So, how to solve the problem?

I have two simple solutions for this problem and they both involve one thing: don’t let FireFox steal focus on its startup. So when starting FireFox, it shouldn’t have focus, and the very first time you let FireFox have focus, my solution magically vanishes.

First of all, make sure FireFox is not running. Then, do the following. These are the two alternative solutions (different options):
1. Open FireFox and very-very fast (or a bit slower if you have time) press Windows + D to show the desktop; alternatively, you can click the “Show Desktop” icon in the tray; if things go well, FireFox should start minimized and without focus;
2. Open FireFox and then again very fast open another application. The new application should have focus, while FireFox launches in background.

Now you can switch to ThunderBird and no matter how many links you click on it, FireFox won’t steal focus (hopefully). Please remember not to switch to FireFox, or you’ll have to repeat the procedure of starting FireFox.

Does this help you?

Update: another solution has been provided by ciccio in the comments: Open Firefox, type about:config, and, with care (you might want to do a back-up first), set browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground to True.

1. What’s a botnet?
In one sentence, botnets are software applications that are executed autonomously on a computer.

Botnets can be controlled from distance, and since they can run autonomously, their power is quite large. The power of a bot is usually used for criminal activity. In computer terms, a botnet is generally represented by programs such as worms and trojans. The criminal activity that worms and trojans can do are: sending SPAM messages (SPAM emails are bulk messages that are not solicited), installing spyware, installing malware, click fraud, denial-of-service or presenting advertisements on the victim’s computer.

The term “botnet” comes from a combination of “robot” and “network” (thus a “network of robots”).

You can compare a Botnet with a terrorist group: they have a leader, they act with a purpose and their actions are autonomous. The leader can control the group from distance, and in most cases the terrorist group has bad intentions. Like in the real world, for botnets and terrorists, measures can be taken. You will find more on this at the end of the article.

2. What does a botnet do?
A botnet can be used to send SPAM messages via email to other computers. A computer infected by a botnet can also have a lot of advertisements for the owner of the computer itself (adware).

It can also be used to attacks on a computer, called denial-of-service (a lot of computers infected with bots access an Internet service, so that the target system becomes busy).

The owner of a computer infected with a bot can become a victim of spyware (these bots spy on the user’s activity, and provide to the owner of the bots private information).

Malware may also be installed. Malware is designed to damage a computer.

Yet another method is click fraud: the owner of a computer infected by a bot visits some web sites, just for the purpose of advertising (so the user not only sees an advertisement, but sees whole web sites).

3. The story behind a botnet – how it’s made and who does it
How is a bot made? First a small recap: botnets are software applications that are executed autonomously on a computer. Thus, as you can imagine, the software application must be first programmed by someone. So, the very first step is for someone with bad intentions to write software that does bad things.

The second step is for that software to get into a victim’s PC. The botnet and viruses are similar in this aspect: you can get a botnet from a friendly-looking email, from a web site or via a software download. There are a lot of ways to get either a botnet or a virus.

After the victim user gets infected with the bot, the bot contacts a web server (or an IRC server). This server is called command-and-control (C&C) server. Now the server can control the application on the victim’s computer.

The bot creator has some deals with persons with bad intentions: spammers, some advertisers, criminal organizations. Since the bot creator is in control of the bot on the victim’s computers, it can command it to do evil actions.

Finally, the bot server autonomously executes the given command.

4. Who does a botnet?
A criminal organization can create a botnet by itself, but generally botnets are done by software programmers. They don’t mind making illegal software as long as they are paid heavily.

A famous example of a bot net is “The Storm botnet” or “Storm worm botnet”. This is a botnet that was linked by the Storm Worm, a Trojan horse spreading via email. The size of the Storm botnet is estimated to hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of computer systems.

The Storm botnet was used for different criminal activities. Some of the main targets of the botnet have been the online operations of security vendors and researchers (because they attempted to investigate the botnet).

5. How can one control a botnet?
The control of a botnet is done via Internet. A person holding a server (on a web page or IRC channel) commands a large number of botnets on the computers of victims via Internet.

