The Whois tool is part of the Network tools found in Ubuntu and is readily available for all other operating systems.
It is also the feature tool of the following mini tutorial. I enjoy networking and network security. It's a hobby of mine. :-)
Many people don't realize how much info can be gleaned by using Whois. I hope to open the door and provide some education on the use of these tools.
The Network Tools feature is found in the System-Administration section of the Ubuntu menu.
Let's open it up and click on the Whois tab.
For this tutorial I will be using a page I found during a Google search of Windows anti-virus reviews.
I have numerous Windows customers and like to keep on top of the ever changing technology.
One of the first pages that came up in my search was a site titled 2009 Security Software Reviews.
The page had reviews for numerous anti-virus software. Many of the reviewed anti-virus software were easily recognizable but a few weren't.
And a few of the more notables were missing but I was after any info I could find and started reading the reviews.
Now the fun begins!
When using Whois you don't use the http or the www portion of the address. All you need is the website's name and the domain extension like .com, .net, .org, etc.
So let's put the following address in Whois and click the Whois button;
2009securitysoftwarereviews.com
A few seconds later Whois provides the following info;
Registrant:
Star Advertising
P.O. Box 8044
Delray Beach, Florida 33484
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc.
Created on: 25-Feb-08
Expires on: 25-Feb-10
Last Updated on: 03-Mar-08
Administrative Contact:
Frischman, Arthur arthur@frischman.com
Star Advertising, Inc.
150 West 25th Street
Suite 904
New York, New York 10001
United States
(561) 251-7198 Fax --
Technical Contact:
Frischman, Arthur arthur@frischman.com
Star Advertising, Inc.
150 West 25th Street
Suite 904
New York, New York 10001
United States
(561) 251-7198 Fax --
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.RACKMY.COM
NS2.RACKMY.COM
Hmmmm....... We see that the contact info is Arthur Frischman at arthur@frischman.com
You want to make a note of that for later.
We also see that this review site is owned by Star Advertising.
Let's copy the above info and paste it into a text document for future reference.
Now let's take a look at the website of the #1 rated security software.
It can be found and purchased here;
pcsecurityshield.com
Clear out the Domain Address search window of Whois and insert the following address in Whois and click the button;
pcsecurityshield.com
A Whois search provides us with this info;
Registrant:
PCSecurityShield
601 N Congress Avenue
Suite 303
Delray Beach, Florida 33445
United States
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc.
Domain Name: PCSECURITYSHIELD.COM
Created on: 04-Dec-03
Expires on: 04-Dec-11
Last Updated on: 28-Aug-06
Administrative Contact:
Frischman, Arthur arthur@pcsecurityshield.com
PCSecurityShield
601 N Congress Avenue
Suite 303
Delray Beach, Florida 33445
United States
5612433247 Fax -- 5612433249
Technical Contact:
Frischman, Arthur arthur@pcsecurityshield.com
PCSecurityShield
601 N Congress Avenue
Suite 303
Delray Beach, Florida 33445
United States
5612433247 Fax -- 5612433249
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.RACKMY.COM
NS2.RACKMY.COM
Again we see that the contact info is Arthur Frischman at arthur@frischman.com
We also see that the street addresses are different but the city and state are the same.
They use different email address domains but both use arthur@.
They both use the same domain servers.
Isn't that interesting?!!!!
Now let's dig a bit deeper and use the resources found at;
http://www.robtex.com/dns
Doing a search of frischman.com gave me this page;
http://www.robtex.com/dns/www.frischman.com.html
I'll let you the reader make a decision and draw your own conclusions from the above info.
As you can see, using the Whois tool can provide some good info which allows you to investigate
website and domain info.
Never take claims on the internet at face value. Do a little research before making a decision.
It only takes you a few minutes and can provide you with good hard facts.
The foregoing shows how and why the use of domain proxies has become more prevalent.
A proxy allows the registrant of a domain name to hide all contact and address info from a search.
The implications and consequences of such secrecy should be obvious to the reader.
However, in an upcoming article I will show you more ways of finding who owns a domain name.
I will also continue my mini-series tutorials of the Domain Tools included with Ubuntu.
Be safe!
TaZMAn
Showing posts with label Info. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Info. Show all posts
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
New Ubuntu 8.04 RC Tested
I broke down today and downloaded the 8.04 Release Candidate versions of Ubuntu and Kubuntu.
Some info on the test systems.
