It’s been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don’t want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

We have a lot of work to do, and we’re definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We’re excited for what’s to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer.

Do you have data on a partition or hard drive that you don’t want tampered with or easily accessible to other users? Well, you can hide any drive/partition in Windows XP, NT, and 2000. That means that they won’t show up in Explorer or My Computer.

If you want access to that drive from your user account you should create a desktop shortcut before proceeding. Once hidden, you can still access by typing the drive letter and a colon in Start/Run—for example, “D:” will bring up a folder of the contents on your D drive.

The easiest way with Win XP is to use the TweakUI power toy from Mcft. Go to Start/Run and type in “tweakui” (without the quotes).

Go to My Computer/Drives and uncheck the drive/partition(s) you want hidden. Click “Apply” or “OK” when finished.

If you have XP but not Tweak UI you can download it here…
http://www.Mcft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

For Win NT, 2000, and XP you can use the following Registry edit:

*Be sure to back up the Registry before proceeding
http://www.worldstart.com/tips/tips.php/401

Open the Registry Editor by going to Start/Run and typing in “regedit” (without the quotes). Find your way to…

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mcft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies

Click on “Explorer”.

Double-click the “NoDrives” key in the right column. If you don’t find a “NoDrives” registry key, just right-click in the right pane and choose “New/DWORD Value” then name the key “NoDrives”.

You’ll see a value like “0000 00 00 00 00″. This is where the fun starts. The four sets of double zeros (after the “0000″) are where you’ll enter the values for the drive/partitions. Now, stay with me on this—it’s not as complicated as it sounds:

The first column is for drives A-H, the second for I-P, the third for Q-X, and the fourth for Y-Z.

The values for each drive are as follows:

1 – A I Q Y
2 – B J R Z
4 – C K S
8 – D L T
16 – E M U
32 – F N V
64 – G O W
80 – H P X

So, let’s say you want to hide drive D. In the first column you would put “08″. For drive K you would put “04″ in the second column.

But what if you want to hide more than one drive in a column? Simply add the values together: D+E = 8+16 = 24. So in the first column you would put “24″.

Still baffled? If you have XP then go get TweakUI and save yourself the math.

Whichever method you use, you can rest easy knowing that the files on that drive or partition are less accessible to other users.

How to Export Registry Keys

Click Start, and then click Run.

In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.

On the File menu, click Export.

In the Save in box, select the boxs at the bottom the bottom according to weather you want to export all or only selected branches of the registry.

Next select a location in which to save the backup .reg file. In the File name box, type a file name, and then click Save.

How to Restore the Registry

To restore registry keys that you exported, double-click the .reg file that you saved.

many websites (http://ww.smashits.com) stream songs and videos
people believe they cannot be downloaded, quite why i dont know. they kinda think there is no file present to dwnld

once the file is located it can then be retrieved by nettransport
nettransport is able to dwnld any file whether ftp or rtsp etc

1. Download Project URL Snooper 1.02.01 from http://rain66.at.infoseek.co.jp/
2. Install URL Snooper (and WinPcap together)
3. Don’t run URL Snooper when it is done installing
4. Restart computer
5. Open Project URL Snooper
6. Click on the General Options Tab
7. user posted image
8. Chose a network adapter
9. Now click on the search tab
10. Click Sniff Network
11. Go to a webpage and you should see some results in the results list
12. If nothing is appearing then chose another network adapter, until one works

13. Now you are ready to begin searching
14. Click the “Hide Non-Streaming URLs” option to hide all http:// references and only show URLs corresponding to streaming audio/video (rtsp, pnm, wma, etc.)
15. Then click Sniff Network
16. Your links should appear as you begin streaming your file
17. Select your desired stream user posted image
18. usually rm file user posted image
19. On the bottom there should be the link which you simply copy user posted image

20. Download nettransport from here ftp://down_transport:123@s1.5fox.com/NT2Setup_multi.EXE or
ftp://nettransport:nettransport@61.153.24…Setup_multi.EXE
http://lycos26486.l97.lycos.com.cn/download.htm

21. Install it
22. Click on new
23. Paste link

now you should be able to download any file
if u need ne help
jus ask
i think dialups may have problems

in the search bar type in just like this – “Windows XP Professional” 94FBR

the key is the 94FBR code.. it was included with many MS Office registration codes so this will help you dramatically reduce the amount of ‘fake’ porn sites that trick you.

or if you want to find the serial for winzip 8.1 – “Winzip 8.1″ 94FBR

just try it out, it’s very quick and it works nicely..

