fully operational kit specifically designed to build malware aimed at the Mac OS platform. ”

Lets get some things straight. I’m not a Mac person. I think its a nice Operating System, and has its place out there, but I think the Cult of Mac, just like the Cult of <insert favorite OS here> needs a reality check. There are good and bad point to every OS, and each one shines in its own way. Microsoft is still the most popular, Linux is great for older or less powerful desktops, and Mac is fantastic for Graphics. It is what it is. Security wise, all of them have their plus and minuses. Any sane person knows that no OS is completely secure, and all can have viruses. So why when a report about one for Mac, let alone a kit to make more, comes out that many Mac Fanatics have to start attacking the report as a FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) campaign?

The story I am referring to is written by Ed Bott, in his Microsoft Report Blog on ZDNet. “Crying Wolf? Apple Support Confirms Malware Explosion,” is a well put together article. It references multiple sources, and does a good job of defensing his original post from May 2 about the possibility of more Mac Malware coming. The Mac Fanatics tend to disagree, and do so in a lot of unprofessional ways in the talkback section of the article. Heck a lot of the deny the current malware even exists.

Let us pose a simple question. If 1 million people get a disease one year, and 100 million get it the next year, would that be considered an outbreak? Most people would say so. 100 time more infections. Yet according to a supposed number (which I cannot verify), there were 2 mac infections last year, and the new malware has 200 infections. That is the same 100 times increase. That is still a significant rise in the number of infections. Is it the end of the world? No. Does it mean that Mac users are as gullible to social engineering as Windows users? Yes.

In fact, being a SMB Consultant, 95% of the virus infections I deal with on a daily basis are socially engineered. Through Facebook, ads, e-mails, doesn’t matter, the end user has to do something to get infected.

Mac has been known for its security. I remember a long time ago when Mac Servers were basically unhackable. Times have changed though. the last 3 PWN TO OWN conventions, Apple’s vaunted OS has fallen, and fallen fast (even when they have patched right before the competition). In 2009, it was reported about the first Mac Zombie Botnet was active. Let see, to become a zombie on a botnet they have to hack your machine, and/or usually slip a rootkit and a trojan on it. That would be considered malware.

The evidence has shown that Mac isn’t as secure as it used to be. Its the way things are. Get over it and act like adults when debating things. I’ve had debates with Ed over his Microsoft slant in the past, but he does slam Microsoft a lot also. His blog is like this blog on more well known. Its news mixed with opinion. Take it or leave it, but as one talkback comment reminded people, the end of The Boy Who Cried Wolf finished with the wolf actually showing up and causing damage.

The Public folder issue with the Exchange 2010 migration has been solved. An old lesson was reconfirmed. Then the chewing out of myself commenced.

Many years ago, when I was first learning to fix and build PC’s, I would go to the local monthly computer show. Each month would mean some new part for upgrading or replacing. It was fun to learn about these things, see what I could do with them, even cause the parts to eventually die out because of my own stupidity. It was a glorious time.

Eventually though I ran into a problem that took forever to solve. I had replaced something in my computer, and straightened up the cables connecting the PC to everything. I fired up the machine, and… no sound. Checked the settings in windows, checked the driver, pulled the card out, tried a different card, all still with no sound. 6 months I kept dealing with this problem, checked everything I could, tried new cards and still no sound. Well I checked almost everything I could. In month 6 of this issue, I went to do another cable cleanup, and that is when I found that I, for 6 months, had the microphone plugged into the speaker jack and the speakers plugged into the microphone jack. This was before they color coded everything, and for 6 months I swore that they were plugged in right. I assumed they were is more like it.

For many years I have told this tale to friends, and colleagues to exercise the point of the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) method. Always check and double check the simplest things before moving on to the more complex reasons. Sometimes though, even I need a swift kick in the rear to remember this.

I had been struggling this week with the public folder migration from Exchange 2007 to 2010. The Mailbox migration had worked fine. The public folders though had been beating me up. The hierarchy was not propagating, let alone the folders communicating. I did some research, and found that the replication was done over email, basically emailing the folders between servers. So I started checking SMTP settings, telnetting between machines, even remembered that there was a problem with mailboxes on the 2007 server sending e-mail to the mailboxes on the 2010 server, but not vice versa.

All the symptoms were there, right in my face as to the main portion of the answer. I still didn’t see the simple thing though, instead looking up every way I could think of describing the issue in Google, with no fix. Then, on day 4 of this madness, while starting to look at yet another site’s solution, the answer hit me in the face. I logged into the Domain Controller, opened up DNS, and yep, there it was. Actually, there it wasn’t. When I set up DNS for the new server, I had forgotten to put in an MX record for the new server. All they years of dealing with DNS and MX records, I had forgotten the simplest thing, yet for 3 day had assumed I had put it in. I was elated and angry with myself all at the same time, especially when I saw the hierarchy start to show up on the Exchange 2010 server (the rest of the solution was cleaning up the old security certs on the exchange 2007 server, and getting a new self signed cert on it).

So once again, I get reminded of the 6 months of no sound from the speakers, and why one really does need to double check the simplest things even more thoroughly than the complicated thing.

The Exchange 2007 server needed to be rebuilt. The BES was all migrated and ready to go. The new server was prepped. No real test environment available, but enough scenarios gone through. The time to Migrate to Exchange 2010.

Over this past weekend, I got the Exchange migration project nearly completed. Friday, I spent the afternoon making sure I had prepped the new server properly. That all the roles needed were installed, and that the system was patched. It came to be 4:30 pm and I started the procedures as I had planned. Changed the IP on the old Exchange Server to an open Internal. Changed the IP on the new Exchange server, to the old one’s IP so that I didn’t need to make any firewall changes. Changed their entries in DNS, and made sure it took. Then Migrated my Mailbox, and tested, and Outlook wouldn’t connect. Checked my settings on the Hub Transport, and found I didn’t have a few boxes checked. Checked the appropriate boxes, and Outlook worked. Tested Internal and External E-mail. External worked just fine. Internal, well, I wasn’t getting any e-mail from people that had not been migrated to the new server. Not a big deal, as I migrated the helpdesk tech’s e-mail and tested locally. That worked. So Exchange 2010 could e-mail to people on the 2007 server, but 2007 could not e-mail to the 2010 server. Still not a big deal. So I migrated all the boxes over the weekend.

While that was happening, I made my adjustments to OWA, Active Sync and made sure the Blackberry’s would still get e-mail, along with the Android phones. By Sunday afternoon, all the mailboxes had been moved over, and I had started on working on getting the Public Folders back up and running on the 2007 server so I could replicate them over and be finished with it all. The bad thing when a migration is going smooth, is that one can become complacent. Sure enough, the Public Folder Hierarchy would not populate on the 2010 server. Nothing that was on the 2007 server, none of the folders were showing. Houston we have a minor problem. I went to bed, waiting to see if it was just taking a long time to propagate.

Walk into the office on Monday, sure enough everything is working just fine, except the Public Folders had not been replicated yet. I know it is because Exchange 2007 can’t e-mail to Exchange 2010. So I continue looking for the answer to this issue, but outside of that, the migration was pretty painless.