A statement has been released by the Australian Communications Media Authority urging internet users to check their DNS settings. It is estimated four million users were affected world wide, ACMA estimate up to 10,000 Australians have devices which have been affected with the malware.

The DNS server is like a telephone book translates the website address you type in, into the numerical IP Address of that domain. This malware enabled the criminal syndicate to point peoples computers from a website they were browsing to a malicious one.

The criminals involved in this were arrested in November 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) took over these malicious servers and replaced them with legitimate servers.

These legitimate servers put in place by the FBI will be turned off after the 9th of July. This means that if you are affected by the malware your computers internet browsing abilities will suddenly stop working. The Australian Government have created a diagnostic website dns-ok.gov.au, which can be used to check if your computer has been affected.

We strongly recommend you head over to the website and ensure that your systems are unaffected by the malware. Otherwise you may be left without an internet connection come July 9th.

Last month Microsoft has released a security warning, identifying a critical flaw in all versions of Windows.  The reported vulnerability is a flaw in RDP, which is a protocol that enables remote access to your machine.

The flaw allows hackers to deploy code remotely. In the report case it was just 16 lines of code, which was used to crash a server in a matter of seconds, causing a blue screen and rendering the server unusable. This is shown in the video below. Microsoft anticipates that by now hackers will using this exploit to unleash code onto unprotected systems.

Allowing your server to automatically update may be tempting option, however sometimes this can have unpredictable results. Sometimes the update may conflict with the hardware or software of your server. This can cause all sorts of issues sometimes even resulting in your server failing to boot. For this reason, we recommend a technician to oversee the patching of the server, just to ensure it comes back up smoothly and fault free.

If you are a managed service customer of Greenlight, you have no need to worry as your server has already been patched and is up to date. However if we do not manage your machines we strongly advise you to update them now. If you would like to find out how Greenlight can help you manage these critical system updates, call us on 02 8412 0000.

With the release of the iPhone 4s there has been a lot of media attention to Siri and iCloud. iCloud is Apple’s free service allowing users 5GB of storage space for up 10 devices and allows users to store data to the cloud.

iCloud syncs all email, contacts, calendar events, bookmarks, photos, iTunes, documents and makes a backup to the cloud. It also allows ‘Back to My Mac’ access for Apple users. This is a great tool for micro businesses already reliant on iPhones, iPads and Apple hardware, as it allows the cloud to share data with 10 devices. This means the information stays consistent across all their apple devices.

However, iCloud does not look as promising for larger Businesses as they have very different concerns. They need to collaborate and share data in a much more controlled way.

Most importantly, there is no Service Level Agreement (SLA) on this service.  This means there is no guarantee of the uptime, quality of the service, or assurance that your data will always be accessible. This is probably a deal breaker for most. There is no point entrusting important information to the iCloud, if there is no guarantee it will be accessible when needed.

Currently Apple isn’t giving companies what they need to fully utilise the iCloud. However, if the service appears as seamless as advertised, it will put pressure on other cloud providers to offer the same simplicity or risk losing out to the iCloud.

Upgrade your aging server to the HP ProLiant DL380 G7 server and you may be eligible for up to $2000 cash back from HP.

Call Greenlight on 02 8412 0000

for details and learn how you could benefit from upgrading your server.

Hurry as this offer expires on the before 31^st October

*Conditions Apply.

With over 700 million people on facebook, it’s no wonder that businesses have smartened up to the potential of social media marketing. We are able to connect to our customers and recruit brand ambassadors like we never could before. On the flip side, businesses are now exposed through social media like they’ve never been before.  Those who approach social marketing as a channel of the media spend instead of just ‘a facebook page’ almost always have a logical and thorough strategy in place.

The Smart Business knows where to find its key audience, whether it’s a Four Square check in and reward scheme, or an engagement channel through Twitter. As our world grows smaller through mobile, it’s becoming increasingly important for businesses to understand how ‘social mobile’ works as part of the marketing mix. It’s a daunting task; adding yet another confluence of channels to reach another part of the fast fragmenting audience. But there are good reasons to reach out to mobile users:

1. 80% of Australians now own a smart phone. We are taking the internet with us wherever we go
2. Facebook is in the Top 5 most downloaded mobile applications in the world
3. Facebook users who download the app are twice as active on the site compared to normal Facebook users
4. Mobile Internet is expected to overtake the PC within the next 5 years

What does all this mean?

Increased engagement, on your terms, in any location. If you’re a brick and mortar retail business, imagine sending all your business’ facebook fans and  sms notification announcing a discount whenever they walk past your store.

If you’re a cupcakery with a traveling truck (we know you’re out there) imagine accepting mobile payments and taking orders on the go.

If you’re a car company, imagine an app that shows users the intricate details of the car, before letting them book a free test drive from their nearest dealer.

Imagine the viral possibilities of your business in front of your customer 24/7.

Greenlight has teamed up with eStrategy Group to bring you the cutting edge in social marketing innovation. If you’re looking for mobile or social solutions that fit your company, contact Jessica at Jessica.p@estrategygroup.com.au

I am excited to announce the merger of Speak Ezy and Technically Yours. This merger will officially happen on the 1^st of August 2011.

