Remove Omiga Plus

Recently it happened that my computer was affected by the "Omiga Plus" malware. The symptoms were:

• My browser start page, new tab and home page were changed to show the "Omiga Plus" web search page. 
• One search plugin was added to the list and set as default in Chrome and Firefox.
• If I change manually the start page, new tab and home page settings, the omiga settings were resetted "magically" when I restart the computer.

It happens that de mentioned "Omiga Plus" is a not a virus but a malware, specifically a browser hijacker and its really annoying to have those bugs lurking in the computer. Some of those only "hijack" the web browser (hence the name) and redirect search to a specific web page, but only they know if they are capturing some other data.

Deleting this kind of software sometimes can be easy or turn out to be an odyssey. There are from every kind and for me this was the most complicated to delete that I have found yet. I tried in several ways but they didn't work, at least for me:

• Avast!: I have it on my computer as my antivirus of choice but It didn't even blink, didn't detected the omiga malware.
• Spybot: I installed and executed it, but again, didn't delete the omiga malware.
• I manually deleted a suspicious file that executes on computer start. Resetted the browser options but those keep emerging after a computer reset.

SOLUTION

• Adwcleaner: finally, one of the many pages I visited (malwaretips.com) commented it was posible to remove it with some antimalware tools and recommended adwcleaner. I downloaded from this URL (adwcleaner malware removal tool) and it worked perfectly.

After removing the malware, resetted manually the start page, new tab and plugins in my browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome) I restarted the computer and the issues didn't show up again.

Espero que esta información is useful to you.

Eliminar Omiga Plus

Recientemente me sucedió que mi computadora se vió afectada por el malware "omiga plus". Los síntomas eran:

• La página de inicio, nueva pestaña y el home page de los navegadores fueron cambiados para que se mostrara la web de búsqueda de Omiga Plus.
• Se añadió un buscador a la lista de buscadores de Chrome y Firefox de forma que el buscador por default fuera Omiga Plus.
• Al cambiar manualmente las opciones de inicio, nueva pestaña y home page, la configuración de Omiga se reestablecía "mágicamente" al reiniciar la computadora.

Sucede que el susodicho "Omiga Plus" es un malware de tipo browser hijacker, y realmente me resulta molesto tener esa clase de bichos en la computadora, algunos simplemente secuestran el navegador (de ahí su nombre) y redirigen las búsquedas a una página específica, pero solo ellos saben que otra información podrían estar capturando.

Eliminar este tipo de programas puede ser una tarea sencilla o resultar en toda una odisea. Los hay de todo tipo y hasta el momento este ha sido el más complicado que me he encontrado. Intenté de varias maneras pero al menos a mi no me funcionaron:

• Avast!: lo tengo instalado como antivirus y ni pestañeó, no lo detectó.
• Spybot: lo instalé y ejecuté pero no funcionó, no eliminó a omiga plus.
• Eliminé manualmente un archivo sospechoso así como un archivo que se ejecutaba al iniciar el sistema. Reconfiguré las opciones de inicio, nueva pestaña y home page pero estas volvían a cambiarse al reiniciar la computadora.

SOLUCION

• Adwcleaner: finalmente, una de las tantas páginas que estuve visitando (malwaretips.com) indicaba que era posible eliminarlo con herramientas antimalware y recomendaban adwcleaner. Lo bajé de esta dirección (adwcleaner malware removal tool) y funcionó a la perfección.

Luego de haber eliminado el malware, reestablecí manualmente las configuraciones de inicio, nueva pestaña, plugins activos y buscadores predeterminados de mis navegadores (Firefox, Internet Explorer y Chrome), reinicié la computadora y el problema ya no volvió a presentarse.

Espero que esta información te sea de utilidad.

MySQL - Authentication with old password no longer supported, use 4.1 style password

Estaba retomando un desarrollo web para un cliente y al intentar probar el sitio web en vivo en internet... ¡pum!, que me salta un error al momento de intentar la conexión a la base de datos: "Authentication with old password no longer supported, use 4.1 style passwords".

 SET PASSWORD FOR 'username'@'%' = password( 'mynewpassword' )

Estuve realizando algunos intentos de cambiar el password pero obtenía otros errores:

Access denied for user 'username'@'localhost' to database 'mysql' 

Access denied for user 'username'@'%' to database 'mysql' 

Finalmente, revisando las páginas páginas oficiales de MySQL (ver aquí). Me encontré con la solución y resultó que solamente tenía que poner el nombre del usuario sin las comillas:

 SET PASSWORD FOR username = password( 'mynewpassword' )

En resumen: al parecer hubo un cambio en la manera de establecer la encriptación de los passwords entre las versiones viejas de MySQL y la versíon 5.1. Ahí fue cuando sospeché que mi proveedor de web hosting estaba utilizando una versión "viejita" de MySQL. Por si acaso, les pica la curiosidad y quieren conocer la versión de su servidor de MySQL, es posible obtener ese dato ejecutando el siguiente query:

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE "%version%";

Saludos!

MySQL - Authentication with old password no longer supported

I was resuming a web development for a customer and when I tried to test it live on the internet ¡bang!, an error jumps out when the application attempts to connect to the database: "Authentication with old password no longer supported, use 4.1 style passwords".

 SET PASSWORD FOR 'username'@'%' = password( 'mynewpassword' )

I made some attempts to change the password but I kept getting some other errors:

Access denied for user 'username'@'localhost' to database 'mysql' 

Access denied for user 'username'@'%' to database 'mysql' 

Finally, I double checked the official MySQL pages (here) and found the solución. It turned out that I only needed to write the database user name without the quotes:

 SET PASSWORD FOR username = password( 'mynewpassword' )

Summary: it seems that there was a change in MySQL version 5.1 regarding how the password is encrypted. Then I suspected that my web hosting was using a non fully compatible Parallels Plesk Panel/cPanel - PHP MyAdmin - MySQL.

I solved the issue but if you, like me, are curious about the MySQL server version your web hosting is using, you can get that data by executing the following query:

SHOW VARIABLES LIKE "%version%";

¡Greetings!

Raise (Signal) MySql Exception

It's true that we can do a lot of data validation on the front-end. But, in some cases, it happens that is more convenient to do it at the server side. No only because it helps us to enforce data integrity, but because changes in stored procedures, functions, triggers, etc doesn't involve recompile and redistribute the application executable file.

It happens then that in some cases we need to raise an exception from a stored procedure as a way to let the front-end know that the process was not executed correctly. ¿How to do it in MySQL?. The basic sentence is very simple:

SIGNAL SQLSTATE '45000' SET MESSAGE_TEXT = 'Error Message';

In the following video we have a brief example (video is in spanish but you can get an idea just by watching):

This works from MySQL 5.5 and above. It basically assigns an error code ('45000' in this case) and a message as a text for the exception. There are predefined error codes (check this list) but because we want to raise an excepcion (or SIGNAL in MySQL) is for our app/database only then its better to use one code that doesn't exists in that list.

If we wanted to be much more specific about the information we want to send as part of the exception, we can set some other values.

My first search about this topic lead me to a StackOverFlow post and from the a search by jumping from link to link.

¡Greetings!