@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

@PhlipElder Where's the slot Proc?! Lol. Now those are biiiiiig.
Think they sat in ISA slots right? Or no maybe it was just a special slot for the processor...can't remember

It was a custom slot that allowed for four or eight CPU configurations without needing too much real estate to make it happen. I was working for a former employer in those days, so unfortunately don't have any samples.

With AMD's EPYC Rome single socket CPU setups absolutely crushing Intel's dual and even quad :astonished_face: processor rigs real estate won't be too much of an issue for the next few years.

The trend, in my mind, was back towards daughter cards for CPUs and memory slots given the density direction Intel was heading in.

AMD packing such a huge punch in one socket has put Intel on notice and Ice Lake is probably not going to be the answer they need especially if it does not have PCIe Gen 4.

Effing Tourists.

The folks in the MDX opened their doors and started to get out to take pictures of the "cute bears" (my thought of what was in their mind). The bears took an immediate interest in them. They changed their minds right properly quick (RPQ)!

Black bears are fresh flesh eaters while brown like carrion for the maggots.

This pic was taken on a back road up into the mountains Northwest of Banff, Alberta a few years back.

@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

@black3dynamite said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

I had a HP DC5850 that replaced my dx5150 which I had used for years. The DC5850 made it nine years, I think, as my main desktop. That had the AMD Phenom-II processor, 6GB of RAM, but the key was that it had an early SSD and was so fast that the old CPU didn't matter. Now 6GB of RAM would kill me, but 8GB will essentially work.

AMD Phenom was my favorite.

Oh but that Sempron though!

Let's see,

• Intel 486SX
• IBM/CYRIX 6x86MX (these were real performers ... not)
• Intel Xeon Processor 2400DP
• Intel Pentium III
• Intel Pentium D
• Intel Celeron

The Pentium Pro was a significant size larger but I don't have one anymore. I'm not sure where it went.

@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

@Dashrender said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

but it was just over 5 years old and died last year.

That's pretty young for a laptop. My $1100 HP Folio 13 is still going strong from 2012.

I have a Tecra Z50-A series that's still going strong. A high performance Intel SSD and the maximum amount of RAM gives it a good go along with an Asus HD USB3 monitor makes it a solid work kit.

@FATeknollogee said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

@PhlipElder said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

The goal is to run the system with two virtual machines:

• VM0: Domain joined and work apps
• VM1: Not domain joined with all personal apps

This user is a power user with the need to keep things separate. The OS will be Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit.

For a personal rig, we'd flip the workstation board and Xeon to a desktop mATX board and a Core i5 and the NVMe drives to 760p or 600p series. Cost would be substantially reduced.

Just curious...why can't the o/s be F30 with both VM's running in Virt-Manager?

F30 being Fedora?

All of our clients are Windows houses and are licensed as such with Windows 10 E3 and soon E5 to gain access to Advanced Threat Protection.

Everything is tied in to Active Directory and Group Policy for management and security.

We've built GRID on FreeBSD and security soft-appliances on OpenBSD but that was quite a while ago.

There's no point to *NIX on the user side for us and our clients. It would be way too painful. Dealing with Macs can be a challenge enough especially when Apple is not so kind to their integration components for Microsoft networks.

@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

@Dashrender said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

@kamidon said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

Looking at an i5 Desktop with 16GB of ram pushes the envelop at $800

Why look at Intel when genuine AMD is crushing them? With better price/performance and shipping nearly 80% of CPUs today, Intel seems like an odd choice.

DAMN...80%?
In what market though? Surely not the consumer market. And most servers I've at least seen are always Intel. Perhaps the east coast is different?
I seldom come across an amd processor in the consumer market, it's extremely rare.

Edit: And in terms of speed, I mean AMD just doesn't seem to cut it. Maybe as a server because of the muilti core speeds. https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-9900K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-3900X/4028vs4044

How many people are running i9's though? For consumers wouldn't it be better to look at i5 vs Ryzen, or i7 vs Ryzen?