Often when a Bot joins an IRC channel it will log in with a password. This prevents control from other people.

6. Real life solution for protecting against botnets
The first thing to do is know about botnets. You can then take the decision if your personal data are important to you, if you want to let your computer be used for SPAM (to others and even to you), denial-of-service-attacks and click fraud. You may decide that these are not important to you, but knowing more about the risks is the first thing to do.

If you decide that you should be more attentive to botnets, you should have a better care over what you allow to run on your computer. You should have the latest version of the browser (and update it regularly) and most of all don’t visit just any web site. Crack and warez web sites are known for distributing malware software, including botnets. When you are on chat rooms you should not accept any file (a file with multiple extensions, like file.avi.zip or file.mp3.scr might be a botnet).

Even with care from your side, some software does get executed on your local machine. To add an extra security, you should use an Internet Security suite. This is a very good measure to protect your computer against botnets. Even better is to update your Internet Security from time to time, or let it automatically update.

7. Bibliography
I’ve read and used resources from:
1. Botnet article on Wikipedia;
2. Honeynet article on bots;
3. Definition of botnet on SearchSecurity.com;
4. Article on Microsoft.com on zombies and botnets;
5. FAQ on botnets by techFAQ;
6. Robot Wars – How Botnets Work article;
7. Botnets, Hackers and SPAM (OH MY!) article on OnGuard Online.

1. What does my software do?
My PHP add-on does one single trick: helps you put HTML emails. It works great with Gmail (tested it a lot on some of my blogs, see the end of this blog post), and it works not-so-bad with Yahoo! Mail (only done a few tests, though).
It also try to fix a bug of WordPress for breaking posts that contain Unicode characters.

2. What does my software doesn’t do?
Unicode characters are a big pain for WordPress. There are some characters which are poorly converted. This problem is also common for sending emails. What’s the solution? I’ll present my case story: whenever I send an email that has Unicode characters, I first try to convert those Unicode characters into ASCII. This can be solved quite easily in Notepad (under Windows Operating System). Just create a blank document in Notepad, put the Unicode text in there. Save it. Notepad usually warns you that if you want don’t save as Unicode, you’ll lose some formatting. Hit Ok, then reopen the document. Most Unicode texts are gone. There are still some problems (quotes, for example, are not converted) and for those … I’ve created a different software. See the blog post in here.

3. How can you personalize the blog to work only for your email address?
You can replace this line:
if (( is_email($author) ) && ($author == ‘PUTYOUREMAILADDRESSINHERE@SOMEMAIL.COM’)) {

with this line:
if ( is_email($author) ) {

Also, replace these two lines:
// Author not found in DB, set status to pending.  Author already set to admin.
$post_status = ‘publish’;
with these two lines:
// Author not found in DB, set status to pending.  Author already set to admin.
$post_status = ‘pending’;

Finally, replace these three lines:
if (!$userdata) {
$post_author = 1;
$author_found = false;
with these three lines:
if (!$userdata) {
$post_author = 1;
$author_found = true;

4. What should you note?
I am not responsible for errors you might encounter with your software. You can leave a comment below and explain your errors, and I’ll see what I can do, you can post your errors on WordPress’s support page or search its archives. Please note that this is my very first software in PHP and I’ve learned the commands mostly by trial and error.

5. Ok, ok, where’s the software? Download link?
You can download my software in here:
wp-mail.php made by Olivian BREDA. Use at your own risk

Use it at your own risk.

6. How do you know it works?
Well, I’ve tested it for a few months now. These are the blogs where I’ve tested my software:

• Fii eficient! – Blog despre eficienta
• Conferinte. Blogul WordPress
• Grupul Fotografilor Interesati de Concursuri (gfic)
• Ortodoxie – blog despre evenimente ortodoxe

What can you read on this specific blog post?
1. What’s the best use for my software?
2. Alternative: How can you convert Unicode texts into ASCII fast?
3. What does my software do?
4. How to install it?
5. How to use it? (basic)
6. How to change settings? (basic)
7. How to change settings? (advanced)
8. Replacement matrix (what my software replaces)

1. What’s the best use for my software?
I greatly use this software for posting via email on my blogs.

You can also use it before sending emails. Mailing lists will just love your new messages.