A little bit about Technically Yours

Technically Yours is an award winning ISO 9001 Quality Certified IT support business specialising in IT and Managed services to small to medium sized businesses. Our merger has significantly strengthened our IT support product offering and now with even more cost effective IT plans, we now have an IT solution for every company.

IT Solutions include:

• Cost Effective customised IT support Plans.
• Server Monitoring
• Cloud Computing
• Offsite / Onsite Backup
• 24/7 IT support
• PC & MAC Support

Greenlight-Our new brand

We are taking this opportunity to combine all our brands together as Greenlight, however Speak Ezy Voice and Data still owns  all the associated brands and entities.

What Happens Now?

Apart from now being bigger and better, not much changes.

Our addresses, phone numbers, account details, and email addresses all remain the same.

The Logo and branding on our invoices and email signatures change.

We will now answer the phone as Greenlight.

Domain names

Hierarchy

The hierarchy of domains descends from the right to the left label in the name. There are typically 3 levels in the hierarchy but it can extent to up to 127 levels.

Within the 3 stage hierarchy there is the:

• The first level is the top level domain (.com, .net, .it, .fr, .org).
• Followed by the second level domains (google.com, microsoft.com, greenlight-itc.com)
• Then followed by host names (www.google.com, ftp.microsoft.com, mail.greenlight-itc.com)

Register Domains

Each domain must be unique. You can’t have glhelp.com twice but you can have glhelp.com and glhelp.com.au since they are on different top level domains. There are also regulations in place when registering domains on particular top level domain name. For example:

• .com.au requires you to have a registered business, and you will have to provide an ABN or something similar
• .com doesn’t require anything specific

Name resolution

Name Servers

Name Servers hold DNS records for a particular domain. Each domain has an Authoritative Name Server and a slave/backup Name Server. A Name Server’s job consists of:

• Accepting requests from applications to converts domain names into IP
• Accepting requests from other Name Servers to convert domain names into IP

Name Resolution Process

When your web browser or mail server needs to resolve a domain name to an IP address, your computer or server will contact your primary Name Server (If it’s a computer then it will be what ever the primary DNS server is set to, probably your server or router. If it’s a server then it will be up to which Name Servers IPs are set in the DNS forwarders.)

Two things can happen when the resolution happens (For this example we will use glhelp.com):

1. If the Name Server already knows the IP address of the domain then it will just give you the answer.
2. If the Name Server doesn’t know the IP address:

- First it will contact a Root Name Server which doesn’t solve the name but instead give the IP address of one of the Top Level Name Servers for .com

- Then your Name Server will contact the Top Level Domain Name Server for glhelp.com. It will return the Name Server for the domain glhelp.com

- Your Name Server will then contact the glhelp.com Name Server which will consult it’s DNS table and give you an IP address

To avoid this lengthy process, Name Servers maintain a cache of previous lookups

DNS Records

Only the most common DNS records are covered.

When changing DNS records remember that it can take up to 24 to 48H to propagate over the internet on other Name Servers

• A – Host Record

Maps a hostname to an IP

• CNAME – Alias record

Alias a hostname to another

• MX – Mail Exchanger Record

Defines the destination server for the domain’s emails

• PTR – Pointer Record aka Reverse DNS

Maps an IP address to a hostname

• TXT – Text record

Primarily used to define SPF record and SOA record

Split DNS

Split DNS revolves the issue where external and internal users require access to the same resources using the same DNS name.

Benefits of split DNS

We will look at a scenario where an internal user and an external user wants to access the local mail server using the A record mail.greenlight-itc.com

Without split DNS

• External User

The user will resolve mail.greenlight-itc.com to the public IP address of the firewall/router and will it be routed through to the internal mail server

No problems here

• Internal User

The user will resolve mail.greenlight-itc.com to the public IP address of the firewall/router and will it be routed through to the internal mail server.

The problem here is that this connection puts a lot of stress on the firewall as the traffic loops back from the internal interface to external interface and then back to the internal interface of the router then goes to the mail server.

Sometimes this will not work, it depends how the firewall handles these types of traffic.

With split DNS

This time you have on your LAN a Name Server that has DNS records with Private IPs for the domain greenlight-itc.com

• External User

The user will resolve mail.greenlight-itc.com to the public IP address of the firewall/router and will it be routed through to the internal mail server

• Internal User

The user will resolve mail.greenlight-itc.com to the private IP address of the mail server and will only communicate to it on the LAN

Diagnose DNS faults

External DNS issues

• Check the DNS records are right

Use DNS lookup websites such as: http://centralops.net/co/ http://www.dnsstuff.com/

• Check that the Name Servers are correct and working
• Check the DNS forwarders

Internal DNS issues

• Check that the DNS services are running (restart them if necesarry)
• Use the nslookup command to check if the name server is resolving correctly
• Open the DNS manager and clear cache, update data files and scavenge stale records