No...because AMD's software is garbage, their performance is spotty despite benchmarks that are decent.
But this is anecdotal and obviously my opinion.

Now it has been a while, I wouldn't mind trying out a system with another AMD proc, but at least at this time, Intel is cheaper and faster...still...so from a consumer perspective, it doesn't seem viable to go with AMD.

Ah, tweaked a memory ... indeed, the drivers were an issue for the AMD chipsets especially the chipset software based RAID setups. Lots of broken arrays.

The problems we have had on the Intel side have been with in-box drivers in the Windows OS, though the last time that happened was Windows 7 on the Intel NIC driver ($15K dual Intel Xeon trading box with pausing mouse cursor was a heart-stopping moment) on the user side.

@scottalanmiller said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

AMD Ryzen
AMD RYZEN 7 2700 8-Core 3.2 GHz (4.1 GHz Max Boost) Socket AM4 65W YD2700BBAFBOX Desktop Processor

A Ryzen 7 is some serious stuff. Consider a Ryzen 5.

We ventured into AMD quite a while ago and ran into some serious problems with the desktop and workstation platforms we purchased.

The big difference between AMD and Intel has been, and still is today, the partner and system builder ecosystem.

As hard as AMD has tried, they have seemingly fallen short of getting a homogeneous ecosystem together.

Mind you, today, the AMD EPYC system builder focused platforms have a lot more in-vendor options for chassis, storage, and power supply setups. That may help.

But, for those of us that build custom systems, yeah I know we're a dinosaur in the industry, it's important to avoid the Willy Wagging that can come with disparate system components. BTDTBTTS (Been There, Done That, Burnt the T-Shirt)

@Dashrender said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

@PhlipElder said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

Been working on retiring the old NTG desktop for a while, and have been looking at different starting points for hardware.

• MSI
• ASUS
• Dell

• etc

Looking at an i5 Desktop with 16GB of ram pushes the envelop at $800, and that is before looking at a good video card for dual or triple monitors. Like what the heck... Stock Memory is 4GB.. ouch!

I want a decent box, but don't want to get sticker shock at the same time. I could build my own, the NTG case is solid - and heck, it hasn't rebooted in two or three months (now that I've said that, it'll reboot mid post)....

Co-worker got a MSI laptop for his wife, but I don' think I need another laptop. To many of those things floating around here as it is...

Just need a decent build

• i5 or better CPU
• 16GB mem
• 500 GB SDD (could go with 250GB as the SSD I have now is 120)
• Dual Monitor Support, HDMI or DVI
• USB A and USB c would be nice,.. but not required.

We've done a number of custom builds over the last while.

This one is on the build docket for today:

• Gigabyte C246M-WU4 mATX
• Intel Xeon Processor E-2278G
• 32GB DDR 4 (2x 16GB)
• 1TB RAID 1 (Intel SSD 7600p NVMe pair)
• AMD RADEON Pro WX 3100 PCIe (can drive 4 or more monitors)
• SilverStone FT03 Mini-Tower
• SilverStone ST75F-PT Ultra-Quiet
• Mini-DisplayPort Adapters (MDP2DPMF6IN)

The goal is to run the system with two virtual machines:

• VM0: Domain joined and work apps
• VM1: Not domain joined with all personal apps

This user is a power user with the need to keep things separate. The OS will be Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit.

For a personal rig, we'd flip the workstation board and Xeon to a desktop mATX board and a Core i5 and the NVMe drives to 760p or 600p series. Cost would be substantially reduced.

Is the plan to use Windows 10 Hyper-V?

Correct. What I missed was that we need to test whether Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Professional for Workstations (Microsoft's Server to Desktop Hack all done for us).

@gjacobse said in Spec'ing a new computer from Dell or?:

Been working on retiring the old NTG desktop for a while, and have been looking at different starting points for hardware.

