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By Admin, December 23, 2008 09:49

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From my family to yours, I wish you the best of the holiday season. Please drink responsibly and compute responsibly!

Merry Christmas

and

Happy New Year

As part of our holiday spirit we are offering 50% off our computer repair services (see our new site in the new year which will link to this site). Yes, that means $30.00 instead of our regular $60 for in-house work and $35.00 for our mobile services instead of $70.00 Offer ends January 15th, so call or email before then and book your appointment!! So some people ask, what do I do?

First I am a A+ certified, MCSE carrying computer expert. I am familiar with most operating systems including several of the popular linux distributions.

I am also a certified low-voltage technician who specializes in security and networking. Any wired (or wireless) product I support. I am proficient with security systems, surveillance systems, telephone systems, in addition to your typical computer systems. My company sells a fully integrated solution that marries all your systems to work together, improve automation, reduce false alarm issues, improves legal documentation, and helps you sleep better. Serious solutions that WORK.

I do hardware diagnostics and repair. From laptops to servers, any computer can be diagnosed and fixed from our in-house repair depot. Even if the PC DOES NOT BOOT, we can diagnose the problem.

I also do data backup, recovery and restoration. We can recover deleted files and filesystems. If you use our restoration services, I will also provide you with a custom backup solutions, so that you never have to worry about losing your data EVER. Many folks do not pay much attention to this service but we have saved many important pictures from being lost forever.

I also do malware discovery and removal. I have spent the last several years studying malware and how to remove it. We also provide effective security products to eliminate the risk of infection. We rather spend time making your computer do more things than fixing these issues, so we do NOT just clean it and forget it.

I also design and provide Intrusion detection systems for individual networks. Whether your a small home network with a few users, to large data centers with hundreds of users, are products are designed to not impact your network performance and provide you with the information to enforce policies, and ensure your networks are not being used by the bad guys.

Additionally I have built many custom computers for various needs, from personal video recorders, to network accessible storage, home theatre PCs, to high end gaming rigs, dedicated process servers (file servers, streaming servers, digital video recorders, etc.)

No problem is too big and no request is impossible. Contact me via email for any questions you may have.

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By Admin, December 12, 2007 08:51

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I recently came across an article from ‘Information Security’ that reviewed several “Enterprise” class security suites. I have reviewed several here on this blog in the past year and have found very disappointing results. There have been a couple of new comer’s to the land of the personal desktop namely ‘Blink’ by eEye that I have been testing for several months. The tool isn’t ready for personal use, but it’s professional version has been commended for a while. This article compared Blink’s Enterprise tool (at time of writing I haven’t been able to confirm the differences between Pro and Enterprise).

For most readers of this blog, they may dismiss reviews of enterprise class applications but I decided to include it since for most of these vendors the Enterprise version represents the ‘best of the best’ of their offerings. As this review compares all the top providers including Symantec, CA, Trend Micro, ISS, eEye and a few others I decided it was worth while comparing them.

The article can be found here:

(I included the print-friendly version of the article as it is a 15 page review, and 15 pages is ridiculous since every page is barely a screenful on my PC, I prefer reading to clicking links and waiting for advertising to load so…)

A lot of these offerings are strictly for Windows machines, very few have linux offerings or Mac. Something to keep in mind if your network has blended OS’s you will have to seek other options for a network wide protection. However if your network is mostly Windows bases these products will meet your needs.

The offerings were presented and reviewed by many criteria, such as ‘ease of information gathering’ to usage, to malware detection capability.

The most interesting note to this is that NONE of the products had 100% detection. NONE! The best came in around 92% detection.

It’s also important to note that some were plainly incompetent at detecting malware that was present and moving around a machine. This too was a interesting consequence of the article.

Here is the features offered in the product.

The real nice extra feature that only two of the above offer is vulnerability scanning. This is a must to ensure your machines are patched and up to date. However the features can be very valuable in a work environment that can have strict policies, in a home environment its benefits will be less. My experience shows that they typically have inaccurate results so being able to use this as a guideline rather than a definitive state is important. Its still very valuable.

Since we like Blink, it’s also important to note that even the Personal version of their product offers all these features, most of the other vendors are not so accommodating for their lower end versions of the product.

So this review does in fact support our arguments regarding malware. There is NO 100% effective solution, so a multi-tiered approach to malware is wise.

