So you just got vonage and your tivo needs to update. Not to worry these two little sugestions will save you lots of time. First, set the dialing prefix on your Tivo to ,*99 then check your quality under the vonage bandwidth saver and make sure it's set to best. Test your connection, and you should be able to have the tivo make connections without issue.

I just got off the phone with the FDIC to confirm that the email listed below is a scam, if you recieve any emails like this I was instructed by an FDIC information specialist to delete them.

I recieved this email today, and thought it wise to publish because I think some blindly patriotic Americans could fall victim to this scam.

Like all other scam emails; the best thing to do with these is either delete them, or forward them to local authorities. Click read more to see the source email.

A great paper written by Peter Phaal explains the simple method used in his companies product, Sflow, to detect multiple host behind a NAT firewall. The secret, it would seem is simply monitoring of the TTL of out going packets and comparing them to a host know not to be using a NAT firewall.

Another method only touched upon by Phaal is passive OS finger printing, although this method is less reliable, an statistical analasys could determine if multiple operating systems were using the same network network device. If this were the case it would be reasonable to assume that that host was in fact a NAT device.

AT&T Labs has published a paper explaining how to count the number of devices behind a NAT device. The method AT&T uses, relies on the fact that most operating systems (excluding Linux and Free BSD) use IP header ID's as simple counters. By observing out of sequence header ID's, an analasys can calculate how many actual hosts are behind a NAT device.

Each of these methods can be easily defeated through better sterilization by the router itself. In the first example, if the TTL for each TCP packet was re-written by the router for each packet to the value of 128, the first method would no longer function. For the second method, sterilizing IP header information and stripping unneeded TCP flags would successfully undermine this scheme. For the last Method, counting hosts behind a router. Striping the fragmentation flag for syn packets, and setting the IP ID to '0', (like Linux and Free BSD both do) would make it impossible to count hosts behind a NAT router.

I've just finished a report on why privacy should be important to all online users, read more for details or click here for the report in MS word format

November 2, 2002, I sent an email to support@linksys.net detailing what I thought was vulnerability on the LAN side of the Linksys router family (befsr11). Two days later, a report came from IDG detailing the exact same vulnerability for the Linksys befsr41 router. The major difference in their report and my own is that they say the vulnerability can be fixed by upgrading the router's firmware. This report absolutely incorrect because I have tested both the current firmware available on the Linksys website and the previous version released last march, and both of are vulnerable.

See the original report I submitted. I discovered the vulnerability using Nessus, a freely available security auditing tool, for unix.

The latest article from Newsfactor gives good insight into the realm of many types of hackers, but fails to realize that the vast majority "casual hackers" don’t really fit in a single category. Instead it’s probably best to break that category down into sub categories. You've got your “script kiddy wannabes”, and the “IT school geeks” that break software and security policies just to see if they can. These “IT school geeks” aren’t looking for any kind of publicity rather just gratification of their intelligence over those who made the software or hardware that they were able to break. The most intelligent of all are the elite casual hackers, the "super geeks". People like this are 100% book worms, can write at least 5 different computer languages fluently, and only "hack" to further his/her knowledge of a particular piece of software or hardware.

While the above profiles are important in criminal investigations, do they not provide little to no other use? Why is it that we’re all so intrigued with the minds of computer geeks? There are hundreds of people interested in car mechanics, but we never see mechanics break into 69 corvettes to see how the engine works, or to see if when they take the same car over 120 miles an hour if it crashes. I guess the “computer geek” and “computer hacker” are just permutations of an ever evolving digital society.

"Your inbox is awash in spam, your boss is chuckling over your credit report, and you've got a sneaking suspicion that Uncle Sam counts how many Löwenbräu you chug. Yes, your privacy's shot to hell, and you're tempted to shrug and settle for an open source life. But privacy isn't like virginity, forever lost after the first trespass. With some work, "reprivatization" is possible. Use this three-tiered guide to pick a level of solitude. But be warned: Going all the way off the grid is more Ted Kaczynski than Howard Hughes."

Walking into your local computer store with the goal of purchasing the best graphics card can sometimes be a hard decision. Here's some facts that you, the hard working, money making, consumer should think about before you spend the big bucks on an awesome graphics card.

According to a newsvac post, "a kuro5hin.org post describes a potential method of using Microsoft Network (MSN) without running Outlook Express. Might be useful for people who bought (or whose relatives bought) computers on one of those 'sign up for MSN for three years and get a big rebate' deals."