• MSI
• ASUS
• Dell

• etc

Looking at an i5 Desktop with 16GB of ram pushes the envelop at $800, and that is before looking at a good video card for dual or triple monitors. Like what the heck... Stock Memory is 4GB.. ouch!

I want a decent box, but don't want to get sticker shock at the same time. I could build my own, the NTG case is solid - and heck, it hasn't rebooted in two or three months (now that I've said that, it'll reboot mid post)....

Co-worker got a MSI laptop for his wife, but I don' think I need another laptop. To many of those things floating around here as it is...

Just need a decent build

• i5 or better CPU
• 16GB mem
• 500 GB SDD (could go with 250GB as the SSD I have now is 120)
• Dual Monitor Support, HDMI or DVI
• USB A and USB c would be nice,.. but not required.

We've done a number of custom builds over the last while.

This one is on the build docket for today:

• Gigabyte C246M-WU4 mATX
• Intel Xeon Processor E-2278G
• 32GB DDR 4 (2x 16GB)
• 1TB RAID 1 (Intel SSD 7600p NVMe pair)
• AMD RADEON Pro WX 3100 PCIe (can drive 4 or more monitors)
• SilverStone FT03 Mini-Tower
• SilverStone ST75F-PT Ultra-Quiet
• Mini-DisplayPort Adapters (MDP2DPMF6IN)

The goal is to run the system with two virtual machines:

• VM0: Domain joined and work apps
• VM1: Not domain joined with all personal apps

This user is a power user with the need to keep things separate. The OS will be Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit.

For a personal rig, we'd flip the workstation board and Xeon to a desktop mATX board and a Core i5 and the NVMe drives to 760p or 600p series. Cost would be substantially reduced.

@RojoLoco said in Any Camera People Here?:

@PhlipElder sweet flower pic! I spent most of a year taking flower pics at my parents house. Totally basic camera though.

Thanks. Unfortunately, a camera kit is out of the question for us right now thus the pursuit of a lens kit for my iPhone X which takes half decent pics ... just a crappy camera app that is nowhere near as good as the Microsoft one was.

My wife's birthday presents for the last three years has been garden roses along with two rose gardens one two years ago and one this year. I love roses. My mother had an amazing rose garden when I was growing up and I have lasting memories of them.

@Pete-S said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

@PhlipElder said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

@Dashrender said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

@dafyre said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

@PhlipElder said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

All it takes is one absentminded click or drive-by that's completely shielded from us as we go about the day to day stuff and it's done. Game over. Say, "Bubbye".

There's always going to be that risk or one absentminded click.

Granted an Air-gapped PWA is a good way to handle it.... but so is not saving passwords in RDP files (I don't do this), and if you use an app like MobaXterm that can encrypt the files for you, use a good pass phrase.

However if your admin machine is owned, you have bigger issues to start with.

Well, the idea is that the air-gapped machine won't ever be in a situation to become compromised, is my guess. I haven't had a chance to look at the MS link Philip sent earlier.

There are several ways to implement with the simplest being the main machine having two VMs installed on it. One for day-to-day and one for client/systems management. Nothing is done on the machine itself with all designated tasks being done in their respective VM.

We have a number of laptops that came back from client refreshes. So, we're using them as our dedicated management machines. Asus makes a great external USB3 DisplayLink and DisplayPort external monitor that allows for two screens. That makes the work easier.

There is security leakage between VMs on a client machine for instance over clipboard.

Have a look at Qubes. https://www.qubes-os.org/

It's probably the best implementation of security separation to date.

Using the Hyper-V VM Console without RDS pass-through eliminates any access to the VM beyond console.

@scottalanmiller said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

@PhlipElder said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

We have a number of laptops that came back from client refreshes. So, we're using them as our dedicated management machines. Asus makes a great external USB3 DisplayLink and DisplayPort external monitor that allows for two screens. That makes the work easier.

This can be a great use case for small, limited machines like Raspberry Pi. Or super high power desktops that can run a lot of desktop VMs for you locally. And a place where, if you can, using Linux makes it work so much better. No limitations on count, don't need a GUI in all cases. Can run on ARM if you want.