———————————————————–

here is another trick that works fairly decent for finding mp3′s on the web (which is hard to do normally, to say the least)

say you want to get, for example, a Garth Brooks song. type this in the search bar – “index of/” “garth brooks” .mp3 the ones you want to check out first are the

What is spy-ware?
Spy-ware is Internet jargon for Advertising Supported software (Ad-ware). It is a way for shareware authors to make money from a product, other than by selling it to the users. There are several large media companies that offer them to place banner ads in their products in exchange for a portion of the revenue from banner sales. This way, you don’t have to pay for the software and the developers are still getting paid. If you find the banners annoying, there is usually an option to remove them, by paying the regular licensing fee.

Known spywares
There are thousands out there, new ones are added to the list everyday. But here are a few:
Alexa, Aureate/Radiate, BargainBuddy, ClickTillUWin, Conducent Timesink, Cydoor, Comet Cursor, eZula/KaZaa Toptext, Flashpoint/Flashtrack, Flyswat, Gator, GoHip, Hotbar, ISTbar, Lions Pride Enterprises/Blazing Logic/Trek Blue, Lop (C2Media), Mattel Brodcast, Morpheus, NewDotNet, Realplayer, Songspy, Xupiter, Web3000, WebHancer, Windows Messenger Service.

How to check if a program has spyware?
The is this Little site that keeps a database of programs that are known to install spyware.

Check Here: http://www.spywareguide.com/product_search.php

If you would like to block pop-ups (IE Pop-ups).
There tons of different types out there, but these are the 2 best, i think.

Try: Google Toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com/) This program is Free
Try: AdMuncher (http://www.admuncher.com) This program is Shareware

If you want to remove the “spyware” try these.
Try: Lavasoft Ad-Aware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/) This program is Free
Info: Ad-aware is a multi spyware removal utility, that scans your memory, registry and hard drives for known spyware components and lets you remove them. The included backup-manager lets you reinstall a backup, offers and multi language support.

Try: Spybot-S&D (http://www.safer-networking.org/) This program is Free
Info: Detects and removes spyware of different kinds (dialers, loggers, trojans, user tracks) from your computer. Blocks ActiveX downloads, tracking cookies and other threats. Over 10,000 detection files and entries. Provides detailed information about found problems.

Try: BPS Spyware and Adware Remover (http://www.bulletproofsoft.com/spyware-remover.html) This program is Shareware
Info: Adware, spyware, trackware and big brotherware removal utility with multi-language support. It scans your memory, registry and drives for known spyware and lets you remove them. Displays a list and lets you select the items you’d like to remove.

Try: Spy Sweeper v2.2 (http://www.webroot.com/wb/products/spysweeper/index.php) This program is Shareware
Info: Detects and removes spyware of different kinds (dialers, loggers, trojans, user tracks) from your computer.
The best scanner out there, and updated all the time.

Try: HijackThis 1.97.7 (http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html) This program is Freeware
Info: HijackThis is a tool, that lists all installed browser add-on, buttons, startup items and allows you to inspect them, and optionally remove selected items.

If you would like to prevent “spyware” being install.
Try: SpywareBlaster 2.6.1 (http://www.wilderssecurity.net/spywareblaster.html) This program is Free
Info: SpywareBlaster doesn`t scan and clean for so-called spyware, but prevents it from being installed in the first place. It achieves this by disabling the CLSIDs of popular spyware ActiveX controls, and also prevents the installation of any of them via a webpage.

Try: SpywareGuard 2.2 (http://www.wilderssecurity.net/spywareguard.html) This program is Free
Info: SpywareGuard provides a real-time protection solution against so-called spyware. It works similar to an anti-virus program, by scanning EXE and CAB files on access and alerting you if known spyware is detected.

Try: XP-AntiSpy (http://www.xp-antispy.org/) This program is Free
Info: XP-AntiSpy is a small utility to quickly disable some built-in update and authentication features in WindowsXP that may rise security or privacy concerns in some people.

