How to secure your Google (or GMail) account using two-factor authentication

A few days ago, my cousin had her Gmail account hacked. The hacker immediately changed her password, recovery questions and mobile number.
Therefore, she had to fill in this form (https://www.google.com/accounts/recovery/) and to wait for Google's support.

The hacker checked her public data on Facebook, read her mails and sent messages to all her contacts asking for financial help.

How could the hacker find her password?
The password was probably too weak or she might have used the same password on another website that could have been hacked.

How to secure my Google account?

• Use a strong password:
  I recommend using at least 8 caracters, with lower (ABC) and uppercase (abc), one number (123) and one special caracter (/*!-@...)
• Use a different password on every website or application:
  I know, this might seem difficult but you might use keepass to help you or you could use the same password with the 3 first letters that changes depending on the website's first letters for example.
• Use two-factor authentication

What is two-factor authentication?

Two-factor authentication (also known as 2FA) is a method of confirming a user's claimed identity by utilizing a combination of two different components. Two-factor authentication is a type of multi-factor authentication.

A good example from everyday life is the withdrawing of money from a cash machine; only the correct combination of a bank card (something that the user possesses) and a PIN (personal identification number, something that the user knows) allows the transaction to be carried out. (source: Wikipedia)

In the case of Google, you will log in as usual but a second step will be necessary to validate your identity. This second step will require your smartphone, and you will need to type a code, displayed on your mobile, that changes every few seconds, or to validate by clicking "Yes" on your mobile.

This means that even if someone knows your password, he will not be able to login if he doesn't have access to your mobile. Nice, isn't it?

Don't worry, you will be able to recover your access even if you lost your mobile by using other methods of validations.

How to enable two-factor (2-steps) authentication on for my Google account?

1. Go to the 2-Step Verification page. You might have to sign in to your Google Account.
2. Select Get started.
3. Follow the step-by-step setup process.
Once you're finished, you'll be taken to the 2-Step Verification settings page. Review your settings and add backup phone numbers. The next time you sign in, you'll receive a text message with a verification code. You also have the option of using a Security Key for 2-Step Verification.

Quelques perles lors de mes années à fournir du support informatique

Cela fait longtemps que je me dis que je devrais noter quelques anecdotes suite à mes années à fournir du support en informatique...

En voici quelques-unes:

Le nouvel arrivant

Un jour alors que je remets son pc portable à un nouveau collègue, il voit le câble d'alimentation et me dit: "ah il n'est pas compatible WiFi ?"

La souris

Alors que j'étais étudiant et que j'aidais une société de services informatiques, un client appella pour un problème avec sa souris qui était bloquée...

Après lui avoir fait vérifier le câblage, réinstaller les drivers, nettoyer la boule (oui, ça comment à dater...), le client de préciser que "la souris fonctionne mais qu'elle est bloquée au milieu de l'écran" et que "je suis en haut du tapis de souris et la souris ne monte pas plus haut".

Eclats de rire et le patron me dit de dire au client d'acheter un tapis de souris plus grand...

Le clavier

Alors que je suis près d'une assistante, celle-ci me montre un tas de journaux et me précise qu'elle doit retaper les articles de presse au sujet de la société. Son souci étant que les touches de son clavier sont trop dures à son goût.

Je lui dis alors que malheureusement, je n'en avais pas d'autre en stock. Ce sur quoi elle me répondit sérieusement: "ah, tu ne sais pas me faire un programme pour que les touches soient moins dures?"

L'appel d'offre

Récemment, sur internet, je suis tombé sur l'appel d'offre public d'une école pour du matériel informatique. Visiblement, celui-ci devait être légèrement orienté et le rédacteur n'a pas compris tout ce qu'il recopiait:

Chaque station informatique sera composée des différents matériels décrits ci-dessous:

Description technique du matériel:

• 14 PC : i3- 16Gb RAM- disque dur 512Gb SSD - lecteur CD ROM - Windows 10 (édition professionnelle) – connexion réseau;

• 14 Claviers azerty;

• 14 Souris;

• 14 Ecrans : 19’’ 1280x1024, DVI-D, VGA;

• 1 Speaker; et il doit être stéréo?

