For those of you that has been using PeerGuardian 2 in the past (PeerGuardian 2 is a Firewall / blacklist that can block certain IP’s based upon lists you subscribe to) here is some good news 🙂
As you may know PeerGuardian 2 has not been supported for the past 1-2 years, and is (to say it mildly) not very stable on Windows Vista/7 etc. Well some nice people has decided to continue the project under a new name Peerblock, and I do mean continue as the first version is based upon the source from the last PeerGuardian.
As with PeerGuardian the Peerblock application is free (although donations are greatly appreciated).
Get it here
The A5/1 encryption used to protect GSM phone conversations has long since been broken, actually just last year it was made possible to eavesdrop encrypted GSM in realtime – hence GSM telephony is today to be considered utterly insecure. Scientists have thus begun working on the 3G variant A5/3, and it would appear that a “breakthrough” has been made, not quite allowing for realtime decryption but weakening the cipher quite considerably.
Are your DNS settings configured for optimal performance? Don’t know? Well www.grc.comhas released a DNS Benchmarking utility that will not only test your configured DNS servers but also check a bunch of known DNS servers and thus provide you with a diagram of which servers perform best for you, along with this DNS servers are also tested for known security problems.
The tool is not ‘officially’ released as the documentation is not yet ready, but the tool is available for download and usage never the less;
Peerblock to replace PeerGuardian 2
Security, Utility, Web3G Cell phone encryption weakened
Crypto, SecurityRead the scientific repport here;
http://eprint.iacr.org/2010/013
DNS benchmarking
Network, OS, WebThe tool is not ‘officially’ released as the documentation is not yet ready, but the tool is available for download and usage never the less;
http://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm (please note the download link at the top does not work, use the one at the bottom “Download a copy to your computer“)