It also proves our case about not relying on a traditional antivirus product alone. This type of product has pretty much no life in todays market. A blended product is what is required which most of these provide. It’s unfortunate that most of these companies cannot improve their offering to be more effective.

Additionally it’s important to note that ‘false positives’ are the #1 problem with most of these packages so it’s critical to compare ‘detection results’ with other products before making a decision to buy. As a lot of spyware vendors like to do with their product offerings is to have LARGE numbers of detection, regardless of it’s importance or even accuracy.

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By Admin, July 4, 2006 15:07

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Well as my previous blog item indicated I’ve gotten Vista installed on VMWare.   I’m still debating about actually using a  PC to do a full install as I feel I may wipe this and start fresh again.

It’s a good thing I’m not a rush out and upgrade everything person such as I was in the past.  Yes, I used to be terrible at getting the latest code/beta’s and hardware and throwing it together and hoping it works.  With tear apart PC’s this is ok, but for production work or serious gaming boxes one needs stability.  Rushing the latest OS or patch just to eliminate a bug or add a feature are nice reasons one needs to ensure that everything that was, still is, and everything we expect to be, will be.  Today I’ve been burned by so many upgrades that either broke itself or something else that I’ve gotten very particular about what I install and what I don’t.  On my companies web page we review many software and seldom does a package achieve better than a 70%.  It’s just very hard to find a good documented piece of software that acutally does what it states without issues.  Even some old favorites don’t score as high as would be expected.

This is something that seems lost with many IT professionals, but moreso with Marketing folks than the technical folks.  Yes rush out and get that new update, you’ll appreciate it.  Really?  Thank god for Virtual Machines.  When it comes down to Vista patching during the beta is something that will just have to be done, but at what point does it lose focus with my needs?

Why you don’t need every upgrade or patch.

My main gaming PC is currently running XP SP1 as I also use this as my main chat and torrent machine.  SP2 showed that it put ‘Microsoft’s idea of security’ ahead of the user, and did things that simply are not required for experienced PC users.   I saw more problems that I decided not to upgrade this machine.  It has caused a lot of problems and as a result to changes to the way Microsoft allows access to it’s updates I no longer get automatic updates on this box.  I can still get them manually and download them, but I hesitate to say that for the most part I don’t even worry about it.  I checked and with the exception of two critical patches in the last year that had to be installed, I haven’t installed any patches or updates on this machine in 18 months.  It’s quite unlikely that for the life of this box (another two years max) I will probably never upgrade this again.  Will Windows stop working or break?  Unlikely it’s working fine now, and since I’m not changing any componants or core kernals functions or adding new unwanted functionality it will remain that way until it dies of a natural death.  This box has been well protected for it’s entire life and the last thing I needed was Microsoft adding features that dumbed down my protection since most users are not aware.   The key is not to allow malware to get on this machine.  To date we’ve been very successful and only now are we seeing others adopt my solutions that have been used since 1996. 

Vista – Latest dummy-proof OS
When it comes to dumbed down, it seems that Vista is king at this.  If my experience with Vista doesn’t improve from newbie-land soon I shall say that I’ll never adopt Vista as too immature of an OS.  I realize how that sounds given all the really cool features implemented but really, many of these cool features can be had elsewhere, other linux distro’s, third party tools to add to XP.   Where I could really use some dummying down is with the error messages and the parlance of the ‘event viewer’.

When you have a problem do you think you get a sensible error message?  No.  It seems the ‘operation’ is dummy-proof, but ‘configuration’ is left cryptic.  Why can’t I have better control of my PC out of the box?  It seems this type of internal schism to the operation of the desktop is tantamount when dealing with any Microsoft product or tool.  When Microsoft cannot adopt their own ideas fully, I should not either.  Neither should you.  Of course this is a beta product so final remarks will wait until it\’s release.

I have Vista installed and running at this point from fresh install.  The security center is complaining bitterly about not having an AV installed on it.  I really don’t need one but to get rid of this annoying red X in my systray I’ve been attempting to install something.

Bitdefender v10 beta.  First choice, says it runs on all Windows OS.  Does not install, unknown error.

Kapersky v6 beta.  Second choice, does not claim to run on Vista.  Does not install, incompatible OS.

PC-Cillan – The Microsoft recommended Vista Beta Product.  Does not install, incompatible OS.