XP system is using XP Pro that has been modded by me to be lightweight At idle it uses about 230 megs of Ram. It has an NForce 2 Asus mobo, AMD Barton 2500 CPU, 1 gig of Dual Channel PC3200 Ram, FX 5200 AGP 8X video card, integrated Sound Storm 6 channel audio, integrated nic card and a 500 Gig Sata hard drive.
No Antivirus or Spyware software to slow me down as it is not connected to the internet. Only connection is through samba to my Linux system.
My Linux system runs Ubuntu as the default OS.
It's a Biostar Nvidia based mobo with an AMD 3000 Sempron Mobile CPU, 512 megs of PC3200 Ram, integrated GeForce 6100 video, integrated nic and 7.1 audio, 120 gig ATA 100 hard drive.
First I tried them in my XP system using Qemu. Not a good outcome. Ubuntu would crash with a network card not found error.
Kubuntu did run but not in a full screen mode. However, I decided to try it in a 800 x 600 mode.
The Kubuntu I used was the KDE 4 version. I wanted this version because I was intrigued by the Plasma desktop that I had read about.
To be fair, I didn't test it very long because of the lag times I was experiencing.
I have run both versions of 7.10 this way and have not experienced this much lag time. I have a feeling it is due to Plasma because as I was making changes to the desktop wallpaper and other settings I would see Plasma deleting files that were used by the previous settings.
Also, I would experience changes to my menu and system tray based on what I was doing.
From what I have read about Plasma, I can understand why all this was happening. Plasma is a dynamic and very fluid desktop that changes in real time to what you are doing presently. As I said, I was intrigued by it.
But with the lag times being so bad, I found it was a bit intrusive and making decisions for me. That is not a feature I favor.
A quick look at the default software installs gave me the standard fare.
I didn't get a chance to check out the administrative tools because by the time I clicked on the button I was almost locked up.
Odd that it would eat up almost 700 megs in virtual mode.
To me this seems that KDE 4 may be a memory hog. But that will be better determined when it is fully released and installed into a dedicated system.
Ubuntu on the other hand would not boot up in Qemu. Even when I tried the newer 0.9.1 version. Kept crashing with a hardware not found error.
So I decided to try it on my Linux system using VirtualBox.
I use VirtualBox to run XP inside Linux for some testing and demonstration purposes. Using it to test a new Linux release candidate is not the best of choices due to the 512 megs of Ram in this system. But I gave it a try anyway.
After the install I was faced with a screen resolution of 800 x 600 and no audio. Decided to download and install the Nvidia video driver but when I ran the installer package it said that there was no Nvidia video card installed. This may be due to VirtualBox. I'm not sure. So I plugged along at 800 X 600.
First thing I had to do was to download and install 47 updates! LOL!!
My Release Candidate got updates already. Can't wait to see how many there are on opening day. Grin!
The layout is the standard Ubuntu style. You won't get lost or confused due to someone deciding to change the menu and desktop layout like some other company we all have heard of.
The only new changes I saw was in the software department.
Brasero which is a Gnome based Cd/DVD burning program and a new torrent client named Transmission.
I have also read about the addition of the Wubi installer. It allows users of XP and Vista to install Ubuntu from within XP or Vista and set up a dual boot. And if you so desire, you can uninstall Ubuntu from the Add/Remove menu.
Unfortunately, there is no option at this time to uninstall Windows from within Linux once the user finds out he really doesn't need or want Windows anymore.
On other thing I noticed. Ubuntu running inside VirtualBox on my 512 meg Ram Linux system was faster and much more responsive then was Kubuntu running in Qemu on my 1 Gig Ram XP system.
Should be interesting to see how they fair in a full install environment.
I'm excited for the new LTS Ubuntu release. But not that excited that I'm going to grab it one the first day. Oh no! I learned that lesson a long time ago.
It's best to wait on the upgrade. How long? Oh, I'd say about a month or so.
There will be less traffic at the servers, any update bugs will be found and hopefully there will be workarounds to those bugs and if you wait until the updated .1 version is released (Approx. 1st week of June) you will be updating with a bug-fix version that should make upgrading a breeze.
I am aware that I could have burned these iso's to Cd's and tested them in a 'Live' environment but I'm trying to keep my disk count down. It's getting very tough to keep track of everything I have. Besides, these are release candidates. Probably very close to what will be the final version but not worth it to burn to a Cd.
TaZMAn
Some info on the test systems.
