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066: Joe Gets Burned

Recorded live on September 9, 2014

1) Open Relay On Mac Server

One of my clients received a call from Comcast Security requesting that 
they block UDP port 53 because the IP address is being used in a reflector 
attack. As I understand it, these are common for DDOS attempts and is 
sometimes referred to as an "open DNS resolver”.

According to Comcast, it is not internal. The IP address is being uses as a relay- http://openresolverproject.org
"Open Resolvers pose a significant threat to the global network infrastructure by answering recursive queries for hosts outside of its domain. They are utilized in DNS Amplification attacks and pose a similar threat as those from Smurf attacks commonly seen in the late 1990s."
You can test your IP address here - http://www.thinkbroadband.com/tools/dnscheck.html

https://blogs.akamai.com/2013/06/dns-reflection-defense.html

2) Unbootable iMac  Late 2010 i7

http://www.macworld.com/article/1145418/unbootablemini.html

You can bypass the password by changing the amount of physical RAM inside the computer and then resetting PRAM during the first boot immediately after the RAM change. In other words, if you change the amount of RAM in a Mac, it will start up normally one time to give you a chance to reset the PRAM; if you don’t reset the PRAM during that boot, firmware-password protection will be restored the next time you boot.)

3) iCloud Gotcha’s

Son had purchased iPad and logged into mothers account deleted all contacts.

Contacts since installation of time capsule was never opened, so Contacts added since time capsule installation never did a sync 

  In addition noticed behavior adding contacts through text did not sink because contacts in Gmail and iCloud for both turned on with the same email account name 

Other links mentioned:

- client email addresses being added to spam list: http://mxtoolbox.com

https://forgetcomputers.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/201008710-Bender-Automated-Backup-of-OS-X-Server-Settings

http://derflounder.wordpress.com/2014/08/17/uninstalling-app-store-apps-from-the-command-line/#more-5239