OF course every single tool used MSI to install, so my guess is it never got past unpacking it then it checked.

Why don’t they check before you download and waste all that bandwidth?  I guess they’d rather waste the bandwidth.  I don’t.

So, I’m not impressed with Vista’s installation ability, since there does seem to be a disconnect between what works and what doesn’t with both Vista as an OS and the vendors supplying their tools.

And I still have that red X in my systray…..

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By Admin, June 14, 2006 14:43

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As I’m sure you’re aware Microsoft had rumored to release Vista this year, but instead decided to delay its release.  We won’t be able to purchase Vista until 2007 now, but until next summer Microsoft has given everyone the opportunity to try Vista in beta test until it’s released.  I don’t think Microsoft has ever before offered a new OS release under a completely open beta. 

Downloading Vista is truly an easy thing, but as anyone who has used windows before, the real challenges occur during the installation and continue into the setup, and do not stop once you are logged in.

There are some nice cleanups and improvements over XP, but I’m afraid that I certainly understand why this product was delayed and certainly why there are still lots of unhappy MVP’s and users.

I have some feedback and initial impressions of the Vista product which I will discuss in future blogs but right now I want to give everyone the information about acquiring and installing Vista.

Keep in mind, getting Vista and installing it isnt any more difficult than any other OS installer or previous versions of Windows, unless you introduce limitations.  Vista really wants to use a powerful machine, and will seriously take advantage of newer hardware.  That certainly doesnt mean you have to upgrade or even buy a new PC for Vista, though it may not be a bad idea.  The time you will run into problems is when you have a box that barely ran XP, and you decide to upgrade/install Vista on this.  That would probably be a bad idea.  If you meet the minimum specifications you should be fine.  If you meet or exceed the recommended specifications you should be able to see and use a very powerful OS.

To start first thing to do is get the software and the license.

The first thing to do is to go to Microsoft’s Vista web page and download the ISO file.  This is a large roughly 3GB file so be prepared to spend some time downloading this, ensure you have enough free space available.  A high speed connection wouldn’t hurt either.  During the initial week of release the download servers were simply overwhelmed and many of the servers and additional processes simply broke.  At the time of writing this, you should have little difficulty as I\’m sure the initial demand has dropped. 

I have a fairly decent cable connection and had the ISO in less than one hour.  I didn’t really time it, I went out for lunch and when I came back I was ready to burn this to a DVD.  An ISO now needs to be burned to the DVD.  Any DVD Burning software that supports ISO images should be effective at making the Vista Installation DVD, in our case we used Nero Burning ROM which is one of the more common and feature rich software for removable media.  Nero was able to quickly create our Installation disk which we booted in our machine for installation.

Yes, a 3GB ISO is not going to fit on a CD, so DVD was the only option which leads to qualification #1 is that you must have a DVD Burner to create the Installation Disk, and the machine your installing to must have a DVD ROM drive.  I have heard some folks attempting to break this into a multi-CD format but I couldn’t be bothered to attempt this.  However this did limit a couple installation candidates for me, and I decided to be able to install this on a couple different setups so I decided to go the VMWare route for most of my installations rather than move DVD ROM’s around constantly. 

Ok, so you got the ISO downloaded, now just like a real Installation you need a product key which Microsoft provides you.  When you normally acquire the ISO it will step you through the process to getting a product key, but at the time I acquired it, this was broken.  Later I was able to go back and get one (actually two ) so this was only some confusion on my part trying to decide what I did wrong. 

You will need a Windows Live account (also known as Passport) and this is easy to setup and then allows you to go to the download beta section and then it will present you with both the download link and the product key for you to use.  The really nice thing about this is that the beta is good for one year roughly and this is exceptional.  I do believe microsoft wants as much possible feedback from the community prior to finalizing and releasing this product.  If so this may be the most demanding OS released in history and additionally one of the more supported and user-backed OS’s ever.   I say this because many linux distro’s and Apple are moving into Microsofts markets and taking advantage of the fact that many folks understand the value they get with non-microsoft OS’s and software.  However many users still require (or think they require) Windows in order to use their PC’s.  By offering Vista as a free beta for a full year you allow the users to grow accustomed to the OS, and when they do release it sales should be immediate.  Just like a game company releasing demo’s, this allows them to guage the market, demographic, potential share, potential growth projections based on beta reaction and feedback, etc.