We're getting there but not yet. The idea that's coming down the pipe is a boutique build we have designed that has everything mounted on small aluminium plate and is essentially wireless except power. It's a fun side project.

@Dashrender said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

@dafyre said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

@PhlipElder said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

All it takes is one absentminded click or drive-by that's completely shielded from us as we go about the day to day stuff and it's done. Game over. Say, "Bubbye".

There's always going to be that risk or one absentminded click.

Granted an Air-gapped PWA is a good way to handle it.... but so is not saving passwords in RDP files (I don't do this), and if you use an app like MobaXterm that can encrypt the files for you, use a good pass phrase.

However if your admin machine is owned, you have bigger issues to start with.

Well, the idea is that the air-gapped machine won't ever be in a situation to become compromised, is my guess. I haven't had a chance to look at the MS link Philip sent earlier.

There are several ways to implement with the simplest being the main machine having two VMs installed on it. One for day-to-day and one for client/systems management. Nothing is done on the machine itself with all designated tasks being done in their respective VM.

We have a number of laptops that came back from client refreshes. So, we're using them as our dedicated management machines. Asus makes a great external USB3 DisplayLink and DisplayPort external monitor that allows for two screens. That makes the work easier.

@Dashrender said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

Basically you're saying that every admin at an MSP should have two machines - one for managing clients, and one for MSP related email/web surfing, etc.

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/datacentersecurity/2017/10/13/privileged-access-workstationpaw/

@dafyre said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

@PhlipElder said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

@dafyre said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

For the couple of sites I manage some stuff for, I have separate VMs (on my end) for each of them. Each VM has only the VPN client for the client I am connecting to.

Edit: Passwords are different for each VM, as well as each VPN connection as well.

Catch is, the VMs need to be accessed from a system that has nothing to do with day-to-day operations. None.

I think I get your thinking... but for clarity's sake: Why?

The whole point of a Privileged Access Workstation setup is to keep things separate.

As soon as I manage client systems from this system I'm sitting at there is no guarantee of protection.

The idea is to keep an air-gap in there.

I remember a story of a small MSP that not too long ago got compromised. As it turns out, the perps that got in on their system managed to get in to the balance of the MSP's clients. Why? They had saved the passwords in the RDP files for their client's servers. Duh.

All it takes is one absentminded click or drive-by that's completely shielded from us as we go about the day to day stuff and it's done. Game over. Say, "Bubbye".

@dafyre said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

For the couple of sites I manage some stuff for, I have separate VMs (on my end) for each of them. Each VM has only the VPN client for the client I am connecting to.

Edit: Passwords are different for each VM, as well as each VPN connection as well.

Catch is, the VMs need to be accessed from a system that has nothing to do with day-to-day operations. None.

Comodo Username & Password published to GitHub.

This one would have been avoided if MFA (Multi Factor Authentication) was enabled on all of their O365 accounts.

EDIT: And if the one that posted it used some sort of code scraper to flag sensitive info in code. :S

@siringo said in Any Camera People Here?:

I'm looking for a camera and I know nothing.

I'm happy with the quality of the photos I get out of my Samsung Galaxy S6+ but I'd like to have, is it called a viewfinder? The thing you used to have to jam your eye up against with all the cameras we used to use before we used smartphones.

Also something with bluetooth, a screen so I can review what I just shot, maybe wifi, SD card. Also the ability to add filters, just like I do on my smartphone.

Manual focus and the ability to add lenses may be good as well.

Budget is up to $500.

With thanks.

There are plenty of good third party lenses that can attach to smart phones. I've been wanting to pick-up a good Macro and Zoom lens set for my iPhone X as I can't be bothered to carry around extra kit with me where ever I go.

^^^ This was taken with my iPhone using the native lens and built-in software. The built-in camera app sucks so purchasing an app that allows for full control is on the To Do List as well.

