Some of you may have heard of Steve Gibson. He’s a (IMO, at least) programming genius whose work has greatly increased security for the average computer user. He created ShieldsUp - the browser-based open port detector, OptOut - the Spyware detector, and LeakTest - the firewall tester.



Anyway, a month ago Grc.com fell off the ‘Net for over 17 hours. This wasn’t some hardware problem, though, but a malicious Denial of Service attack. Instead of simply attempting to get his site back online and stop the attacks, Steve turned the attack into an opportunity to enlighten (and perhaps scare) the average user by writing a great article about Denial of Service attacks.



Towards the end of his article, Steve gives some instructions on how to test whether your system has been infected with an IRCBot. I’ve taken those steps and put them into an easy-to-use batch file. So, with many thanks to Steve Gibson, I’d like to present my IRCBot Detector.



On another note, I’m growing disenchanted with using Yahoo Mail for my Toolbox e-mail account. Yahoo restricts every account to 6MB max (unless you want to pay $$$ for more MB). This means that one large screenshot can fill up a good chunk of my mailbox. Since my web host gives me unlimited mailboxes, I’ve decided to use them. So starting today, you can e-mail me at toolbox@jasons-toolbox.com. E-mails sent to my Yahoo account will still be answered as will unanswered e-mails which were sent there. I’m just going to have to forward them to the new account, which may delay matters. Hopefully this move will allow me to answer your questions quicker (and keep the toolbox mailbox from going over quota while I’m on my honeymoon).