So to say this was simply an ability for Microsoft to release Vista at no cost to ensure quick adoption of the OS would not be entirely incorrect.  I’m sure there were other reasons, some would say security issues, but I don’t think they would delay because of security issues, unless it was a core/fundamental process in one of the new features.  Other reasons may be because key features still don’t work as well as they should.  Regardless once you have your own copy installed you can decide this for yourself.

If you boot your computer from the Vista disk you quickly see a familiar looking setup environment.  One of the main differences is that awful blue background is gone and replaced with a nice web like white background that loads a image.  Since I chose to use VMWare to install Vista with for my first couple tests, I decided to install it on a fresh machine and had considerable problems.  This was apparently more of an issue with VMWare and following the helpful hints on their support forums enabled me finally get past this I only ever had this error with Vista.  No other OS including Windows varieties had this issue. 

I did not attempt this for real, but the idea crossed my mind, and that was to simply mount the install disk vs. burn and run from a DVD-ROM.  This is not recommended. 

The questionnaire was easier than XP in that it allowed you to get the installer running faster with less questions, the disk setup also is more friendly which allows you to pick which disk, and how to set it up and format it prior to you running the OS installer.  The default admin account is still created and the installer will ask you to create a user for your use (or more if you require, however I would not use this method for anything other than home-based/test installation).  For most users this will be enough to get everything working. 

The installer runs and about 45 minutes later (or more) it starts rebooting and initializing the desktop. This is the time to be patient and allow the installer to do its several reboots to get all the hardware initialized and working.  Hopefully you won’t have any issues with this, as I was using VMWare I had no difficulty installing the basic driver set, and when I added specific drivers for video card I was able to quickly find them online and install them.  The only downside to this I had was the numerous reboots before everything was ready to use.  I counted 14 reboots.

The really nice feature of the login screen is that a key set of features
for accessibility are moved here so that when you login, you can choose the features you want to use, otherwise once you login these features are no longer directly available.  I welcomed this change since windows 95 these features have been left as simple tools that any user can enable at any time, and they tend to cause operational issues that confuse users later.   By sticking these features at the login screen allows most users who never use these features to ignore them and move into the desktop with less ability to enable these ‘while using’ the system, whereas for those users who depend on these features they are able to set them before login so they can quickly take advantage of these features.

Now you login and the desktop loads and you are greeted with a familiar desktop with some interesting changes.  The icons on the desktop have increased  and they are much bigger.  You can even make them bigger than the default install.  I could not comprehend this.  I have used software in the past to make these smaller, and I would have jumped for joy to have discovered a ‘shrink’ or ‘smaller’ option for the desktop icons.  Nope.  Regular, huge and really huge only.  The start button has some nice changes which can be easily configured by right clicking on the taskbar and selecting properties.  The system properties have also taken over the traditional display properties when you right click on the desktop background.  This allows you to make the numerous changes as before, plus additional system property changes. This should make moving around the control panel looking for that setting much less likely in Vista.  For the most part the desktop changes are not revolutionary simply evolutionary but still not utilizing all the ideas that have been developed into other desktop UI’s over the last ten years.  Of course now the Vista desktop actually takes advantage of transparnency in the desktop that has actually been around since Windows 2000.  They’ve also added some nice features that take advantage of better utilization of older features.

From here you get to see the ‘Welcome Center’ which is a glorified control panel and allows the user to quickly get to nearly any setting for the system they might be interested in.  Microsoft Update along with the Security Center run immediately putting the checks into protecting your system from hackers and malware, and Microsoft Defender is running along with the Microsoft Firewall also.  Essentially the next thing is to install a Anti-Virus product, and the Security Center takes you to the one Vista-ready product (Trend Micro) but the product is not available for download.  The page indicates that the beta is running and only good til the end of the year, one could decide whether they wish to try this vista-ready product now, or wait for another or to try installing a current stable product and test it on the beta.

Next…New features highlighted and discussed.

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By Admin, February 27, 2006 11:54

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To be quite frank no language is secure, no language was built from a security perspective.

So….

Many people these days seem to get it in their head that there are secure designs in the world, and I digress, no their isn’t. Nobody thinks deeply about security except those with a great deal to lose, and they pay very heavy for it.

Your bank is not really that secure.  Your data is not really secure.  Your personal government files are not secure.  Your home is not secure.  Your business is not secure, your car is (phht a joke!) not secure.  What does this tell you?