As a comparison, nothing has come close to the Lumia 1020 that my wife now has for photo capabilities. That was one awesome camera that had a smartphone attached to it. :S

@scottalanmiller said in Protek Support MSP Ransomware Hits Customers in Salt Lake City, Utah:

So we heard from customers of Protek Support in Salt Lake City that the MSP has been hit with ransomware that has gone on to hit all of their clients as well. From what we understand, they are currently on four days of customers being without their files and they aren't cleaning them up yet. We would suspect that their internal systems have been hit and they are tied up dealing with that.

Pretty good timing considering we just posted about this MSP Risk a few days ago.

How do MSPs survive this kind of level of destruction? Are clients talking to each other? Are clients going on to talk to other MSPs and look for assistance when their main support is gone?

We rarely think about how the MSP itself would be offline indefinitely and potentially unable to function in the case of a breach like this. But in this case, it looks like the MPS has been impacted to such a degree that they aren't even able to start helping customers yet. Four days with no action is a lifetime to an impacted business. Something like a hundred customers down for a whole week with no end in sight, it sounds like.

Each customer is going to need every machine - desktops, servers, storage, etc. to be totally wiped, reloaded, and restored. Imagine the manpower necessary to do that.

WiPro outsourcing giant breach: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/04/experts-breach-at-it-outsourcing-giant-wipro/

PCM MSP Breach: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/06/breach-at-cloud-solution-provider-pcm-inc/

Ongoing mess: https://www.insynq.com/support/#status

^^^ Note the word meticulous in the "we've cleaned things out" paragraph. SMH

CCH Walters Kluwer: https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/the-wolters-kluwer-cch-outage-what-happened

Maersk: Saved by a physical DC that was off in Africa after a power outage.

MSPs: Vulnerabilities in RMM/PSA software allowed compromise a while back.

Bing Search: MSP Breach

Privileged Access Workstation is the only way to go today. There needs to be an air-gap between systems being used to manage clients/customers and the MSP's day to day production systems.

There is no excuse for not segmenting operations, administration, cloud services systems, backup systems, and more. None. Nada. Zippo. Zilch.

Oh, and this:

Courtesy of Malware-Traffic-Analysis. It's virtually always the human.

@Dashrender said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

@PhlipElder said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

@dafyre said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

@Dashrender said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

@scottalanmiller said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

@WLS-ITGuy said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

I use Facebook as a way to keep in touch with family and friends who don’t live close to me. I use FB Messenger to talk to my wife throughout the work day. If I wasn’t in IT I doubt I’d have a phone with internet. I’d prefer to be disconnected from the world. I’d rather be on my boat fishing all day.

I was doing that (family and stuff), but honestly, it seems like if people don't move to something else to talk to, not a big deal.

15 years ago, before Facebook - what did you use to keep in contact with your family? I don't know about you - buy my answer was - oh yeah - nothing. We didn't stay in contact and we didn't feel like we were missing anything - otherwise we would have found a way to stay in contact.

15 Years ago? Ha... We were using Skype and IRC.

Edit: The old man still runs his own IRC server for like 5 friends.

ICU? MSN Messenger? AIM?

Heh, there are some vague memories in there of those in the latter part of the 1990s early 2000s.

Most of my family didn't have internet until the mid to late 2000's. Even then, didn't use it much until smartphones and tablets. Chat is something my family has never used. by family I mean -my mom/dad/brothers.

The biggest way we still communicate is either SMS or a phone call.

I've been online since the mid 90's.

SMS seems to be one of the better ones. I've been texting my brothers-in-law back and forth quite a bit over the last few years. We've become quite good friends.

I tend a mail list for family members with regular postings of pictures and events that are happening in our family life such as home school and extra curricular stuff. They generate a fair amount of e-mail exchanges and a few phone calls here and there.

Effort. Just like a garden family takes effort. FB is much too much like, "I can feel really good about myself keeping family in touch" without ever reaching out to them to talk to them ... to show interest in their lives.

[/SOAPBOX]