Our Procera Overlords…

I noticed that some of my traffic over the last couple of days has originated from a corporate intranet

“http://intranet.int.prnw.net/index.php?title=Pl10k_press”.

I did a tiny bit of checking and found the domain prnw.net redirects (by a framed script on www.netintact.com/…)to proceranetworks.com, the company behind the $800,000 packet filtering behemoth I mentioned in my prior post.

Through the wonder of HTTP referrals (which sends the originating URL as part of the HTTP transaction header) it not only gave me the domain but the remote path to where the link is held which the visitors took to get to my blog. By the looks of things, Procera have been keeping a close eye on all press / blogosphere reactions to their new release… interesting. Whilst it is likely many companies do this, I was amused that their intranet web-server is not setup to sanitise referal information.

Image credit.

The 2k bug

Whilst it seems the Internet enjoys a good Microsoft Vista bashing (see previous post on topic) research today came out suggesting Windows 2000, an eight year old operating system that recently entered long term support phase by Microsoft, is more ’secure’ than Windows Vista. (Cue fanboy and antiboy posts.)

But this is rather misleading, let us not forget, Windows 2000 was released in February 2000, a dark era where firewalls, security software and Windows Update were treated with suspicion previously reserved for black magic. Ok, so maybe I am exaggerating slightly, but back then the average PC had either a Pentium 2 or 3 processor between 600Mhz - 1.2Ghz, between 32-128Mb of RAM and a 20Gb hard disk and was aimed at the business market not consumers who had the privilege of running Windows ME (let the justified ME bashing commence.) But we are still missing the point here, now the only users that run Windows 2000 (which accounted for about 2% of all Internet traffic in March 2008 ) are those who are comfortable power users (like Steve Gibson) or those with old hardware (e.g. Third world etc.) As such, it is not worth the malware authors’ time to target such a small percentage of the userbase when they are more likely to snare the vulnerable XP or Vista users.

Worse still, serious doubts have been raised over the validity of this study given PC Tools did not scientifically determine the states of key security within the operating like Windows Vista’s UAC or even which service packs were installed on the computers. As noted by Ars technica, often the first action by typical malware is to download the target package(s) onto a system immediately after it has been compromised with the usually relatively small initial exploit. This could mean that their numbers are greatly misleading when three or four ‘infections’ could actually be a single instance of malware.

The only way to scientifically conduct such a test, would be with three virtual machines, one running Windows 2000, one with Windows XP and finally one with Vista each running a with a comparable set of security tools and the latest patches. That way, after each exposure, the virtual machine could be examined to determine if the exploit was successful and if so, the degree to which the target machine was compromised. At the end of the experiment, the virtual machine is ’switched off’ without writing the changes to it’s virtual disk and restarted to test the next exploit. Using this methodology, all exploits can be tested equally and methodically and various configurational permutations can also be tried (e.g. Operating systems with only default security measures etc.)

Let us also not forget, there is no way to tell whether these threats are serious silent drive by download style exploits (which would constitute a serious threat) or as a result of user ignorance which even the most secure operating systems and security applications can not guard against. Playing Devil’s advocate, I can see a case that unscientific tests like these better represent real world conditions, however it can not be used to judge to reliability or security of Operating Systems nor the users using them as no conditions nor variables have been made constant. As such, unfortunately, these results have no validity as far as I am concerned.

Deep Packet Inspection - Hide your shame!

A company called Procera today announced the availability of a 12u rack system that can perform deep packet inspection on 80Gbps of data in real time with 96% accuracy. In a world where Internet bandwidth increases daily, ISPs are embracing technologies such as DPI as they potentially offer an answer to this and other challenges the ISPs face such as Copyright and Intellectual property protection.

But what is deep packet inspection? It a process that allows for the identification and characterisation of packets (internet traffic) by content and purpose. It can distinguish between innocuous HTTP, FTP, VoIP and slightly less liked high bandwidth traffic like Bittorrent (and other P2P protocols) as well as streaming. Armed with this information, ISPs or Internet backbones could then opt to throttle bandwidth to services or users in real time based on time of the day, the services they are using or simply how much they are paying.

