My information Resource (blog.mir.net)

Hundreds of newly released sessions to spark your Ignite planning

The Microsoft Ignite Session Catalog is here! Be sure to take a look at the hundreds of sessions covering cloud infrastructure and management, big data and analytics, productivity, unified communications, operating systems, and mobile devices at the biggest enterprise technology event of the year! You’ll find sessions that provide deep technical detail on specific products, as well sessions that provide strategy, guidance and best practices on security and topics including deployment, operations and usage. We will be adding more sessions and labs in the coming weeks, so please check back often for updates.

Get more out of Ignite with a Pre-Day Session

For an additional investment of $500, Pre-Day Sessions on Sunday, May 3, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm. offer a unique opportunity to extend your learning experience with a full day of focused training the day before the conference opens. These sessions are designed to provide you with a deep knowledge base and skills that you can apply as soon as you’re back in the office. You’ll be able to tap into the knowledge and insights of the people who, in many cases, literally wrote the book on their subject.

Network and network, then network some more

There is something special about the connections you make at events. That’s why we’re making it easy for you to find and connect with others interested in similar topics. There will be meet ups in lounges; fire-starter and birds-of-a-feather community-led sessions in theaters; regional, industry and technology-focused meal-time mashups; and after hour networking events with Microsoft tech and business leaders to add to your agenda to unwind, kick back, and truly enjoy the scene. You can talk tech all day and night.

Mark your calendars for #IgniteJam on Twitter

On February 3^rd at 9:00 am PT, we’ll have the whole event team and lots of speakers ready to chat with you on Twitter. We’ll be ready to answer your questions about the event and hear what you’re excited about in terms of community experiences and things to do in Chicago. Add the event to your calendar with this link.

To participate in this #IgniteJam

1. Log in to Twitter at 9:00 AM PT on February 3^rd. For easier real-time participation, use Twubs and join us at:  http://twubs.com/ignitejam.
2. Introduce yourself and include the hashtag #ignitejam and tag us at @MS_Ignite.
3. Watch for questions coming from @MS_Ignite and chime in with your answers and commentary, using the hashtag #ignitejam.

Feeling fired up? See where technology is headed and meet who’s fueling it—at Ignite. Register today, and add a Pre-Day Session to your Ignite agenda.

 

I be at Ignite Session will you..

 

 

Between January 5 and May 31, 2015, take any Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) or Microsoft Dynamics exam, and get a free Second Shot if you fail the first take.

With our full transition to Pearson VUE as our sole exam delivery provider this year, there’s a slight difference in the Second Shot process. Please note:

• You must complete a Microsoft certification exam between January 5, 2015 and May 31, 2015. Simply go to https://www.microsoft.com/learning, log in, and schedule your exam.
• After your exam, log in to check your personal dashboard at https://www.microsoft.com/learning to verify testing results. Please allow up to 24 hours for results to show up on the dashboard.
• If you need a Second Shot, select “retake” for your exam within 30 days from your first take.
• Please review the Pearson VUE testing center availability for your specifc exam and then schedule your retake. 
• For complete terms and conditions of this offer, visit the Second Shot page on our website.

Good luck on your road to a new Microsoft certification title.

 

Tool for  create and manage the Enterprise Mode site list for Enterprise Mode IE.This tool lets IT Professionals create and update the Enterprise Mode site list for their company, without directly editing the XML. The Enterprise Mode site list only works with Enterprise Mode IE.

Click Here for Download

 

The installation package for HPC Pack 2012 R2 Update 1 is available for download here. The HPC Pack Image in the Azure Gallery, for both Azure Global and Azure China, is also now generally available. Together with this image, an official PowerShell script tool to deploy an HPC Pack cluster in infrastructure as a service (IaaS) VMs is now downloadable from here.

About two months ago, we announced the release of the Preview version of the Update 1 for HPC Pack 2012 R2, We want to thank everyone who helped us tested the early releases and sent us feedback. We made some important and necessary changes to our official release as a result.

The following are the significant new features in HPC Pack 2012 R2 Update 1:

• A major focus in Update 1 has been to quickly and robustly create a Windows HPC cluster using Azure virtual machines (IaaS). In order to achieve this goal, we released an HPC Pack image in the Azure Virtual Machine Gallery. All customers with an Azure subscription can use The HPC Pack IaaS deployment script tools to quickly deploy an HPC cluster with just a few steps. For details about how to use these tools, you can refer to the help document here.
• After a new cluster in Azure has been set up, you can use new tools to manage your HPC cluster in Azure. You can easily create, start, stop, or delete compute nodes as virtual machines on your cluster.Custom compute node images are supported. You can leverage this customization to make your whole deployment process much faster when installing applications and other dependencies. For more details, please see the online help document here.
• We also continued the investment around our existing scenario for “bursting” to Azure with Platform as a Service (PaaS) compute instances. To further enhance this scenario, we added grow/shrink capabilities to the HPC Pack scheduler. Now you can configure your HPC cluster to automatically adjust the number of active VMs in Azure, whether using virtual machine compute nodes or PaaS compute nodes. For more details, see the help document here.
• There are also several important new support and bug fixes added for HPC Pack, such as support of SQL Server 2014 and moving nodes to a different cluster. For more details, you can refer to the What’s New and Release Notes documents.

