Various cool software and more

The omnibus experience – Hilarious

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If you are at all interested in IT-Security then YOU NEED to get a load of this, Paul Craig’s omnibus experience (a podcast from Kiwicon) brought to you by Patrick Gray http://www.it-radio.com.au/, its awesome and extremely funny.

Paul Craig is a security consultant whom in his Omnibus experience explain how he created 1) A kiosk attack tool 2) Hacked a botnet (and got a lot of interesting and funny information) 3) Wrote his own WMI trojan (yes he actually utilized WMI for this one – scary – PLUS it will verbally insult you, you really MUST hear the podcast its so funny).

Makes you think, hmm WMI very usefull but maybe a bit overlooked in regard to security.

Links;
http://itradio.com.au/security/?p=98
http://ha.cked.net/projects.html
http://www.mls.id.au/

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Want a free Virus?

Now that’s a stupid question (excellent quote from Star Trek DS9, for those who get it ;- ), but anywho – NO it’s actually not that stupid a question..  Let’s say you want to discect one of these evil doers or want to test your antivirus, well you need a specimen and my sources tell me that; http://malwaredatabase.net/blog/ or http://www.malwaredatabase.net/index.php is a place to start your search. Truth be told though, I did actually not find anything to download there, but their site was SO agonizing slow that I did not want to waste that much time looking.

Be careful though, we are talking live and kicking malware, so if you don’t know what you are doing better stay clear.

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Extract images from IE Cache

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Have you ever tried browsing around accidentally discovering beautiful images/backgrounds or the likes, but not thinking to save them.

Well recently I did, and damn if I could remember the site later (and MY history in IE, well lets just say its huge so that was no help).  I came to think, hey someone MUST have written a utility to inspect your “Temporary Internet files” (IE Cache), you probably know you cant just ‘browse’ down there yourself and get anything meaningful, well anyway, sure enough after a bit of poking around I found a very decent tool (decent because a preview function in this util would have been to die for, but hey this is quite ok).

Get it here (its freeware, yes nice I know);
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/ie_cache_viewer.html

He has even developed a few other utilities for this area so poke around a bit on his site.  His site is even mentioned earlier in my blog as he also makes some VERY COOL security utilities, and hey it makes sense some of these “Temporary Internet Files” utilities could be used for crude security inspection.

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Robocopy GUI – for the faint hearted

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So you did not grow up with MS-DOS 3.2 like the rest of us, and when it comes to copying files you stick to the good old Windows Explorer.  Well that is all well and good, however if you suddenly need to copy a LARGE number of files or some very large files this can become an issue, the error handeling capabilities of Windows Explorer just aint that great.

You may have heard about Robocopy, a cool little – rather old by now – utility from Microsoft. Robocopy stands for Robust file copy, and it has the ability to mirror directories event down to ntfs rights, very nifty (I have used it since the good NT4 days) however it’s a good old MS-DOS commandline utility so you have to write pages with switches to tweak it just for your task.

To my amazement however I just realized that Microsoft actually released a GUI for the util back in 2006 :-) well well, so now there is no excuse not to use it and save yourself a lot of time and pain..

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc160891.aspx

Now Robocopy is a VERY nice utility and still the most reliable I know of, however as mentioned in an earlier post Terracopy is quite a competitor, and I would be sure not to miss giving it a go too (its somewhat easier to work with).

http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php

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Scheduling issues – back to good old NT4

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In this day in age everything has wizards, this also being true for creating a new scheduled job on a server. 

Now I did not research this in great detail, so bare with me if I overlooked something, but I had problems omitting an account and password when creating a new scheduled job.  I wanted to create a schedule witch would run under the systems account, and let me tell you it got old REALLY fast, damn wizard would not let me create the job.

So back to the good old dos AT command I think, but wait I thought was there not an old utility in NT4 that had some kind of GUI..  Google->Search->Found :-)

ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/ResKit/nt4/x86/winat/winat.exe

So if you like me experience problems with those damn modern wizards, download this and be happy (its even a bit nostalgic to work with an NT4 util again :-))..

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International TV – right for your favorites

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Do you have your friends from oversea come to visit, do they hate to miss just a single episode of their local “wheel of fortune – tv show”, well try this site on for size;

http://www.wherever.tv

It even offer a gadget that will omit your pc and stream right to your TV, a bit steep though.

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Hyper-V from Microsoft ready for Download

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And finaly its here, Hyper-V from Microsoft can now be downloaded free of charge;
http://www.microsoft.com/servers/hyper-v-server/how-to-get.mspx

For those of you, who have no clue what this is, well you are not likely to need it (if you have not heard about it) 🙂  but anyway, it’s like the VM-Ware ESX server – a new stand alone virtual server platform from Microsoft.

Sadly I don’t have the hardware to try it right now 🙁  Maybe it will run as a virtual instance on my VM-Ware Server *lol*

Read the “how-to’s” here;
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=26426203-de3c-4d74-851e-4e1388a81d5f&DisplayLang=en

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October – Cyber Security Awareness Month

Quote from OpenDNS newsletter;

We work hard to keep you safe online all year long, but the good folks at the National Cyber Security Alliance have designated October as the month to raise awareness for this very worthy cause. We’ve asked our friend Michael from the NCSA to share with you a few tips — in addition to using OpenDNS — for protecting your cyber self. Take it away, Michael!

“Top Ways to Stay Safe Online,” by Michael Kaiser, Executive Director, National Cyber Security Alliance

The Internet is supposed to make our lives better, and for most of us, that’s exactly what it does. But the Internet has a dark side, and unless we take the proper precautions, this wonderful tool can end up causing us more harm than good. October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month, and it’s a good time to take a hard look how our online behaviors may be putting us in harm’s way. You don’t have to be a computer genius to protect yourself online and you don’t have to spend a lot of money. By following a few common sense tips, you can make the most out of your Internet experience, while protecting you and your family from online threats.

Protect your identity: On the Internet, your personal data (social security number, birth date, etc.) is extremely valuable and can be used against you. Keep it protected.

Protect your children: Children face unique risks on the Internet, and require unique rules and safeguards. Monitor your kids’ online activities closely. There are many tools available to help you protect them from online threats.

Protect your accounts. Choosing hard-to-guess passwords and changing them regularly can help prevent criminals from getting at your money or personal information.

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Capturing media streams

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We all experience it, find the most interesting web-cast on the new but don’t quite have time to watch it all right now.  When you visit the site a few weeks later, the web-cast is removed and your whole week is ruined :-(

Well maybe not, here is two media stream capture utilities someone recommended, I have not tried them yet but they both are available as trial versions so if you are in need download a trial and see if it solves your streaming nightmare :-)

www.wmrecorder.com
http://www.applian.com/download-videos/

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Windows update / Forefront update error codes

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Have you ever had Windows Update or Forefront Antivirus fail to update, and then mock you with one of those very informative errorcodes like 0×80244015?  Well guess what, you are not a totally lost, there is actually a “cheat-sheet” http://inetexplorer.mvps.org/answers/63.html for decoding these 😀

Now why these translated error codes are not not displayed as opposed to those interesting 0×80244015 number codes… well your guess is a good as mine..

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