Whilst throttling high bandwidth services such as file sharing and movie streaming might seem like a good idea, this brings us to the idea of net neutrality. Net neutrality is a principle in which ISPs and Top Tier providers can opt to slow or block specific services or websites based on their bandwidth usage or any criterion of their choosing. Take for example Skype, if an ISP decided Skype was taking up too much bandwidth, or worse, was competing with their telephony services with its VoIP serice, it could opt to slow the traffic an end user (you or I) has with Skype’s service. This could restrict the application or usability of Skype to a point where it might no longer be functionally or financially viable. The ISP or provider could then ask Skype to pay a premium for it’s bandwidth to be restored. It works the other way as well, lets say there was another VoIP company who decided it wanted to have the fastest bandwidth / lowest latency (compared to other VoIP providers) to an ISP’s users, it could pay the ISP to prioritise it’s packets over others. As you can see the scales of services / content on the Internet, once promoted as a source for free and equal speech and services, becomes tipped in the favour of corporations stifling both creativity and innovation.

Throttling is not the answer to the long term (or even short term) bandwidth explosion the Internet has seen in recent years (thank you youtube ) and at $800,000 per machine, I can’t help wondering if the money would be better spent upgrading existing capacities.

UPDATE: I just read another related article which touched on something I had not considered. Privacy. Whilst most information about a packet can be gleaned from the routing header, there is nothing to stop this technology literally parsing Gbps of traffic for any (and all) information at all which could be store for later examination. The only limitation would be hard drive space, 80Gbps is 10Gb of data every second which would fill up a Petabyte (Pb) of storage every 28 hours. The only limit would be the computational power and storage available to the ISP/backbone operator.

Of Hookers and Extortion!

Whilst the title obviously suggests I am talking about Grand Theft Auto, it is not GTA:IV that I am playing at the moment. No, in-fact, I decided to pick up GTA: Vice City Stories for the PSP to give it another go. Prior to this, GTA: Liberty City Stories was the game I had put the most hours into on my PSP and I had thoroughly enjoyed the non-linear (or at least out-of-order mission style) game play and abundance of side quests that the GTA brand is famous for. When I first started playing GTA:VCS, I was underwhelmed. The starting location in the army barracks is not the best due to it being placed almost under the airport which confused the hell out of me when I first started to play. Compared to the well thought out streets of Liberty City, I felt lost and disorientated.

I am glad I picked this game back up last week, for I have just discovered the thrill of empire building! A feature completely missing from Liberty City Stories, you can take over ‘property’ either by buying or creative negotiating (read shooting and pillaging) and establish a variety of businesses in these newly obtained premises. These businesses contribute to your overall empire and pay you periodically giving you a nice cash income for the later stages of the game. But it doesn’t end there, to build up each business, you need to perform side quests which vary from playing cab driver to hookers (for prostitution rackets) to vicious vigilante attacks for protection rackets. That’s not all, there are a few which I have yet to unlock. Overall, if you have not played GTA:VCS on the PSP, I highly suggest you buy a copy (fairly cheap now) and try it out, don’t be fooled by the strange colours and 80s nostalgia theme, they grow on you very quickly! Although I have not yet played GTA:4 (and will hold off posting definitively about it until I do), from what I have been hearing from reliable sources, the story line is weaker than expected with access to other islands being granted too early and a lack of variety in side quests. Still, I highly recommend you try out both games and decide for yourself!

ID Officially Announce Doom 4

In a somewhat surprising move, ID Software today announced they had begun development of Doom 4. This is not particularly earth shattering in itself given the spate of recent rumours to this effect, however the reason it surprised me was that ID Software are already fairly far into a project named ‘Rage‘ which appears to be a post-apocalyptic vehicle slash first person shooter based on ID Software’s Tech 5 Engine, currently in development. Whilst is would not be unusual to ID to be working on two games at the same time using the same engine (Quake 4 / Doom 3 anyone?), given the rumours circulating about a new Quake game, I didn’t think we would be seeing another Doom game so soon.