• 1 Imprimante réseau laser couleur avec 2 jeux de cartouches hautes capacités : port USB 2.0 haut débit; port réseau Gigabit Eternet 10/100/1000T intégré; (haut débit l'USB 2.0 svp...)

• 10 clés USB 4Gb ; (en 2016 cela devient dur à trouver...)

• 14 Logiciels Anti-virus ou une offre incluant les 14 logiciels ;

• 14 Malware ou une offre incluant les 14 Malware (et pour la rançon, vous payez en bitcoins?)

L'experte en Windows Millenium

Une collègue, qui avait pourtant indiqué être experte en Windows Me (aka la pire daube de Microsoft) m'interpelle car elle a un souci pour recopier les données d'un document à un autre.

A l'époque, nous utilisions Lotus Notes, un outil puissant mais assez lourd dans lequel les documents de l'entreprise étaient accessibles après s'être connecté et avoir ouvert les bases de données avec une structure conséquente...

Elle ouvre donc Lotus Notes, tape son mot de passe, ouvre la bonne base de données, recherche son document, l'ouvre, me le montre... puis le referme, referme lotus notes, ouvre son dossier "Mes Documents", ouvre un autre document et me montre ce qu'elle souhaite recopier...

Ensuite, elle referme le document, son dossier "Mes documents", rouvre Lotus Notes, introduit son mot de passe, ouvre la base de données, recherche son document et me montre qu'elle n'arrive pas à recopier le contenu à cause d'un souci de mise en page...

Pour que je comprenne bien, elle recommence toute la procédure deux trois fois jusqu'à ce que je l'arrête pour lui demander pourquoi elle ferme et rouvre à chaque fois tous les programmes et dossiers... Je vis réellement le désespoir dans son regard quand je lui ai montré qu'il était possible de passer d'une fenêtre à une autre sans fermer les programmes dans Windows... Elle dut se rendre compte qu'elle avait perdu des années à sstématiquement fermer et rouvrir une application avant de passer à une autre...

Voilà, il y en a beaucoup d'autres mais certaines sont compliquées à mettre par écrit... je compléterai de temps en temps si je me souviens d'autres perles...

Et vous, vous avez des perles à raconter?

My list of useful softwares after a fresh Windows (re)-installation

My laptop came pre-installed with Windows 8, was upgraded to 8.1 and finally to Windows 10 (and the Anniversary update), so, as you can guess, it became slow and unstable after multiple software installations and removals.

So, today, I decided to proceed to a clean re-installation of it and felt like I wanted to share the list of software that I always include on my computers.

re-installing Windows 10

I hope it will be useful for some of you.

Here is my list of recommended software (or at least the one that I always use):

• 7-ZIP, archiving open-source software (compress / uncompress zip, rar...) http://www.7-zip.org/
• AdBlock Plus a browser extension to block invasive ads https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-plus/cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb
• CCleaner (Free version) to clean my computer from temporary files times to times https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download
• CutePDF writer to "print" documents in PDF format http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp
• Keepass to save all my passwords and its chromeIPass Google Chrome extension to fill in the passwords automatically when I am browsing http://keepass.info/
• Google Chrome browser. Best choice for me as I am using Gmail or Inbox to retrieve my e-mails https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/desktop/index.html
• Microsoft Office Professional (currently v 2013). I also like OpenOffice and LibreOffice but I just can't exchange documents with customers without it. https://products.office.com
• NotePad++ one of the best text editors https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
• Skype voice and video calls http://www.skype.com
  
• Spybot (free version) to clean my computer from malwares, adwares... https://www.safer-networking.org
• Slack a messaging app to communicate better than mails with my team and even with some customers https://slack.com/
• Synology's Cloud Station Drive to sync with my private and company cloud storage (like Google Drive or Dropbox if you have a Synology NAS) https://www.synology.com
• Unchecky a software to unckeck the unwanted sofwares that are bundled with others (Thanks Eric D. for pointing me to this one.) https://unchecky.com/
• VLC MediaPlayer, the best media player, it plays everything without the need for extra codecs and it's free http://get.videolan.org/

There are some other softwares that I'm using of course (like GIMP the open-source equivalent of Photoshop http://www.gimp.org , or other business specific tools) but these are the ones I always install on my computers.

