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Vol. 6, No. 41
10-5-06
1 Magnetic fields and why screwdrivers are safe
2 Bald is beautiful
3 Earthlike planets, lightning pics, tech acronyms, HP funny business
4 Rootkit test
5 Exploit test
Several weeks ago the topic of the safety of magnetic screwdrivers around computers came up in the chatroom. As happens often, this got me thinking about how debunking this myth would make an interesting newsletter article.
This has actually come up before way back when we were still on the air and I didn’t really think about it at the time. While repairing a PC in the studio one Sunday John Markham commented that I was a brave man for using my trusty Snap-On magnetic ratchet screwdriver to replace a drive. I just replied, “I do it all the time” and thought no more about it, but apparently it’s a common misconception that anything magnetic can damage a PC.
Magnetic field strengths are extremely complicated and are measured by density and area and distance so I won’t get too deep into it, but I need to define a couple of measurements to give you some scale. Gauss is kind of a micro-measurement of tesla, which is the base measurement.
The term degauss may be familiar since many newer CRT monitors and TVs have a degauss function through either a button or from the onscreen menu. This feature basically drains the magnetic charge from the inside of a cathode ray tube and corrects color defects caused by static charges or external magnetic fields.
A tesla is 10,000 gauss and is the main scientific measurement of field strength. Gauss is used for lower power devices like magnetic computer storage and electron guns in displays.
To give some scale the following chart will illustrate the strengths involved:
Earth’s magnetic field… .5g
Magnetic screwdriver… 10g
Hard drive motor… 1t
MRI… 7t
Forget the math, looking at the real world strengths might prove the point. A magnetic screwdriver will pick up screws and paper clips. A hard drive voice-coil magnet will break fingers if you get them between it and a metal surface.
An MRI can pick up chairs, beds, IV poles etc. Check http://www.simplyphysics.com/flying_objects.html# for some interesting pictures and a good movie on an attempt to remove an office chair from the magnet bore of an MRI machine without ramping down the electromagnet.
What I’m illustrating is that using magnetic tools around a computer pose no risk. The fields generated by such tools are nowhere near as strong as the fields that actually wrote the data and maintain the field inside a hard drive housing.
As a matter of fact using magnetic tools can actually prevent damage to a computer. Imagine dropping a screw onto the motherboard without noticing. When you power on the PC… POOF, instant electrical short.
Even though I have many specialty tools on my service bench like spring hooks, chip lifters, cutters, forceps, multi-meters and a dremel, the only things I carry on most service calls are a magnetic screwdriver with multiple bits and a CD case full of software tools. I seldom need more than that, and I’ve never seen my tools cause any sort of damage.
Since we’re on the subject of tools, next week I’ll cover what’s needed for a good set of PC tools and why.
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
Hubble research leads scientists to predict billions of planets in the Milky Way Galaxy alone. Hide the cookbooks…
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/05/MNGG9LINJC1.DTL
Ever wish you could take breathtaking lightning pictures like you see in magazines and on websites? Grab the Lightning Trigger and wait for your Pulitzer:
http://www.f-8andbethere.com/tips/LightningTrigger.htm
Do terms like PVR and VoIP confound you? Don’t feel alone; our cousins across the pond are in the same boat:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5406498.stm?ls
California’s Attorney General has filed felony charges against former HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and “ethics” manager Kevin Hunsaker. Oops!
Copy us on the good stuff, or we’ll have to hire someone to tap your phones…
Matt Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattstodayinhistory.com
Download of the Week
Rootkits allow security
threats such as Trojan horses and spyware to operate covertly on your system.
Sophos Anti-Rootkit helps you locate rootkits and remove them from your PC. The
program is easy to use. It installs in the root directory in a folder called
SOPHTEMP. In that folder you click a file called SARGUI to launch the simple
interface. While scanning my test PC the tool popped up the names of offending
files. At the end of a few minutes'
scanning, it let me delete them.
One caution: Like many
security tools, Sophos Anti-Rootkit can return the occasional false positive.
Should any security program find a potential problem, it's best to make sure
it's really a problem before you delete something that might be harmless--or
even necessary.
While Sophos Anti-Rootkit is
free it does require registration.
You can get it here:
Art
Maley
Email Question of the
Week
Q: PCMAG.com has an article about the VML problem, and includes a link to "ZERT" that supposedly can test your system to see if you're vulnerable. But every time I try to connect to the link, ZERT's page starts to load, and then I get the MS IE "kiss off" window telling me it can't do what I ask and asking if I'd like to send a report. I can connect to any other site or page I wish today, just not that one. Any possible connection between ZERT actually having a patch for MacroSlop's problem and the fact that I can't connect? Or is it just me and everyone elso on earth can connect? Maybe I really can't connect to other sites like yours and I'm just imagining it? MS would NEVER "censor" a site that points out they are incompetent slobs, now, would they? I'm ready and willing to stand corrected.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2020255,00.asp
A: This is not a case of Microsoft
censoring your access to ZERT. You
linked to the "TEST" page of
ZERT which actually exploits the VML
vulnerability, hence Internet
Explorer crashes. That is the bug they
are using to crash your
browser to prove the browser is vulnerable
and a patched IE browser
will not crash. Try the link on an alternate browser such as Firefox and
it won't crash.
If you
visit the ZERT patch download page
http://isotf.org/zert/download.htm
and scroll
down, you will see the following warning:
"Warning!
If you visit the above test page with an unpatched
version of Internet
Explorer it will crash."
Hope that sheds some light on the
situation.
Hash
hash@ucanweb.com
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