Judging by the Careers page, the extra staff ID Software are taking on for this project will be require ‘applicable skills’ for developing for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms indicating ID Software are looking to make this a multi-platform game in much the same way as Doom 3 which was also released on the Xbox. This is, however, just early supposition on my part at this stage.

Doom 3 was criticised for being too dark, too broody, too linear and having too little variation. I disagree, having found it atmospheric and a lot of fun to play, but what worries me, is where ID takes us from here. Quake 4 didn’t really do it for me, I preferred Doom 3 for a number of reasons. The story was simpler and more elegant as was the environment. Whilst being a colonial marine and interacting with other marines and military equipment was fun in Quake 4; it felt a little over done and I never really bought into the whole Quake universe past Quake 2. There were, however, moments which I genuinely enjoyed not just because they brought something fresh into the ID-style FPS genre but also because they were quite unexpected. (Those that have completed Quake 4 will know of the Hospital section I am referring to!)

Doom 3 really was a no brainer in that it was classic Doom style game play with a modern engine, I will be decisively underwhelmed if ID are planning to just update the graphics for Doom 4.

When the file extension… is not the file extension.

I was bemused to read on bbc news earlier that a trivially simply ploy stung half a million file sharers. The concept is nothing new having been started a fair few years ago by virus / malware writers and adopted by Copyright enforcement agencies in recent years. Do the anatomy of a decentralised file sharing system, anyone can seed a file. Once this seeded file is made available to the peer-to-peer network it either becomes advertised to a localised central file distributor (referred to as a Super Node or Server) or is found during a spider search query run by another user logged into the peer to peer network. If these files are topical or sought after, they can be transferred onto a different node (client) rapidly. There they are stored in the second user’s ’shared’ directory where more people can download it.

Once a seeded file has been downloaded and spread over a few tens of nodes the rate at which it can be downloaded by others increases almost exponentially with a cascade like effect. Other people of the peer to peer network are lured into downloading this file based on the number of people who have it therefore assuming it must be genuine and would be comparatively quick to obtain. Couple this with a topical or sought-after song / album or file aimed at the masses (who statistically would contain a fair percentage of PC-illiterate users and those with a penchance for agreeing to all the pop ups they come across) means these files explode across networks.

This malicious file in question appears to have masqueraded as a MP3 by Girls Aloud. Given the fact that on running the file pops up a message saying the computer requires a codec to play the song and tries to direct you to a website in order to download it, most computer users would stop and reexamine what they had just downloaded. People that brazenly proceeded and downloaded the malicious ‘codec’ package had spyware installed on their system which would ‘bombard’ users with pop ups. Also, the download file would spawn copies of itself within the User’s shared folder under different names to try to make itself attractive to a greater audience.

But what happened? How were people tricked into downloading an MP3 file but ended up running a malicuous program? The answer to this lies in the file type. Broadly speaking, there are two ways in which a file can be opened:

1) via script or binary execution (e.g. .exe, .com, .vbs, .java, .scr … and some others)

2) via program read from an external application (e.g. .txt, .doc, .wav, .mpg, .avi …. and MANY more.)

MP3 files (Moving Picture Experts Group version 1 audio layer 3) are the latter, upon execution, Windows searches through its list of known file extensions stored in the registry to see what it should do. It instantly finds the entry for MP3 and sees this type of file is handled by a media player like Windows Media Player, WinAMP, iTunes etc etc. Windows then executes the media player which, on loading, opens the MP3 file specified in the command line argument, decodes a block, fills its buffer and starts to play. Unless a clever trick like a buffer overflow is used, which have historically been responsible for security breaches in various Windows programs as well as console homebrew development, this renders all ‘program read’ type files harmless*. As such we have to look elsewhere for the source of this problem.