Try: SpySites (http://camtech2000.net/Pages/SpySites_Prog…ml#SpySitesFree) This program is Free
Info: SpySites allows you to manage the Internet Explorer Restricted Zone settings and easily add entries from a database of 1500+ sites that are known to use advertising tracking methods or attempt to install third party software.

If you would like more Information about “spyware”.
Check these sites.
http://www.spychecker.com/
http://www.spywareguide.com/
http://www.cexx.org/adware.htm
http://www.theinfomaniac.net/infomaniac/co…rsSpyware.shtml
http://www.thiefware.com/links/
http://simplythebest.net/info/spyware.html

Usefull tools…
Try: Stop Windows Messenger Spam 1.10 (http://www.jester2k.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/j…r2ksoftware.htm) This program is Free
Info: “Stop Windows Messenger Spam” stops this Service from running and halts the spammers ability to send you these messages.

—————————————————————————-
All these softwares will help remove and prevent evil spammers and spywares attacking your PC. I myself recommend getting “spyblaster” “s&d spybot” “spy sweeper” & “admuncher” to protect your PC. A weekly scan is also recommended

Free Virus Scan
Scan for spyware, malware and keyloggers in addition to viruses, worms and trojans. New threats and annoyances are created faster than any individual can keep up with.
http://defender.veloz.com// – 15k

Finding . is a Click Away at 2020Search.com
Having trouble finding what you re looking for on: .? 2020Search will instantly provide you with the result you re looking for by drawing on some of the best search engines the Internet has to offer. Your result is a click away!
http://www.2020search.com// – 43k

Download the BrowserVillage Toolbar.
Customize your Browser! Eliminate Pop-up ads before they start, Quick and easy access to the Web, and much more. Click Here to Install Now!
http://www.browservillage.com/ – 36k

The first things you need to know about using Bit Torrent:
– Bit Torrent is aimed at broadband users (or any connection better than dialup).
– Sharing is highly appreciated, and sharing is what keeps bit torrent alive.
– A bit torrent file (*.torrent) contains information about the piece structure of the download (more on this later)
– The method of downloading is not your conventional type of download. Since downloads do not come in as one
big chunk, you are able to download from many people at once, increasing your download speeds. There may be
100 “pieces” to a file, or 20,000+ pieces, all depending on what you’re downloading. Pieces are usually small (under 200kb)
– The speeds are based upon people sharing as they download, and seeders. Seeders are people who constantly
share in order to keep torrents alive. Usually seeders are on fast connections (10mb or higher).

In this tutorial, I will be describing it all using a bit torrent client called Azureus. This client is used to decode the .torrent files into a useable format to download from other peers. From here on out, I will refer to Bit Torrent as BT.

Which BT client you use, is purely up to you. I have tried them all, and my personal favorite is Azureus for many reasons. A big problem with most BT clients out there, is that they are extremely CPU intensive, usually using 100% of your cpu power during the whole process. This is the number one reason I use Azureus. Another, is a recently released plug-in that enables you to browse all current files listed on suprnova.org (the #1 source for torrent downloads).

Before you use the plug-in, take a look at /http://www.suprnova.org, and browse the files. Hold your mouse over the links, and you’ll notice every file ends in .torrent. This is the BT file extension. Usually, .torrent files are very small, under 200kb. They contain a wealth of information about the file you want to download. A .torrent file can contain just 1 single file, or a a directory full of files and more directories. But regardless, every download is split up into hundreds or thousands of pieces. The pieces make it much easier to download at higher speeds. Back to suprnova.org. Look at the columns:

Added | Name | Filesize | Seeds | DLs (and a few more which aren’t very useful.)

I’ll break this down.
Added: Self explanitory, its the date the torrent was added.
Name: Also self explanitory.
Filesize: Duh
Seeds: This is how many people are strictly UPLOADING, or sharing. These people are the ones that keep .torrent files alive. By “alive”, I mean, if there’s no one sharing the .torrent file, no one can download.
DLs: This is how many people currently downloading that particular torrent. They also help keep the torrent alive as they share while they download.

It’s always best to download using a torrent that has a decent amount of seeders and downloaders, this way you can be assured there’s a good chance your download will finish. The more the better.

Now that you should understand how torrent files work, and how to use them, on to Azureus!
First, get JAVA! You need this to run Azureus, as java is what powers it. Get Java here: /http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html
Next, get Azureus at: /http://azureus.sourceforge.net
Next, get the Suprnovalister plugin from /http://s93732957.onlinehome.us/storage/suprnovalister.jar

Install Java JRE before you do ANYTHING.

