Disable specific devices such as USB, CDROM, Floppy, on your local Windows machine or the Windows server..

Recently I’ve seen people having issues with certain devices attached via USB to their thinking machines… Issues that included, Spyware, Malware, Viruses.. ugh, many more.. Wouldn’t it be good to disable these unwanted creepy devices when on a shared/public windows  machines? Ok, follow these steps & get yourself a bit secured.

This can be implemented on your local Windows Machine or on the Windows Dedicated servers, please make sure to backup the Windows registry before following these steps. As making incorrect changes in Windows registry can make the system unbootable.

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close Port 445:

• Click Start >> Run, to open the Run dialog box
• Here, type regedit to open the registry.
• Navigate to the following registry key – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE >> System >> CurrentControlSet >> Services >> NetBT >> Parameters
• On the right-hand pane find the option TransportBindName.
• Double
  click on TransportBindName and delete the existing default value.
• 
  click Ok

From the above, it is clear, that you have closed Port 445 by giving a blank value to TransportBindName for NetBT services.

close Port 135:

• Click Start >> Run, to open the Run dialog box
• Here, type regedit to open the registry
• Navigate to the following registry key – HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE >> software >> microsoft >> Ole
• On thee right hand window pane find an option called EnableDCOM
• Double-click EnableDCOM and change the value from Y to N
• click Ok
• Close the Registry Editor and restart your computer

These steps will only work for a standalone servers. Any serveres that are in a cluster state such as Active Directory, SQL failover cluster, Network Load Balancing [NLB] or Windows Replication service that NEVER-EVER follow these steps as it will simply diable port 135 which is used my Distributed File System [DFS] for the servers to comunicate with each other. Disabling it will just wont allow the servers to communicate and the services will fail.

What is NTFS ?

The File system comes with Windows NT. (NT File System) An optional file system for Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista. NTFS is the more advanced file system, compared to FAT32. It improves performance and is required in order to implement numerous security and administrative features in the OS. NTFS supports Active Directory domain names and provides file encryption. Permissions can be set at the file level rather than by folder, and individual users can be assigned disk space quotas. NTFS is designed to log activity and recover on the fly from hard disk crashes. It also supports the Unicode character set and allows file names up to 255 characters in length. See FAT32 and file system.

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Microsoft Windows Server 2003 does not install Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) for
NTS (CDONTS). Therefore, applications that use   do not function on a Windows
Server 2003-based computer.

Windows Server 2003 provides improved alternatives to CDONTS. To make CDONTS
functioning on a Windows Server 2003-based computer, use one of the following

solution:

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What is Apache ?

The Apache HTTP Web Server, we all well know it as Apache, is one of the world’s most widely used Web servers. It is very popular because of its strong security features, most outstanding performance & the fact that it does cost us any thing. It comprehensively supports and it is most recommended for MySQL & PHP/Perl/Python (and now also supports Ruby) programming languages.

It’s available for all flavours of Unix (GNU/Linux & UNIX systems), Microsoft Windows including other OS as well, for Example Linux distros such as  RedHat, SuSe, Debian, CentOs, Gentoo, Mandrake, Fedora, etc etc. Apache is used to serve both dynamic static content & static Web pages on the Internet. Some web applications are developed expecting the features & environment that Apache provides. It is one of the most basic feature in the hosting world is what allows your website to be seen by the world.

What is a DDoS attack ?

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What do we want from secure computer systems?

Here is a reasonable goal:  Computers are as secure as real world systems, and people believe it.

Security is the condition of being protected against danger, loss, and hackers. In the general sense, security is a concept similar to safety.

In today’s web-based world, hackers and malicious software are the biggest threat to anyone who conducts business online.  Viruses and worms have the ability to cripple entire networks while an experienced hacker can penetrate a system and thieve confidential data.  Because of this, consumers and online businesses alike are taking proactive steps towards protecting their personal information.  Some are conferring with their web hosting providers to ensure that the security measures they implement are reliable.

There are many creative ways that unscrupulous people use to access or abuse unprotected computers. I have mentioned few of them below,

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