XP system is using XP Pro that has been modded by me to be lightweight At idle it uses about 230 megs of Ram. It has an NForce 2 Asus mobo, AMD Barton 2500 CPU, 1 gig of Dual Channel PC3200 Ram, FX 5200 AGP 8X video card, integrated Sound Storm 6 channel audio, integrated nic card and a 500 Gig Sata hard drive.
No Antivirus or Spyware software to slow me down as it is not connected to the internet. Only connection is through samba to my Linux system.
My Linux system runs Ubuntu as the default OS.
It's a Biostar Nvidia based mobo with an AMD 3000 Sempron Mobile CPU, 512 megs of PC3200 Ram, integrated GeForce 6100 video, integrated nic and 7.1 audio, 120 gig ATA 100 hard drive.
First I tried them in my XP system using Qemu. Not a good outcome. Ubuntu would crash with a network card not found error.
Kubuntu did run but not in a full screen mode. However, I decided to try it in a 800 x 600 mode.
The Kubuntu I used was the KDE 4 version. I wanted this version because I was intrigued by the Plasma desktop that I had read about.
To be fair, I didn't test it very long because of the lag times I was experiencing.
I have run both versions of 7.10 this way and have not experienced this much lag time. I have a feeling it is due to Plasma because as I was making changes to the desktop wallpaper and other settings I would see Plasma deleting files that were used by the previous settings.
Also, I would experience changes to my menu and system tray based on what I was doing.
From what I have read about Plasma, I can understand why all this was happening. Plasma is a dynamic and very fluid desktop that changes in real time to what you are doing presently. As I said, I was intrigued by it.
But with the lag times being so bad, I found it was a bit intrusive and making decisions for me. That is not a feature I favor.
A quick look at the default software installs gave me the standard fare.
I didn't get a chance to check out the administrative tools because by the time I clicked on the button I was almost locked up.
Odd that it would eat up almost 700 megs in virtual mode.
To me this seems that KDE 4 may be a memory hog. But that will be better determined when it is fully released and installed into a dedicated system.
Ubuntu on the other hand would not boot up in Qemu. Even when I tried the newer 0.9.1 version. Kept crashing with a hardware not found error.
So I decided to try it on my Linux system using VirtualBox.
I use VirtualBox to run XP inside Linux for some testing and demonstration purposes. Using it to test a new Linux release candidate is not the best of choices due to the 512 megs of Ram in this system. But I gave it a try anyway.
After the install I was faced with a screen resolution of 800 x 600 and no audio. Decided to download and install the Nvidia video driver but when I ran the installer package it said that there was no Nvidia video card installed. This may be due to VirtualBox. I'm not sure. So I plugged along at 800 X 600.
First thing I had to do was to download and install 47 updates! LOL!!
My Release Candidate got updates already. Can't wait to see how many there are on opening day. Grin!
The layout is the standard Ubuntu style. You won't get lost or confused due to someone deciding to change the menu and desktop layout like some other company we all have heard of.
The only new changes I saw was in the software department.
Brasero which is a Gnome based Cd/DVD burning program and a new torrent client named Transmission.
I have also read about the addition of the Wubi installer. It allows users of XP and Vista to install Ubuntu from within XP or Vista and set up a dual boot. And if you so desire, you can uninstall Ubuntu from the Add/Remove menu.
Unfortunately, there is no option at this time to uninstall Windows from within Linux once the user finds out he really doesn't need or want Windows anymore.
On other thing I noticed. Ubuntu running inside VirtualBox on my 512 meg Ram Linux system was faster and much more responsive then was Kubuntu running in Qemu on my 1 Gig Ram XP system.
Should be interesting to see how they fair in a full install environment.
I'm excited for the new LTS Ubuntu release. But not that excited that I'm going to grab it one the first day. Oh no! I learned that lesson a long time ago.
It's best to wait on the upgrade. How long? Oh, I'd say about a month or so.
There will be less traffic at the servers, any update bugs will be found and hopefully there will be workarounds to those bugs and if you wait until the updated .1 version is released (Approx. 1st week of June) you will be updating with a bug-fix version that should make upgrading a breeze.
I am aware that I could have burned these iso's to Cd's and tested them in a 'Live' environment but I'm trying to keep my disk count down. It's getting very tough to keep track of everything I have. Besides, these are release candidates. Probably very close to what will be the final version but not worth it to burn to a Cd.
TaZMAn
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