Install Azureus, and then in the installation folder, create 2 more folders. ./Plugins/suprnovalister (For example, if you installed Azureus to C:\PROGRAM FILES\AZUREUS, create C:\PROGRAM FILES\AZUREUS\PLUGINS\SUPRNOVALISTER). Next, put the suprnovalister.jar file that you downloaded, in that folder.

Load up Azureus, and if you want, go through the settings and personalize it.

The tab labeled “My Torrents” is the section of Azureus you need the most often. That lists all your transfers, uploads and downloads. It shows every bit of information you could possibly want to know about torrents you download.

In the menu bar, go to View > Plugins > Suprnova Lister. This will open up a new tab in Azureus. Click on “Update Mirror”. This will get a mirror site of suprnova.org containing all current torrent files available. Once a mirror is grabbed, choose a category from the drop-down box to the left and click “Update”. Wah-lah, all the available downloads appear in the main chart above. Just double click a download you want, and bang its starting to download. Open the “My Torrents” tab again to view and make sure your download started.

After your download has finished, be nice, and leave the torrent transferring. So people can get pieces of the file from you, just as you got pieces from other people.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to use the plugin… you can just head to suprnova.org and download files to any folder. Then go to File > Open > .torrent File in Azureus.

This should about wrap it up for the Bit Torrent Tutorial. If you guys think of anything I should add, or whatnot, just let me know and I’ll check into it.

With the spread of Hackers and Hacking incidents, the time has come, when not only system administrators of servers of big companies, but also people who connect to the Internet by dialing up into their ISP, have to worry about securing their system. It really does not make much difference whether you have a static IP or a dynamic one, if your system is connected to the Internet, then there is every chance of it being attacked.

This manual is aimed at discussing methods of system security analysis and will shed light on as to how to secure your standalone (also a system connected to a LAN) system.

Open Ports: A Threat to Security?

In the Netstat Tutorial we had discussed how the netstat -a command showed the list of open ports on your system. Well, anyhow, before I move on, I would like to quickly recap the important part. So here goes, straight from the netstat tutorial:

Now, the ??a? option is used to display all open connections on the local machine. It also returns the remote system to which we are connected to, the port numbers of the remote system we are connected to (and the local machine) and also the type and state of connection we have with the remote system.

For Example,

C:\windows>netstat -a

Active Connections

Proto  Local Address          Foreign Address              State
TCP    ankit:1031             dwarf.box.sk:ftp                       ESTABLISHED
TCP    ankit:1036             dwarf.box.sk:ftp-data                 TIME_WAIT
TCP    ankit:1043             banners.egroups.com:80    FIN_WAIT_2
TCP    ankit:1045             mail2.mtnl.net.in:pop3       TIME_WAIT
TCP    ankit:1052             zztop.boxnetwork.net:80   ESTABLISHED
TCP    ankit:1053             mail2.mtnl.net.in:pop3       TIME_WAIT
UDP    ankit:1025             *:*
UDP    ankit:nbdatagram       *:*

Now, let us take a single line from the above output and see what it stands for:

Proto  Local Address          Foreign Address              State
TCP    ankit:1031                dwarf.box.sk:ftp              ESTABLISHED

Now, the above can be arranged as below:

Protocol: TCP (This can be Transmission Control Protocol or TCP, User Datagram Protocol or UDP or sometimes even, IP or Internet Protocol.)

Local System Name: ankit (This is the name of the local system that you set during the Windows setup.)

Local Port opened and being used by this connection: 1031

Remote System: dwarf.box.sk (This is the non-numerical form of the system to which we are connected.)

Remote Port: ftp (This is the port number of the remote system dwarf.box.sk to which we are connected.)

State of Connection: ESTABLISHED

?Netstat? with the ??a? argument is normally used, to get a list of open ports on your own system i.e. on the local system. This can be particularly useful to check and see whether your system has a Trojan installed or not. Yes, most good Antiviral software are able to detect the presence of Trojans, but, we are hackers, and need to software to tell us, whether we are infected or not. Besides, it is more fun to do something manually than to simply click on the ?Scan? button and let some software do it.