That brings us nicely to the point I wanted to raise in this post, file extensions and more specifically, security vulnerabilities in their implementation. Recent versions of Windows from XP (and possibly earlier, I can not remember) have automatically hidden the file extension by default leaving the user to distinguish between file types by iconographic representations. Whilst at times this is both cleaner looking and more functional, it does present an interesting security problem, what if there are two file extensions? Window will quite happily truncate the file .xxx from a file name leaving the first extension, despite the fact Windows ignores anything before the final .xxx . As a result, if you name a file SomethingInteresting.mp3.exe, in its default state, Windows will happily display the file as SomethingInteresting.mp3 but will execute the file as an EXE when double clicked. Obviously, if you quieried the file by right clicking on it and selecting properties you would be immediately told what type of file it is, but most people will take the file at face value.

Luckily there is a very simple way to gaurd against such black magic, in Windows XP and Vista** in the file browser, goto the Tools menu and select Folder Options.

In this dialog, uncheck ‘Hide extensions for known file types’ and click Apply followed by clicking Apply to all folders.

And that’s it! A simple check box and some common sense now separates you from being lured into downloading fake or malicious files.

* Some files like some movies can have containers which direct the media player or operating system to web pages. It is not just media files which are vulnerable but this is a completely different topic.

** In Vista you may have to enable the classic menu

Test your password!

I found a fantastic site today which quickly and transparently tests the strength of your password(s). I would not recommend you actually type your current passwords in (just in case there is some sneaky javascript code) but it is interesting to experiment with different password combinations.

Since I was on the topic of passwords, I ended up writing a brief post about how to choose a good password and general password security.

A good password should be four things:

1) Use at least two cases* (e.g. lower case, upper case, ‘number’ case and ‘character’ case.)

2) Be a suitable length - anything less than 7 characters should be avoided.

3) Not include repetition within the password and should not be used for more than one application.

4) Be something personal or easy to guess (a birthday, pet or family member name or related to the application - for example ‘email’ as a password for your email account would be ludicrous.)

Let look at some examples:

The old favourite: “password”. As you can see from the rating below, it is a terrible password. Not only is it predictable (and one of the most commonly used passwords) but it uses only one case and has some repetition (sequential double ’s’.)

A slightly better version of the old classic: “pa55word”. This time, all I had done is replaced the ’s’ with the 733t-ified version. By adding numbers, the complexity of the password has increased dramatically although it is still hindered by repetition.

Lets go even further: “Pa55Word”. Now we are using three cases and the result is predictably much stronger than using two cases alone.

And finally, lets go nuts: “Pa5!Word”. Using all the cases available on the Roman alphabet and removing all sequential characters. It is still not a brilliant password, but it is head and shoulders above the others.

Whilst choice and selection of password is important, it is not always essential to pick random strings as your password. Whilst passwords like gY$5c0p[ are very strong (it scored 92%) it is difficult for most people to remember them due to their entropic nature. It is therefore important to marry practicality with security and my advice to anyone picking a password would be to think of a word (or phrase) and substitute some of the letters for numbers / capitals / characters as in the example above**.

Password hints:

1) If you are choosing a very important password, pick a passage from a book. For example, the first 3 (or as many as you want) words from the first line of a particular page** and add a good degree of randomness to it as described above. If you need to jog your memory in the future, simply refer to that page and it should normally come back to you.

2) If you must write or record your password, obfuscate (via a stenographic method) it! Split it in half (or more pieces) and hide the password/passphrase in several bits of innocuous data. For example: If you made your password Nice225 Woods987 then you could store the following contacts somewhere:

William Nice +44207 750 1225

Christian Woods +43133 987 3245

The same method can be applied for card PIN numbers which can be stored as part of a dummy contact on a mobile phone.

3) Never stick to the same password for more than one service - if someone compromises one password, all your services will be vulnerable.

4) Scale your password to the particular security environment. A password that is used for an unencrypted email account need not be as strong as one for a SSH / VPN / Remote Terminal or VNC account.

5) For accounts you are particularly cautions with, rotate your password frequently. This need not be very week or even every month. If you change your password every 2 or 3 months, it will provide a much better protection against online stalkers who may be lurking and checking your accounts / emails periodically.

6) Passwords can be passphrases! It is much easier to remember a line of a story / poem etc than a bunch of rubbish. Unfortunately, even if that line of text is long enough, it will not offset the problems** caused by character repetition, although it would be important to obfuscate it in some way.

