Some people are being plagued by PC error messages saying “cannot find flash.ocx”. Often there is no indication of the program that has been looking for the missing file, so diagnosis is difficult.
Flash is an application that is great for providing interactive features on web pages. It is also used by screensavers and to provide menus on CD-ROMS. It was created by Macromedia (now Adobe) and for the first six generations the main programme file was called flash.ocx but since then the file name has included the vesion number. Some out of date applications that use Flash expect the file to be called flash.ocx, so throw up this error.
There are two possible solutions to the problem:
- Find the application that is causing the problem and update or uninstall it
- Create a new version of flash.ocx by finding the latest version of flash on your PC, copying and pasting it into the same directory and renaming the copy to flash.ocx. The file is located in this folder: C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash
The second solution may be less work but flash.ocx is deleted by the updater every time a new version of Flash comes out. Consequently you will need to keep repeat the copying and renaming process.
admin Hints & tips error, fix, flash.ocx, missing, solution
No, don’t worry, it doesn’t quite mean the end of the world as we know it. SSL encryption itself is still reliable and safe. That isn’t entirely true of websites using it though.
In a little reported paper at the 2009 Black Hat Security conference in New York, hacker Moxie Marlinspike demonstrated a successful man-in-the-middle attack on a secure website.
The exploit involves using an application called SSLstrip, which can be used in a network to capture user logons to secure websites as well as personal information such as credit card nuimbers. Moxie claimed that he had used to technique to capture user information from PayPal, Facebook, Gmail, Hotmail and Ticketmaster. In one day, 117 email accounts were hacked and 16 credit card numbers were captured. Add to that 7 PayPal logins and hundreds of other secure logins.
The weak links in the security chain are the insecure web pages that link to secure services. By intercepting an insecure HTTP web page, such as a bank website home page, the exploit then serves the user a non-HTTPS, insecure, version of the secure web page. Although browser indications of security, such as padlock symbols, do not appear, Moxie explained how it was possible to make a similar symbol appear in the browser address bar.
The exploit suggests that the only really secure way of accessing a secure website is to enter the URL manually, ensuring you include the crucial ‘https://’ at the beginning.
admin News encryption, gmail, hack, hotmail, paypal, ssl
Some customers are bypassing action by their ISP to block troublesome protocols, such as P2P, by subscribing to foreign VPN (Virtual Private Network) services. Others are routing their internet traffic via a free VPN, using the advertising-supported Hotspot Shield – software designed to protect users of low-security free wifi connections. The software provides users with a VPN link into the USA.
VPNs are primarily used by companies to allow secure communications between home or mobile workers and the company servers. They encrypt and pass traffic securely over the open internet. If the end point is not a company server but an internet access point in a foreign country, people can tunnel their internet traffic past ISP and national monitoring equipment, which only records that the customer connected to the VPN server. This is likely to be a major challenge to UK government plans to log the times, dates and addresses of the websites people visit, as well as the addresses, times and dates of emails they send.
According to a survey on the industry website computing.co.uk, 78% believe “the surveillance state is getting out of control”. The increasing popularity of foreign VPNs seems to suggest many may be putting their money where their mouths are.
admin News monitoring, state, surveillance, uk, vpn
Having problems with your Sky HD box? That may be the reason Sky are going to swap out 90,000 boxes made by Pace and which have some sort of non-safety related internal wiring fault, according to reports on Broadband TV News, Digital Spy and other technology websites. Affected customers will reportedly receive a voucher for 3 months free HD viewing in compensation.
The original HD boxes were all made by Thomson but the current generation of Sky HD boxes are made by Pace, Samsing and Amstrad. Some customers with the new generation of boxes had initial problems with lip sync which appeared to have been solved with over-the-air updates last year.
bill News fault, HD, sky
Type any two words into Google and press enter. The result usually brings you hundreds or even thousands of pages. The elusive Googlewhack is a magic combination of words that returns a single result.
There are two rules – the words must be genuine and the result bar must show “1-1 of 1″ results.
You can easily check the words are genuine. You’ll note your search terms in the upper right of the results page. If they are underlined they’re listed at Dictionary.com and you have a Googlewhack!
bill Comment googlewhack