The following is a list of Trojans and the port numbers which they use, if you Netstat yourself and find any of the following open, then you can be pretty sure, that you are infected.

Port 12345(TCP)                   Netbus
Port 31337(UDP)                 Back Orifice

For complete list, refer to the Tutorial on Trojans at: hackingtruths.box.sk/trojans.txt
—-

Now, the above tutorial resulted in a number of people raising questions like: If the ‘netstat -a’ command shows open ports on my system, does this mean that anyone can connect to them? Or, How can I close these open ports? How do I know if an open port is a threat to my system’s security of not? Well, the answer to all these question would be clear, once you read the below paragraph:

Now, the thing to understand here is that, Port numbers are divided into three ranges:

The Well Known Ports are those from 0 through 1023. This range or ports is bound to the services running on them. By this what I mean is that each port usually has a specific service running on it. You see there is an internationally accepted Port Numbers to Services rule, (refer RFC 1700 Here) which specifies as to on what port number a particular service runs. For Example, By Default or normally FTP runs on Port 21. So if you find that Port 21 is open on a particular system, then it usually means that that particular system uses the FTP Protocol to transfer files. However, please note that some smart system administrators delibrately i.e. to fool lamers run fake services on popular ports. For Example, a system might be running a fake FTP daemon on Port 21. Although you get the same interface like the FTP daemon banner, response numbers etc, however, it actually might be a software logging your prescence and sometimes even tracing you!!!

The Registered Ports are those from 1024 through 49151. This range of port numbers is not bound to any specific service. Actually, Networking utlites like your Browser, Email Client, FTP software opens a random port within this range and starts a communication with the remote server. A port number within this range is the reason why you are able to surf the net or check your email etc.

If you find that when you give the netstat -a command, then a number of ports within this range are open, then you should probably not worry. These ports are simply opened so that you can get your software applications to do what you want them to do. These ports are opened temporarily by various applications to perform tasks. They act as a buffer transfering packets (data) received to the application and vis-a-versa. Once you close the application, then you find that these ports are closed automatically. For Example, when you type www.hotmail.com in your browser, then your browser randomly chooses a Registered Port and uses it as a buffer to communicate with the various remote servers involved.

The Dynamic and/or Private Ports are those from 49152 through 65535. This range is rarely used, and is mostly used by trojans, however some application do tend to use such high range port numbers. For Example,Sun starts their RPC ports at 32768.
So this basically brings us to what to do if you find that Netstat gives you a couple of open ports on your system:

1. Check the Trojan Port List and check if the open port matches with any of the popular ones. If it does then get a trojan Removal and remove the trojan.

2. If it doesn’t or if the Trojan Remover says: No trojan found, then see if the open port lies in the registered Ports range. If yes, then you have nothing to worry, so forget about it.

***********************
HACKING TRUTH: A common technique employed by a number of system administrators, is remapping ports. For example, normally the default port for HTTP is 80. However, the system administrator could also remap it to Port 8080. Now, if that is the case, then the homepage hosted at that server would be at:

http://domain.com:8080 instead of
http://domain.com:80

The idea behind Port Remapping is that instead of running a service on a well known port, where it can easily be exploited, it would be better to run it on a not so well known port, as the hacker, would find it more difficult to find that service. He would have to port scan high range of numbers to discover port remapping.

The ports used for remapping are usually pretty easy to remember. They are choosen keeping in mind the default port number at which the service being remapped should be running. For Example, POP by default runs on Port 110. However, if you were to remap it, you would choose any of the following: 1010, 11000, 1111 etc etc

Some sysadmins also like to choose Port numbers in the following manner: 1234,2345,3456,4567 and so on… Yet another reason as to why Port Remapping is done, is that on a Unix System to be able to listen to a port under 1024, you must have root previledges.
************************

Firewalls

Use of Firewalls is no longer confined to servers or websites or commerical companies. Even if you simply dial up into your ISP or use PPP (Point to Point Protocol) to surf the net, you simply cannot do without a firewall. So what exactly is a firewall?

Well, in non-geek language, a firewall is basically a shield which protects your system from the untrusted non-reliable systems connected to the Internet. It is a software which listens to all ports on your system for any attempts to open a connection and when it detects such an attempt, then it reacts according to the predefined set of rules. So basically, a firewall is something that protects the network(or systen) from the Internet. It is derived from the concept of firewalls used in vehicles which is a barrier made of fire resistant material protecting the vehicle in case of fire.