Appendix

* The reason cases are so important is simply a matter of maths. If an attacker knows the password is only one (or two) cases, it significantly reduces the amount of computational time to brute force (or guess) the password. Take for example, a password with only one case (lets assume its lower case). There are only, 26 characters in the Western (Roman) alphabet meaning the complexity of the password is:

…if the password is 4 characters long, there are : 456976 combinations.

If the password is 8 characters long, there are : 208827064576 combinations.

Now lets assume two cases (lower and upper case) are used. Now the attacker has to try a total of 52 character combinations for every character suspected to be in the password.

…if the password is 4 characters long, there are : 7311616 combinations.

If the password is 8 characters long, there are : 53459728531456 combinations.

You can quickly see the significance in the numbers. If to round it off, we try all the (printable) characters available (94), an 8 character long password would have 6095689385410816 combinations!!

** Generally speaking, when trying to create a password, we are trying to create as entropic an outcome as possible as this will be the most computationally time consuming to break. The entropic value measured per key is calculated on the basis that each key press is independent and the entropy per key essentially increases with increased character range.

1 Source

2 Source

Due to the manner in which language is constructed, the occurrence of letter like vowels is dramatically increased leading to a much decreased entropy per key. This means, in order to create a reasonable secure 64bit key, you would need approximately 58 characters as opposed to only 10 if all characters are used.e

The Wow is here! (With some tweaking)

I just came across a great site called MyVistaBoot.com . As the name suggests, it is dedicated to sprucing up that fairly boring Vista boot screen. Each new boot screen is packaged with an installer so it is trivial to get them on your system without resorting to the use of third party applications as was necessary with Windows XP. Take a look, there are some very elegant ones on there to suit every taste.

UPDATE: My mistake, the file downloaded replaces the winload.exe.mui file directly. It is not as simple as just replacing the Windows file but the instructions are clear and concise.

PC Recovery How-to

This started off a reproduction of a leaflet I wrote for the company I work for. It basically attempts to answer the question : “How do I recover my computer” or “How do I run a system recovery” (and permutations there-of) in as few lines as possible. Because I am not constrained for space on here, I have expanded on it somewhat and will continue to do so, if you have any questions, feel free to comment and ask.

The reason for this procedure is simple - recovering your system to the ’shipped’ or factory settings is the best way to clean your system. Over time Operating Systems (Windows is the worst for this) accumulate lots of rubbish. This can be in the form of zombie or orphan dependencies (e.g. .DLL or .OCX files in Windows that are no longer needed) miscellaneous and or useless configuration or drivers and even damaging or misinstalled components. Some retails can not take in laptops or computers for warranty repair unless a full system recovery has been performed first due to the high occurrence of non-supported software related problems being futily sent to manufacturers for hardware repair.

Please note, a full system recovery is NOT the same as a Windows Restore / System Restore point recovery or a partial system recovery. In some cases, Windows Recovery Environment (only on Windows Vista) can solve the issue although I mostly have found it time consuming and unhelpful.

Step 1: Back up all your data

When done correctly, a full system restore will completely wipe your computer. This means all your data (e.g. photos, documents, music) and settings (e.g. ISP / Internet, Web Passwords etc) will be removed. Please make sure you have a complete copy of all the data you wish to save on a external source (e.g. a USB Flash drive, USB Harddrive, CD/DVD, NAS etc) before you continue.

Step 2: Determining what recovery method your PC / Laptop uses.

Regardless whether the unit is a PC or a Laptop, it would have been shipped with a method for recovery. This can be in the form of backup CD/DVD(s) or preinstalled on the computer in a hidden ‘partition’ on the computer’s hard drive. You may have been required to create the recovery discs yourself when you first switched on the computer. If this was the case you normally would have been prompted. If you have not created recovery disks or something has happened to render your recovery partition useless, see troubleshooting #4.

Step 3a: Performing the Recovery with Recovery Discs

If your machine has (or came with discs) read on, if not, skip to the section 3b.