Well what did September 11, 2001 tell you?  What did Hurricane Katrina tell you?  

I think it’s telling us, that no ‘system’ or ‘process’ is secure by design.  Security is something we thought about afterwards, generally speaking when someone else quite distinctly shows you the insecurity.

When it comes to software, we cannot think that ‘security’ is job #1.  We’d be lucky if they even considered it in a fleeting moment, let alone design with it in mind.

So why would we think anything we do on computers or online, is secure?  It isn’t,  it’s even worse.  Online banking/payment systems are not secure, our Media players are not secure, our email and IM is not secure, our web browsing is not secure, nothing in our software is secure… 

…unless we want it secure. 

So if we want to think about secure design, what should we use as a language, and is there any languages we should avoid.  Well a ton of FUD is being generated towards PHP, like it’s the first language to have a high degree of problems.  Probably Microsoft detractors trying to suck people disillusioned by PHP info thinking that Visual Studio will be the holy grail for secure programming.  Only a total idiot could have that type of an epiphany.  Anyways, my thoughts on this subject have been heightened by a recent thread on Bugtraq by a group you’d think knew what they were talking about.  But it shows that its all opinion with little fact.  I question some of this and downright disagree with vast sums of it.

Let me quote:

> —–Original Message—–

What language is ranked the ‘defacto choice of “serious” web developers’? 

When I talk to them I typically hear three answers, Javascript, PHP, and ASP. When I look on google to see if there are any trends out there I find most ‘serious’ web developers typically use PHP and a lot of the design houses use ASP.

For developers in general (app, web, etc.)

Which programming languages are currently in use at your company for development?

According to this I would rank PHP as #3.

Javascript, Perl, then PHP, followed by Python and TCL.

ASP didn’t even qualify (probably a chunk of that ‘other’). 

So what about web developers specifically?  Do they simply use Dreamweaver and frown on the rest?  It’s really up in the air.  A lot of choices out there.  Lets pick a couple examples.

The US  (GAO) General Accounting Office decided that PHP was the choice over java for such reasons as (gasp) security! 

Infoworld

Then there is this guy who thinks the sky is falling.

Nut Case Against PHP

May as well say Windows is a growing target for trojans and worms.  How about Mountains are a growing target for rain?  Taxi drivers are a growing target for passengers?  Runways are a growing target for airplanes (literally!)?  See how foundless this type of comment is?  Javascript has so many holes in it, they cannot realistically be patched, so the best solution is restricting what sites can use javascript, again another solution that has never worked, but at least allows us the whitelist-approach to the solution.

So it’s fairly obvious something with a HUGE penetration into the server market, cost is nil, and developers are abundant around the world,  is to be considered a ‘growing target’ for something!!  If peanut butter became the next language and used by a growing group, guess what?  It too will experience this type of exploitation, it’s part of life.  It’s what we as people do. 

Anyways, lets get back to our bugtraq discussion.

> And I did not think it was as popular in the security

Ridiculous and nonsensical comment.  Perl is typically used because it’s easier to write PoC or exploits in.  I personally prefer Python.

Remember, we are here because nobody thinks about the ‘right’ way, just the fast or simple way. What difference does the PoC source mean?

> >> 2. Developing secure applications in PHP is difficult, as one of

Again, just like any other language or ‘code base’ when we learn from our mistakes we explore new avenues and not necessarily like what we see.  PHP was the least designed to do only a trifle amount of what it has turned into.  It went from being a very simple ‘scripting home pages language’ to a very ‘sophisticated server side language’ in better course of a few years.  In that very short time frame a LOT has been learned about writing secure code in PHP, and the next generation of stuff will be leaps and bounds better, however; a LOT of old code (some no longer supported) needs to be fixed and the fact that the community is working to fix it is king.

But that doesn’t mean that the ‘need’ for secure code is present in all cases.  A Good example of this is ACID, for the longest time the only front end for the popular IDS called Snort used by a security analyst to gather information.  Simply said, one of the worst written apps in PHP probably ever “from a security perspective”. My analysis would be to chuck the whole thing out and rebuild, something a lot of people are currently doing and/or considering, or in the least, aware of the reality.