Now, for a better ‘according to the bible’ defination of a firewall: A firewall is best described as a software or hardware or both Hardware and Software packet filter that allows only selected packets to pass through from the Internet to your private internal network. A firewall is a system or a group of systems which guard a trusted network( The Internal Private Network from the untrusted network (The Internet.)

NOTE: This was a very brief desciption of what a firewall is, I would not be going into the details of their working in this manual.

Anyway,the term ‘Firewalls’, (which were generally used by companies for commerical purposes) has evolved into a new term called ‘Personal Firewalls’. Now this term is basically used to refer to firewalls installed on a standalone system which may or may not be networked i.e. It usually connects to an ISP. Or in other words a personal firewall is a firewall used for personal use.

Now that you have a basic desciption as to what a firewall is, let us move on to why exactly you need to install a Firewall? Or, how can not installing a firewall pose a threat to the security of your system?

You see, when you are connected to the Internet, then you have millions of other untrusted systems connected to it as well. If somehow someone found out your IP address, then they could do probably anything to your system. They could exploit any vulnerability existing in your system, damage your data, and even use your system to hack into other computers.

Finding out someone’e IP Address is not very difficult. Anybody can find out your IP, through various Chat Services, Instant Messengers (ICQ, MSN, AOL etc), through a common ISP and numerous other ways. Infact finding out the IP Address of a specific person is not always the priority of some hackers.

What I mean to say by that is that there are a number of Scripts and utilities available which scan all IP addresses between a certain range for predefined common vulnerabilities. For Example, Systems with File Sharing Enabled or a system running an OS which is vulnerable to the Ping of Death attack etc etc As soon as a vulnerable system is found, then they use the IP to carry out the attacks.

The most common scanners look for systems with RAT’s or Remote Administration Tools installed. They send a packet to common Trojan ports and display whether the victim’s system has that Trojan installed or not. The ‘Scan Range of IP Addresses’ that these programs accept are quite wide and one can easily find a vulnerable system in the matter of minutes or even seconds.

Trojan Horses like Back Orifice provide remote access to your system and can set up a password sniffer. The combination of a back door and a sniffer is a dangerous one: The back door provides future remote access, while the sniffer may reveal important information about you like your other Passwords, Bank Details, Credit Card Numbers, Social Security Number etc If your home system is connected to a local LAN and the attacker manages to install a backdoor on it, then you probably have given the attacker the same access level to your internal network, as you have. This wouls also mean that you will have created a back door into your network that bypasses any firewall that may be guarding the front door.

You may argue with me that as you are using a dial up link to your ISP via PPP, the attacker would be able to access your machine only when you are online. Well, yes that is true, however, not completely true. Yes, it does make access to your system when you reconnect, difficult, as you have a dynamic Internet Protocol Address. But, although this provides a faint hope of protection, routine scanning of the range of IP’s in which your IP lies, will more often than not reveal your current Dynamic IP and the back door will provide access to your system.

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HACKING TRUTH: Microsoft Says: War Dialer programs automatically scan for modems by trying every phone number within an exchange. If the modem can only be used for dial-out connections, a War Dialer won’t discover it. However, PPP changes the equation, as it provides bidirectional transportmaking any connected system visible to scanners?and attackers.
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So how do I protect myself from such Scans and unsolicitated attacks? Well, this is where Personal Firewalls come in. They just like their name suggests, protect you from unsolicitated connection probes, scans, attacks.

They listen to all ports for any connection requests received (from both legitimate and fake hosts) and sent (by applications like Browser, Email Client etc.) As soon as such an instance is recorded, it pops up a warning asking you what to do or whether to allow the connection to initiate or not. This warning message also contains the IP which is trying to initiate the connection and also the Port Number to which it is trying to connect i.e. the Port to which the packet was sent. It also protects your system from Port Scans, DOS Attacks, Vulnerability attacks etc. So basically it acts as a shield or a buffer which does not allow your system to communicate with the untrusted systems directly.

Most Personal Firewalls have extensive logging facilities which allows you to track down the attackers. Some popular firewalls are:

1.BlackICE Defender : An IDS for PC’s. It’s available at http://www.networkice.com.