I hope that you will find some interesting tools in this list.

Would you add another software to this list?

How to solve "Unable to start Photoshop CS6 - could not open a scratch file because the file is locked" (Windows)

Hello,
today I found a problem on a computer using Adobe Photoshop CS6.

Trying to launch the software throw an error:

I noticed that starting the software as an administrator was a workaround but it did not fix the issue.

To fix the problem try the following:

1. launch Photoshop as an administrator (Right click on the icon, run as Administrator)
2. Go to Preferences: CTRL+K
3. Go to "Performances"
4. Under "scratch disks" select another partition if you can
   
   
   
   
5. Click OK
6. Quit Photoshop and try starting it normally

That solved the problem for me.

I hope it will help you.

Why I uninstalled Viber from my Windows computer.

Today I decided to uninstall Viber from my computer.

Why? Because of two problems:

The first reason is that, when my computer resumes from standby, Viber never comes back online.

It is annoying because when you think you’re sending a message, it might take a few minutes before the software shows you that the messages where not send and asks you to retry.

The only way I found to solve this issue was to kill the Viber process and to open Viber again. It started with Windows 8, was still there after an upgrade to Windows 8.1 and it is still not solved under Windows 10.
Of course I tried to uninstall and reinstall multiple times and the software is up-to-date but it happens just all the time.

Support did not help. They asked me to follow some steps but when I answered that it was still not solved I finally could not get an answer anymore and they closed the case.

The second reason is that Viber was using around 50 % of CPU, sometimes more!

Even if I have a powerful computer with an Intel Core i7-4860HQ CPU running @ 2.4GHz and 16GB RAM and SSD  (for the non tech people, it means a very good computer) and viber was using nearly 50% of my CPU. The bad thing is that I did not notice it immediately as it does not use a lot when you start it. But if your computer is used for a few hours, CPU usage is increasing…

My computer is not old and I could hear the fans noise and I felt like my computer was not as powerful as it should be.

So I took a look at the task manager and discovered that Viber was the reason of that. When I googled the problem, I found that a lot of people were complaining about high CPU usage when using Viber. 

(see here: https://twitter.com/pravimali/status/407627058475302912)

Some people tweeted @Viber in 2013 about it and could not get is solved.

Finally, even if I liked being able to use Viber from my computer, today I decided to uninstall it. My CPU usage is now lower than 10% and I nearly don't hear my computer anymore... 

I will probably keep it on my smartphone for a while but I will try to come back or move to Skype, Hangout or WhatsApp.

Comment forcer la mise à jour vers windows 10

Nouvelle icône (logo windows) dans la barre des tâches

Comme beaucoup d'entre vous l'ont remarqué (utilisateurs disposant de Windows 7, 8 ou 8.1), une icône est apparue récemment dans la barre des tâches. Celle-ci vous invite à recevoir gratuitement la mise à jour vers Windows 10. 

La date de sortie officielle est le 29 juillet 2015 mais Windows a annoncé le déploiement de la mise à jour par vagues. Alors, comme beaucoup d'entre vous si vous lisez ceci, je m'impatientais car, bien que nous soyions déjà le 30 juillet, je voyais toujours l'écran ci-dessous m'invitant à patienter.

J'ai donc décidé de chercher comment forcer cette fameuse mise à jour et j'ai trouvé ;)

Alors, voici...

Comment faire pour forcer le téléchargement de la mise à jour vers Windows 10.

(Veillez par précaution à prendre une sauvegarde de vos données avant cette procédure)

1. Ouvrez le dossier C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\Download (remplacez le C: par la lettre du disque où Windows est installé) et effacez le contenu de ce dossier.
   