Put the (first if applicable) recovery disc into your machine and restart the computer. When the computer switches on, you may be presented with the option to ‘boot from Optical / CD / DVD / Media’, press enter (or the key specified) to do this.
The disc should now boot into the recovery mode. (If not, see troubleshooting #1.)

Follow the on screen instructions. When imaging / recovery is complete, your computer will restart. Remove the recovery disc from the drive when prompted.

Recovery should be complete, follow any remaining instructions on the screen.

Step 3b: Performing the Recovery from a Recovery Parition or Image.

If your machine has backup software installed on the hard drive, please read on.

The process is very similar to the one discussed in section 3a, except there will be a short time window where a certain key combination will need to be pressed BEFORE Windows XP / Vista starts to load. If you see Windows XP / Vista start to load, you have missed the window of opportunity and should restart and try again. A PC or laptop system will go through the following steps whilst booting:

1) Video card POST *

2) Main BIOS Post (CMOS and Ram check)

3) Secondary BIOS POST (for RAID cards or some legacy 13h network equipment) *

4) Cycle through boot device order. At this point you might see a small white icon flashing in the top left corner for a moment.

5) Transfer execution to boot sector (MBR) of specified harddrive.

6) Windows starts to boot.

* Only applicable to some systems.

This key combination changes depending on the model and manufacturer but will be something along the lines of [alt]+[shift]+[F10] (for Acer PCs) or [F12] (for some Toshiba and HP models) etc. More confusingly, different manufacturers check for this key combination in different places. Acer tend to check for the keypress predominantly during stage 3 to 4 although some models exist which check for the key combination during BIOS POST (stage 2), HP base units normally check during stage 2 whilst their laptops wait until stage 3 to 4. The general rule is start pressing the keys when the BIOS shows up and keep pressing them until you get to the recovery partition. If your operating system starts to boot, simply restart and try again. CHECK with your manufacturer the key combination your system looks for.

When done correctly, it will take you to the recovery section of your computer. Follow the on screen instructions selecting, if asked, the full system recovery option. If this fails, please see troubleshooting #3.

Recovery should be complete, follow any remaining instructions on the screen.

Troubleshooting
For more detailed information relating to your specific model, please consult the manufacturer’s website or helpline.

#1 - Can’t Boot from Recovery Discs
If you are trying to run a recovery from a CD/DVD but it is not loading (booting) from the disc, you will need to make sure the CD/DVD drive is checked before the hard drive (containing the software issue) is read by the BIOS.

You will need to go into the BIOS by pressing a button almost immediately after the computer is turned on. This can be [F2], [F8], [F10] or [Del] depending on the specific model you have.

CAUTION, do not touch anything other than what is directed here.

When inside the BIOS, check the ‘boot order’ to make sure the CD/DVD drive is booted first. These drives can be called a number of different things, when in doubt consult the manufacturer. When you have changed the boot order, save the configuration into the CMOS and let the computer reboot.

#2 - I have lost my recovery discs / I didn’t back up my recovery software
Some manufacturers have a facility to send you replacement discs if you have failed to keep or create your recovery software. There may be a charge related to this service, please contact the manufacturer. (See #4)

#3 - Can’t Boot from Recovery Partition / Recovery from recovery partition fails
Some software problems (e.g. malware / viruses) can corrupt the built in software recovery. If this has happened, there will be no way to complete the software recovery and you should contact the manufacturer for further instructions. (See #4)

#4- Recovery partition destroyed / useless or no recovery option.
There is a more advanced way to perform a system recovery than using the built in recovery method. I would only reccommend this for more advanced users as it involves manually installing and setting up Windows (XP or Vista) and installing drivers by hand. You may also need to be comfortable manually partitioning your hard drive. This method will give you a better, more responsive system free of crapware / bloatware preinstalled be the manufacturers as well as potentially utilise wasted hard drive space.