But in fairness to the author he did not design it ‘for secureness’ he designed it to view insecure data.  He did not think the average ‘user’ would ‘need it’ secure. Again, if the need for something in the software is not perceived, why would you waste time designing it.

The latest push has been into BASE development which has improved, is still nothing secure or even remotely close.  This team still is trying to grasp rewriting the application.  I personally think this was written this way for a reason, but I digress.

These were developed BY SECURITY PROFESSIONALS yet even they failed to account for writing secure code.  What does this tell you, I know what it tells me.  That nobody understands secure code in the first place, so how can they write it? Do people today still think that BASE needs to be written securely?  Back to our discussion:

> >> 3. Staying on top of new PHP vulnerabilities has become

I’m not quite following this statement, but it would certainly be the one I agree mostly with.  Most patches are good at fixing the issue with the function.  Typically has to do with no longer trusting some data source, and viola it more secure. But it’s similar to patching C functions also.  Or Perl, or Javascript, so why is PHP being singled out?

If you understand the C code, you can fix the problems when they are pointed out to you.  It seems silly to say, but it’s true.  But what is the likeliness of the developer being able to see the problems in his own code.  I think it’s stupid to comment on, but people are inherently egotistical, and programmers even more so.  When it comes to being honest with themselves and seeing their flaws for what they are we seem to emit a hormone that allows our senses to ignore our own, and home in on other peoples.  So, it’s quite unlikely the average developer is going to notice his or her own security flaws.  They will require someone  less in tune with their code, or picks up their hormone.

> Most bugtraq messages with PHP in the subject appear to be

Again, I don’t understand what you would define a secure vs. insecure authoring language.  It’s difficult to write secure C code.  It’s difficult to write ANY code, if your not familiar with it, let alone expert with.  So…back to reality…

No language is secure to start with, so your choice is either defined by:

• Application
• Usage
• Availability
• Cost

Even if ‘Secure’ was in there, how would you measure it?

Some people never grasp this. 

Then what comes along…I see this fellow has figured this out:

On 22/02/06, Kevin Waterson wrote:

Agreed.  That doesn’t surprise me anymore either .  Why aren’t we surprised by this?  Simple.  We understand that servers are built with money, and nobody wants to spend more money than they have to.  LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) is a very common web server setup and can be rolled out quickly, easily, and cheaply.  They need little maintenance, and if they aren’t harmed by the users or the guests, then they can stay running for a long time.   If they get infected or hacked, or whatever, they dump the site, and recreate it somewhere else.  If they need to, they can revert back to a old backup of the site once patching a particular hole. 

Why worry about secure software“it doesn’t exist”.

I think this is the mentality that needs to be changed now.

When people think security in their applications they realize that 100% success isn’t going to happen, and that maybe all they can truly offer is 10% or maybe 20% towards that goal.  So they give up or don’t bother.  I hazard that adding that portion will allow us all to get closer and maybe allow the next person to see how to achieve the next 10%.

PHP 5 is showing its progress at dealing with security, but like most good apps, it also relies heavily on the developer to use the tools properly.  PHP has always been a hacker-friendly languange, and there are not a lot of low level design tools to assist in this.  In this regard it allows poorly written apps to be built, but then so does any other language.

We have to judge it on it’s accomplishments with secure design inherit to the language. 

But we shouldn’t think any particular language is “out to get us”.  And this highlights the importance of not relying on any ONE language thinking it’s solutions are the best.  If that was the case we’d never have matured passed FORTRAN.  Maple is so much better to use.

Recently Visual Studio 9 was being released and as I uncovered from the opinionated source ‘eweek’, Peter Coffee mentions about this new developer tool:

I get a queasy feeling, though, from a combination of comments by Visual Studio Team System Lead Program Manager Jeff Beehler, who told us all on his blog last week that (i) “we’ve been fixing tons of bugs” and (ii) “we’re only fixing the most critical of issues to help prevent regressions.”

So, yes in order to reduce costs (regressions) microsoft will concentrate on the critical issues.  No statement that they will fix them, just concentrate efforts towards them.

I too am skeptical about the cutoff point and where that occurs.  But that won’t change the fact that (i) it will happen and (ii) there will be issues and (iii) there will be supporters and defectors as a result. 

Oh I almost forgot, (iv) a holy war.

I’d normally start this paragraph out with ‘in conclusion’ or some such official closing remark, but is this really concluded?  Not by a long shot.