2. Alternative: How can you convert Unicode texts into ASCII fast?
First of all, don’t use my software if you want fast conversion.

This can be done quite easily in Notepad (under Windows Operating System). Just create a blank document in Notepad, put the Unicode text in there. Save it. Notepad usually warns you that if you want don’t save as Unicode, you’ll lose some formatting. Hit Ok, then reopen the document. Most Unicode texts are gone. There are still some problems (quotes, for example, are not converted) and for those … I’ve created this blog post.

3. What does my software do?
My software does this trick: it looks for a text file on the desktop, file called a.txt, opens it, looks for some Unicode characters, and replaces them after a pattern. See the end of the file for the default replacement matrix.

4. How to install it?
First, download my software from here:
Software for changing files from Unicode into ASCII.

After download, extract the archive. Place the resulting folder somewhere you won’t move often (Program Files is a good option. Another folder that won’t get removed after Windows reinstallations is even better).

What’s next? The file ‘!Remove diacritics.bat – adapt the text in this file, then use it and put shortcut to it.bat’ can and should be edited. Right click on it and choose “Edit”. You’ll have to update the paths according to the paths on your hard drive. You can then rename the batch file to a shorter name like the simple ‘diacritics.bat’.

Then create a shortcut for the diacritics.bat and put it on the desktop (holding Ctrl + Shift and dragging the batch file to the desktop will do the trick). Move the shortcut where you’ll like it best (quick launch, start menu) or leave it on the desktop. Rename it if you wish, and you can pick another icon from the Properties of the software.

That’s it!

5. How to use it? (basic)
Create a file called a.txt and put it on the desktop and close it. Launch my software via the shortcut. Open the brand new a.txt file. It’s now converted.

6. How to change settings? (basic)
You can edit the replacement matrix yourself. There is a aschars.txt text file with the following structure: a long list of rows. In each row there are two codes: the first one is the character you wish to change, while the second code is the character you wish to change into. You can see the current replacement matrix at the end of this blog post.

Let’s say you wish to edit my matrix. How do you know what are the ASCII codes for the characters? Well, I’ve done an utility especially for that. In the self-explaining “Utility” folder you’ll find a new piece of software. All you have to do is edit a text file (named, again, a.txt). You put in there all the characters whose code you wish to know. You can simply put two chars: a character you wish to change (let’s have for example this one: „), and the resulting character (let’s say is this one: “). My software will then create a text file with the two ASCII codes. Only then you update the replacement matrix and that’s it.

7. How to change settings? (advanced)
If you wish to edit the REMDIAC.PAS software, all you have to do is download the Pascal compile from the Antique Software: Turbo Pascal v5.5 page, extract the archive, install Pascal, and open the Pas file. You can then pick the Compilation destination to disk instead of memory and open my Pas file. Open the .pas file you wish to edit (that’s the source file for the software) and don’t forget to compile it after editing.

What you should note? My software does a little trick. For the “…” character, the program has to put three dots. It has a special procedure for this. If you wish to update the software, just add a new line below this one:
133: Begin c := Chr (46); Write (ies, c); Write (ies, c); End;
The first number represents the Unicode code (133) and the second one is the ASCII code for the dot (46).

Another setting you may wish to change is the default path for Windows. My software assumes there is a ‘C:\windows\system32\cmd.exe’ file, but you may wish to change this.

You can change other things in my software, as you wish.

8. Replacement matrix (what my software replaces)
This is the characters my software replaces and the resulting characters. In the left there is the Unicode character, in the right the corresponding ASCII character:

„  →  “
„  →  “
…  →  ...
“  →  “
”  →  “
•  →  *
–  →  -
«  →  “
·  →  *
»  →  “
  →  A
É  →  E
Π →  I
â  →  a
ã  →  a
é  →  e
î  →  i
ï  →  i
ó  →  o
ô  →  o
ö  →  o
ü  →  u

Some of the chracters are specific for the Romanian language.

I hope you’ll enjoy using my software.