2. ZoneAlarm: The easiest to setup and manage firewall. Get it for free at: www.zonelabs.com

Once you have installed a firewall on your system, you will often get a number of Warnings which might seem to be as if someone is trying to break into your system, however, they are actually bogus messages, which are caused by either your OS itself or due to the process called Allocation of Dynamic IP’s. For a details description of these two, read on.

Many people complain that as soon as they dial into their ISP, their firewall says that such and such IP is probing Port X. What causes them?
Well, this is quite common. The cause is that somebody hung up just before you dialed in and your ISP assigned you the same IP address. You are now seeing the remains of communication with the previous person. This is most common when the person to which the IP was assigned earlier was using ICQ or chat programs, was connected to a Game Server or simply turned off his modem before his communication with remote servers was complete.

You might even get a message like: Such and Such IP is trying to initaite a Netbios Session on Port X. This again is extrememly common. The following is an explanation as to why it happens, which I picked up a couple of days ago: NetBIOS requests to UDP port 137 are the most common item you will see in your firewall reject logs. This comes about from a feature in Microsoft’s Windows: when a program resolves an IP address into a name, it may send a NetBIOS query to IP address. This is part of the background radiation of the Internet, and is nothing to be concerned about.

What Causes them? On virtually all systems (UNIX, Macintosh, Windows), programs call the function ‘gethostbyaddr()’ with the desired address. This function will then do the appropriate lookup, and return the name. This function is part of the sockets API. The key thing to remember about gethostbyaddr() is that it is virtual. It doesn’t specify how it resolves an address into a name. In practice, it will use all available mechanisms. If we look at UNIX, Windows, and Macintosh systems, we see the following techniques:

DNS in-addr.arpa PTR queries sent to the DNS server
NetBIOS NodeStatus queries sent to the IP address
lookups in the /etc/hosts file
AppleTalk over IP name query sent to the IP address
RPC query sent to the UNIX NIS server
NetBIOS lookup sent to the WINS server

Windows systems do the /etc/hosts, DNS, WINS, and NodeStatus techniques. In more excruciating detail, Microsoft has a generic system component called a naming service. All the protocol stacks in the system (NetBIOS, TCP/IP, Novel IPX, AppleTalk, Banyan, etc.) register the kinds of name resolutions they can perform. Some RPC products will likewise register an NIS naming service. When a program requests to resolve an address, this address gets passed onto the generic naming service. Windows will try each registered name resolution subsystem sequentially until it gets an answer.

(Side note: User’s sometimes complained that accessing Windows servers is slow. This is caused by installing unneeded protocol stacks that must timeout first before the real protocol stack is queried for the server name.).

The order in which it performs these resolution steps for IP addresses can be configured under the Windows registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\ServiceProvider.

Breaking Through Firewalls

Although Firewalls are meant to provide your complete protection from Port Scan probes etc there are several holes existing in popular firewalls, waiting to be exploited. In this issue, I will discuss a hole in ZoneAlarm Version 2.1.10 to 2.0.26, which allows the attacker to port scan the target system (Although normally it should stop such scans.)

If one uses port 67 as the source port of a TCP or UDP scan, ZoneAlarm will let the packet through and will not notify the user. This means, that one can TCP or UDP port scan a ZoneAlarm protected computer as if there were no firewall there IF one uses port 67 as the source port on the packets.

Exploit:
UDP Scan:
You can use NMap to port scan the host with the following command line:

nmap -g67 -P0 -p130-140 -sU 192.168.128.88

(Notice the -g67 which specifies source port).

TCP Scan:
You can use NMap to port scan the host with the following command line:

nmap -g67 -P0 -p130-140 -sS 192.168.128.88

(Notice the -g67 which specifies source port).

Tracking email back to its source: Twisted Evil
cause i hate spammers… Evil or Very Mad

Ask most people how they determine who sent them an email message and the response is almost universally, “By the From line.” Unfortunately this symptomatic of the current confusion among internet users as to where particular messages come from and who is spreading spam and viruses. The “From” header is little more than a courtesy to the person receiving the message. People spreading spam and viruses are rarely courteous. In short, if there is any question about where a particular email message came from the safe bet is to assume the “From” header is forged.

So how do you determine where a message actually came from? You have to understand how email messages are put together in order to backtrack an email message. SMTP is a text based protocol for transferring messages across the internet. A series of headers are placed in front of the data portion of the message. By examining the headers you can usually backtrack a message to the source network, sometimes the source host. A more detailed essay on reading email headers can be found .