   
   
2. Ouvrez Windows Update en cliquant sur la touche Windows, puis tapez "Windows Update" et cliquez dessus.
   
   
3. Ouvrez une invite de commande en mode administrateur (Touche windows - tapez "cmd" - clic droit sur "invite de commande" - "Exécuter comme administrateur")
   
   

   
   
   
4. Dans l'invite de commande, tapez (mais ne confirmez pas encore avec la touche "entrée"): "wuauclt.exe /updatenow" pour forcer la détection de mises à jour
   
   
   
5. Dans la fenêtre de windows update cliquez sur "Rechercher des mises à jour" puis cliquez immédiatement sur la touche "entrée" dans la ligne de commande (point 4).
   
   

C'est terminé, la mise à jour de Windows 10 commence. Bonne mise à jour ;)

PS: Si windows update ne commence pas le téléchargement de Windows 10, vous devez d'abord installer toutes les mises à jour puis recommencer la procédure.

My first drone is (not an hexacopter but) a Q450 quadcopter with 3DR's Pixhawk flight controller

Here's the follow-up of my previous article "Help needed for my FPV hexacopter" .

Thanks to the help of the "Drones in Belgium" community, and a few friends (Benjamin, Dominique, and Maxime), I finally could get out and have my drone flying for the first time.

In a previous article, I asked for help choosing all the components that I would need to build a FPV hexacopter in order to take videos with a GoPro.

My previous article is the entire story about selecting the components and where I bought those but here's a resume:

Ordered in the international warehouse:

• 1 3.5mm 3 wire Bullet-connector for motor (5pairs/bag)
• 1 10CM Male to Male Servo Lead (JR) 26AWG (10pcs/set)
• 1 OrangeRx R620 Spektrum/JR DSM2 Compatible Full Range 6Ch 2.4Ghz Receiver w/Failsafe
• 1 (+1 spare) XT60 to 4 X 3.5mm bullet Multistar ESC Power Breakout Cable
• 2 (+1 spare) 10x4.5 Carbon Fiber Propellers 1pc Standard/1pc RH Rotation
• 1 Q450 V3 Glass Fiber Quadcopter Frame 450mm - Integrated PCB Version
• 1 Multifunction Care-Free High Crab FPV Landing Gear Set (Black)
• 1 White 16 LED Circular Light Board with Lead
  In order to facilitate the direction identification 
• 1 Tarot T-2D V2 GoPRO 3 Brushless Camera Gimbal and ZYX22 Controller

Ordered in the EU warehouse:

• 3 Turnigy nano-tech 4000mah 3S 35~70C Lipo Pack
• 4 Turnigy nano-tech 2650mah 3S 25~50C Lipo Pack
• 4 (+1 spare) Turnigy Multistar 30 Amp Multi-rotor Brushless ESC 2-4S
• 1 Turnigy Multistar ESC Programming Card
• 4 (+1 spare) NTM Prop Drive Series 28-30S 900kv / 270w (short shaft version)
• 4 (+1 spare) NTM Prop Drive 28 Series Accessory Pack

I have a Spektrum DX6i remote but I finally bought a Taranis FRSSKY X8R (from http://www.gulliver-modeles.fr/) in order to have more channels. It appears to be a very good choice.

3DR's Pixhawk Flight Controller.

Last but not least, I decided to order 3DR's Pixhawk flight controller with the corresponding  3DR GPS uBlox LEA-6 with Compass (from https://www.buildyourowndrone.co.uk).

As recommended by Benjamin, I removed the batteries banana plugs and switched them for XT60 connectors.

Here's a picture of the final result:

After multiple trials to set up my quadcopter with Mission Planner and changing some remote controller settings, thanks to Maxime, I could finally fly for the first time with my own drone.

The day was sunny and with nearly no wind... it was perfect for my first time.

There were a few minor crashes (because of some bad settings and the low-battery alarm that I did not connect correctly) but no damages.

Here is Maxime's video of this day that he took from his own drone.

I want to thank everyone who helped me having this quadcopter flying. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Next steps is to mount the GoPro and FPV system... but that's another story ;)