Gmail Suddenly Connects To 30 Ports On My Machine!

One personal machine I have is a 32 bit Windows XP Pro Machine. It still works fine.

With it, I open up Safari. One browser, and one window only. Check gmail. Logout.

Then, I open up a DOS/CMD window and run netstat.

——

netstat -ab

TCP blue:1423 74.125.212.52:http ESTABLISHED 2684
[Safari.exe]

TCP blue:1393 mail.google.com:https TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1394 accounts.l.google.com:https TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1395 yyz06s05-in-f24.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1396 accounts-cctld.l.google.com:https TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1397 http://www.l.google.com:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1398 http://www.l.google.com:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1399 http://www.l.google.com:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1400 iad04s01-in-f95.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1401 yyz06s05-in-f27.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1402 http://www.l.google.com:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1403 iad04s01-in-f132.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1404 iad04s01-in-f132.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1405 iad04s01-in-f132.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1406 http://www.l.google.com:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1407 yyz06s07-in-f13.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1408 yyz06s07-in-f13.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1409 ssl.gstatic.com:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1410 yyz06s07-in-f31.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1411 yyz06s07-in-f31.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1413 yyz06s07-in-f27.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1414 yyz06s07-in-f27.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1416 a205-200-78-78.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1417 video-stats.l.google.com:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1418 video-stats.l.google.com:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1419 yyz06s07-in-f9.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1420 yyz06s07-in-f8.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1421 www3.l.google.com:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1424 yyz06s07-in-f9.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:1426 yyz06s05-in-f27.1e100.net:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:2869 .:54497 TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:6591 .:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:17987 .:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:23244 .:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:54473 .:http TIME_WAIT 0
TCP blue:echo blue:0 LISTENING 1296
[tcpsvcs.exe]

——

Wow! Look at all the network connections. If you count “HTTP”, google created 30 HTTP connections!

Review of Colasoft – Network Activity Analyzer – It’s Awesome!

The other week, I downloaded Colasoft’s Network Activity Analyzer, and took it for a test drive. Colasoft is a fabulous network analyzer, intuitively obvious and such a pleasure to work with. It installs and works in a few minutes. It’s highly recommended!

Colasoft Network Analyzer

I was prompted to download it, because I’ve often wondered about network activity on my machines.

In addition to seeing the total network activity on the machine, I’d like to see the network activity by each browser window. And further, by each tab in each web browser. So far, I haven’t found a product to do this. If anyone knows of a such a product, please leave a comment. I’d love to see the product.

Using NMAP To Find The Ports For Oracle Apps, OBIEE, Listener

Not finding a port with netstat? Nmap finds what netstat does not. Nmap can also point out your servers’ vulnerabilities.

On my server, there are a number of applications that work via a browser. Each with an associated port.

Usually, I’ll use netstat to find the port.
netstat -a | grep 9704

You can also find the unix process that is using the port by adding the flag, -al.
netstat -al | grep -i 9704

tcp 0 0 black.testrac.com:9704 *:* LISTEN oracle 162677
tcp 0 0 fe80::200:ff:fe00:0:9704 *:* LISTEN oracle 162676
tcp 0 0 ::ffff:192.168.122.1:9704 *:* LISTEN oracle 162675
tcp 0 0 localhost.localdomain:9704 *:* LISTEN oracle 162674
tcp 0 0 localhost6.localdomain:9704 *:* LISTEN oracle 162673
tcp 0 0 fe80::223:54ff:fe73:5f:9704 *:* LISTEN oracle 162672
tcp 0 0 black.testrac.com:49854 black.testrac.com:9704 ESTABLISHED
tcp 0 0 black.testrac.com:9704 black.testrac.com:49854 ESTABLISHED

However, netstat doesn’t find a number of processes or ports. Such as these important ports and applications:
1521 – Oracle listener
1158 – enterprise manager
7003 – Oracle Weblogic/OBIEE admin
8000 – Oracle Applications

I always found this really aggravating. I knew the port was in use. Why didn’t netstat find it? Then recently, I discovered that nmap will find the ports that netstat does not.

Analysis of Adobe Acrobat Reader Update: How To Finally Shut It Up!

Analysis of Adobe Acrobat Reader Update: How To Finally Shut It Up!

Adobe Acrobat Reader likes to update. And update. And update. Ever notice? I turned the update off. But it still continued to update.  I expect computers and software to serve me. Not the other way around. When I tell software to not update, guess what that means?

Analysis of Adobe Acrobat Reader and Updater:

So I decided to do what I do at work a lot. Reverse engineer much of the system and solve the problem.   Here the things I tried, and some of my analysis.  Not in chronological order.

Installed Programs:

I looked at the installed programs.

Adobe Installed Programs From Windows Installer

There is Abobe. But there is no specific program for the updater.

Using Opera And Zone Alarm To Stop Annoying Flash Advertising!

Don’t you just hate all those websites that use flash? And more flash. And banners. And animation. And videos. All over the webpages. And any and all other crap that interferes with the content that you went to see in the first place?

I often have many browser windows open, and multiple tabs in each window. Most of the computer memory gets taken up by the browsers. And then much of the CPU being used, is just being used to display webpages!

I get really annoyed with all the crap that is thrown at me by some websites. All it does is slow down my machine. The swine! What did they think the result would be? That I would reward them with a click? Or a purchase???? Duh!

I discovered some cool features in Opera that I’ve been able to use, along with the Zone Alarm firewall to make things easier.

Someone has hacked my email account via Facebook! And I can’t fix it!

Facebook has been giving me some serious security problems lately! And IT’S NOT EVEN MY FACEBOOK ACCOUNT!!!!

Short Version:

Someone has used one of my email addresses as an alternate in their Facebook account.
Facebook actually allowed them to do that!
Because of whatever Facebook did and/or didn’t do in their systems, I could actually login to the culprit’s facebook account via my Yahoo account!
But now the other Facebook user has once again changed my email’s password, and I can’t login to my Yahoo email again!
Nor can I contact Facebook to get them to correct it!

Overcoming The Malware “XP Internet Security”

Viruses, worms, trojans, and rogue antispyware software are getting pretty sophisticated.  As careful as I am, one caught me today, on a computer I don’t usually use.  Usually I use Firefox.  But I opened up Google Chrome, right clicked on a link, and open in new window.  Suddenly, I got one of those phony webpages telling me that I had a virus, and doing a scan.

Zone Alarm did not catch it, which is pretty disappointing.  I set it to deny, as I usually do, but it still executed.

ZoneAlarm and XCV.exe