If you are using Outlook or Outlook Express you can view the headers by right clicking on the message and selecting properties or options.

Below are listed the headers of an actual spam message I received. I’ve changed my email address and the name of my server for obvious reasons. I’ve also double spaced the headers to make them more readable.

Return-Path: <s359dyxtt@yahoo.com>

X-Original-To: davar@example.com

Delivered-To: davar@example.com

Received: from 12-218-172-108.client.mchsi.com (12-218-172-108.client.mchsi.com [12.218.172.108])
by mailhost.example.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 1F9B8511C7
for <davar@example.com>; Sun, 16 Nov 2003 09:50:37 -0800 (PST)

Received: from (HELO 0udjou) [193.12.169.0] by 12-218-172-108.client.mchsi.com with ESMTP id <536806-74276>; Sun, 16 Nov 2003 19:42:31 +0200

Message-ID: <n5-l067n7z$46-z$-n@eo2.32574>

From: “Maricela Paulson” <s359dyxtt@yahoo.com>

Reply-To: “Maricela Paulson” <s359dyxtt@yahoo.com>

To: davar@example.com

Subject: STOP-PAYING For Your PAY-PER-VIEW, Movie Channels, Mature Channels…isha

Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2003 19:42:31 +0200

X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21)

X-Priority: 3

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=”MIMEStream=_0+211404_90873633350646_4032088448″

According to the From header this message is from Maricela Paulson at s359dyxxt@yahoo.com. I could just fire off a message to abuse@yahoo.com, but that would be waste of time. This message didn’t come from yahoo’s email service.

The header most likely to be useful in determining the actual source of an email message is the Received header. According to the top-most Received header this message was received from the host 12-218-172-108.client.mchsi.com with the ip address of 21.218.172.108 by my server mailhost.example.com. An important item to consider is at what point in the chain does the email system become untrusted? I consider anything beyond my own email server to be an unreliable source of information. Because this header was generated by my email server it is reasonable for me to accept it at face value.

The next Received header (which is chronologically the first) shows the remote email server accepting the message from the host 0udjou with the ip 193.12.169.0. Those of you who know anything about IP will realize that that is not a valid host IP address. In addition, any hostname that ends in client.mchsi.com is unlikely to be an authorized email server. This has every sign of being a cracked client system.

Here’s is where we start digging. By default Windows is somewhat lacking in network diagnostic tools; however, you can use the tools at to do your own checking.

davar@nqh9k:[/home/davar] $whois 12.218.172.108

AT&T WorldNet Services ATT (NET-12-0-0-0-1)
12.0.0.0 – 12.255.255.255
Mediacom Communications Corp MEDIACOMCC-12-218-168-0-FLANDREAU-MN (NET-12-218-168-0-1)
12.218.168.0 – 12.218.175.255

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2003-12-31 19:15
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN’s WHOIS database.

I can also verify the hostname of the remote server by using nslookup, although in this particular instance, my email server has already provided both the IP address and the hostname.

davar@nqh9k:[/home/davar] $nslookup 12.218.172.108

Server: localhost
Address: 127.0.0.1

Name: 12-218-172-108.client.mchsi.com
Address: 12.218.172.108

Ok, whois shows that Mediacom Communications owns that netblock and nslookup confirms the address to hostname mapping of the remote server,12-218-172-108.client.mchsi.com. If I preface a www in front of the domain name portion and plug that into my web browser, http://www.mchsi.com, I get Mediacom’s web site.

There are few things more embarrassing to me than firing off an angry message to someone who is supposedly responsible for a problem, and being wrong. By double checking who owns the remote host’s IP address using two different tools (whois and nslookup) I minimize the chance of making myself look like an idiot.

A quick glance at the web site and it appears they are an ISP. Now if I copy the entire message including the headers into a new email message and send it to abuse@mchsi.com with a short message explaining the situation, they may do something about it.

But what about Maricela Paulson? There really is no way to determine who sent a message, the best you can hope for is to find out what host sent it. Even in the case of a PGP signed messages there is no guarantee that one particular person actually pressed the send button. Obviously determining who the actual sender of an email message is much more involved than reading the From header. Hopefully this example may be of some use to other forum regulars.