With almost all Vista PCs (I will cover XP in a moment) you will receive a Vista Installation DVD. This DVD contains every version of Windows Vista and you can use it to wipe your computer and reinstall Windows Vista. The process to using the disk is the same as is outlined in Section 3a substituting the recovery discs for the Vista disc. Simply select the version of Windows Vista that came with your machine (you can install any edition of Vista e.g. Home Premium / Basic, Business or Ultimate but it will be limited to a 30 day demo) if you are unsure which version you have, check the side of your PC (or under side of your laptop) for your Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity (sometimes called CoA.) This brightly coloured certificate will not only have the version of Windows you are entitled to use written on it, but your Product Serial key as well - this will be important as it proves you are entitled to run the particular version of Windows and will be required during the installation.

Alternatively, if you are using Windows XP (or another Operating System like 98/95, NT, 2000, Server etc) you may need to obtain a Windows CD. I am not sure of the legality of this, but if you find a download somewhere online for a Windows CD image (I won’t provide a link) and install it using the Product Serial key provided on your certificate of authenticity, strictly speaking you are not committing piracy as you are entited to run that operating system on that machine. Because I am not a lawer, I do not know if such a proceedure would be legal and as such can not recommend it. You can always buy a new CD (OEM version) or go directly to the manufacturer for a replacement.

Once Windows Vista/XP (etc) has installed, you will have the basic framework for your PC / laptop. What will still be missing is the drivers and software. Drivers can be downloaded from the manufacturers website and should be done prior to reformating your computer. Some operating systems (XP and prior although to a lesser extent Vista as well) will need security software loaded onto them before you allow the computer to be exposed to the Internet. There are a number of free alternatives as well as commercial options.
Useful Contact Numbers (for the UK)

Sony 0870 240 2408
Acer 0870 853 1002
HP 0870 010 4320
Toshiba 0870 220 2202
Fujitsu Siemens 0870 243 4390

The pride of Chinese Fakes

I want to briefly share an interesting story about a fake iPod I came across earlier in the week. At work, it turns out someone had tried to return a Apple iPod Nano 8Gb they had bought, substituting the Apple iPod for a cheap fake. The circumstances surrounding this are a bit sketchy as I was not there at the time, the first time I came across it was when the fake iPod nano was returned by Apple with a polite and bemused letter to the effect that Apple only services original hardware. Intregued, I took another look at the iPod nano.

As you can see, from the outside it is a very good quality fake - the screen looks a little strange but there are no marks or variations which would immediately suggest this product is a fake. The back plate is engraved correctly with the appropraite logos and serial numbers, although there is a small circular hole on the back plate which should not be there.

On switching on the iPod however, it becomes immediately apparent it is not a geniune article, the unit took a few seconds to boot during which it displayed a strange egg time icon immediately followed by an odd screen with an Apple logo and an animated message saying ‘Loading…”.

The low resolution screen looks awful and the user interface, although trying to copy the iPod interface, clearly fails to impress.

The scroll wheel doesn’t work, nor does the middle button. To move from entry to entry, you have to press the left and right buttons (for up and down respectfully) along with ‘Menu’ to enter into an option.

Entering any of the menu options results in this bland and annoying message for a few seconds.

The Music section looks as though the skin has been copied from WinAMP. Apart from the initial menu, no effort has been made to recreate or emulate the Apple iPod interface in any of the ‘functions’ of this device. Song and albumn navigation is rudimentary and feels more reminiscant of a portable CD player than a modern MP3 player.

The photo / picture option takes you to a very unfriendly file browser with no previews.

I never did get far into the movies function given that the machine appartently was devoid of movie content. Next up is the radio function. I didnt test if this would tune into anything but at least it is a feature not found in original Apple iPods.

Voice recording, another first for the clone! Unfortunately it didn’t seem to want to record anything and I quickly moved on.

The eBook feature simply took me to a screen saying Empty Disk and promptly switched off the machine.

And of course the essential “Good Bye” screen, you will be seeing a lot of it as the battery is terrible, the clone performs poorly and frequently switches off at random. I have no idea what a fake iPod like this would cost, but the only value I can see it having would be in situations like these where people try to con refunds on their original Apple products (or as a film prop), I pity anyone who would consider using this as a functional MP3 player.