This post came from Microsoft

 

Is it time to level up your skills using Infrastructure as a Service?  Want to learn from the best technical engineers and noted technology leaders around?  Join Mark Russinovich, Corey Sanders, and members of the Azure Engineering team for a live event delivered online over four days.  Join for one session, join for them all. You’ll dive deep into technical scenarios, ask questions of the experts, and level up your own skills.  Azure IaaS for IT Pros Online Event, December 1-4

Become an IaaS go-to guru Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Chief Technology Officer, Azure, will kick off the event, followed by deep technical training in the technologies critical for IT Pro Implementers, like you, to deepen your foundational cloud skills.  Following the keynote, experts will share their technical insights on topics including Core IaaS, Cloud Infrastructure Fabric, Open Source Software on Azure, and Workloads on Azure IaaS. Be recognized for your skills Get certified for your skills! Register for the event to receive reminder emails and obtain details for receiving a 50% off exam voucher you can use towards Exam 70-533: Implementing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions for Microsoft Azure Specialist Certification. Join the live event from 9am to 1pm PST December 1 Establish the Foundation: Core IaaS Infrastructure Technical Fundamentals December 2 Dive Deep into Networking, Storage, and Disaster Recovery Scenarios December 3 Embrace Open Source Technologies (Chef and Puppet Configurations, Containerization with Docker and Linux) to Accelerate and Scale Solutions December 4 Optimize Windows Workload Architecture and Administration Capabilities Within Azure

Register Here

Computers that are running volume licensing editions of Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2008 are, by default, KMS clients with no additional configuration needed.

To use the keys listed here (which are GVLKs), you must first have a KMS host running in your deployment. If you haven’t already configured a KMS host, see Deploy KMS Activation for steps to set one up.

If you are converting a computer from a KMS host, MAK, or retail edition of Windows to a KMS client, install the applicable setup key (GVLK) from the following tables. To install a client setup key, open an administrative command prompt on the client, type slmgr /ipk <setup key> and then press Enter.

if you are looking for KMS Client Setup Key 

Go  Here

If you bought Windows 8.1 or Windows 8, you can download and install Windows from this page using just your product key

Have your product key handy. You can find it in your online order information, in the confirmation email for your purchase or on the DVD packaging. The product key is a 25-character code that looks something like this:
XXXXX- XXXXX- XXXXX- XXXXX- XXXXX.

Go Here

 

Linksys EA Router have a security issue, if have  EA series routers running the Linksys SMART WiFi firmware it contain multiple vulnerabilities,

CWE-320: Key Management Errors – CVE-2014-8243

An remote, unauthenticated attacker can read the router’s .htpassword file by requesting http(s)://<router_ip>/.htpasswd. The .htpasswd file contains the MD5 hash of the administrator password.

CWE-200: Information Exposure – CVE-2014-8244
A remote, unauthenticated attacker can issue various JNAP calls by sending specially-crafted HTTP POST requests to http(s)://<router_ip>/JNAP/. Depending on the JNAP action that is called, the attacker may be able to read or modify sensitive information on the router.
It should also be noted that the router exposes multiple ports to the WAN by default. Port 10080 and 52000 both expose the administrative web interface to WAN users. Depending on the model, additional ports may be exposed by default as well.

Impact

A remote, unauthenticated attacker may be able to read or modify sensitive information on the router

FIX go to the Linksys site and download updated firmware files

Reposted form the US-CERT Site

 

US-CERT warned that:

This attack works by luring users to install an app from a source other than the iOS App Store or their organizations’ provisioning system. In order for the attack to succeed, a user must install an untrusted app, such as one delivered through a phishing link. 

This technique takes advantage of a security weakness that allows an untrusted app—with the same “bundle identifier” as that of a legitimate app—to replace the legitimate app on an affected device, while keeping all of the user’s data. This vulnerability exists because iOS does not enforce matching certificates for apps with the same bundle identifier. Apple’s own iOS platform apps, such as Mobile Safari, are not vulnerable.

The  OFFICAL CERT article follows…—

______________________________

Systems Affected

iOS devices running iOS 7.1.1, 7.1.2, 8.0, 8.1, and 8.1.1 beta.

Overview

A technique labeled “Masque Attack” allows an attacker to substitute malware for a legitimate iOS app under a limited set of circumstances.

Description

Masque Attack was discovered and described by FireEye mobile security researchers.[1] (link is external) This attack works by luring users to install an app from a source other than the iOS App Store or their organizations’ provisioning system. In order for the attack to succeed, a user must install an untrusted app, such as one delivered through a phishing link.  

This technique takes advantage of a security weakness that allows an untrusted app—with the same “bundle identifier” as that of a legitimate app—to replace the legitimate app on an affected device, while keeping all of the user’s data. This vulnerability exists because iOS does not enforce matching certificates for apps with the same bundle identifier. Apple’s own iOS platform apps, such as Mobile Safari, are not vulnerable.

Impact

An app installed on an iOS device using this technique may:

• Mimic the original app’s login interface to steal the victim’s login credentials.
• Access sensitive data from local data caches.
• Perform background monitoring of the user’s device.
• Gain root privileges to the iOS device.
• Be indistinguishable from a genuine app.

Solution

iOS users can protect themselves from Masque Attacks by following three steps:

1. Don’t install apps from sources other than Apple’s official App Store or your own organization.
2. Don’t click “Install” from a third-party pop-up when viewing a web page.
3. When opening an app, if iOS shows an “Untrusted App Developer” alert, click on “Don’t Trust” and uninstall the app immediately.

Further details on Masque Attack and mitigation guidance can be found on FireEye’s blog [1] (link is external). US-CERT does not endorse or support any particular product or vendor.

 

The Microsoft Security Intelligence Report is the most comprehensive threat intelligence report in the industry. It provides data and insights on malware, exploits and vulnerabilities based on data from more than a billion systems worldwide and some of the busiest online services. It also includes actionable guidance to help IT Professionals manage risk. The latest report, Volume 17, focuses on the first half of 2014, with trend data for the last several quarters.

Where you are a PC user or not the insight here are great to read about

You can download the report HERE