Tech2know » Security

[How to] Securely Communicate Online with Free RetroShare

Tech2know — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 18:35:08 +0000

Well, we all communicate online with our friends, relatives, girl friends by using various means. For example, messengers. Be it Yahoo, Gtalk, or MSN. All serves same purpose of letting us communicate online.

There is another free communication platform about which many of us don’t know. Its called as RetroShare.

RetroShare is a Open Source cross-platform, private and secure decentralised communication platform. It lets you to securely chat and share files with your friends and family, using a web-of-trust to authenticate peers and OpenSSL to encrypt all communication. RetroShare provides file sharing, chat, messages, forums and channels.

Below is a screen shot :

Supported operating systems.

Windows(I tested it on Vista), Ubuntu, Mac.

Installation and prerequisite

You must install GPG4Win v1.1.4 in you are installing RetroShare under windows. Well, you don’t have to search for GPG4Win separately because win32 installer of RetroShare automatically installs it but you will need to first remove any more recent version of gpg4win.

Features

Serverless, encrypted Chat & File transfer
Multiple simultaneous downloads / uploads
Search Friends
Messages
Forums
UPnP / NAT-PMP port forwarding support
GnuPG Authentication
OpenSSL Encryption
DHT support
Plugins support
Graphical User Interface written with Qt4 toolkit
System tray integration

One of the feature which I personally like about RetroShare is that

RetroShare is serverless, which means – unlike other messengers, you don’t* need to register, complete annoying registration forms and receive tons of ads. Sending a key to your friend by e-mail is enough to set up your own IM network. This also means no IM spam, because people you didn’t invite absolutely cannot connect.

Download and more information

Visit official page to download and explore more about RetroShare.

Please share your thoughts through comments.

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[How to] Generate Strong Passwords With Free Random Password Generator from Iobit

Tech2know — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:35:22 +0000

Friends, some time ago I wrote an article Choosing Secure Passwords-Simple Mathematics which dealt with making everyone understand the mathematics behind strong passwords in a very simple way.

It is utmost important to choose strong password because passwords are the keys to access personal information. Be it mails, Facebook account, Orkut account and the most important, bank account. It the password which is a barrier between your data and the one who can accesses it illegally i.e passwords are the guards or locks who restrict illegitimate access to your personal and sensitive information.

How to generate strong passwords

Well, any password with length 8 or more with the combination of alphabets, numerals and special characters is quite strong.

If you don’t want to think about the string which you can use as your password then there is a free tool from Iobit called Random Password Generator which generates strong password for you and relieves you from the job.

Below is a screen shot of Random Password Generator.

Random Password Generator is designed to help you create secure Random passwords that are extremely difficult to crack or guess, with a combination of random lower and upper case letters, numbers and punctuation symbols. And these random generated passwords will be saved for memo. You can give a mark to the generated random password for later check.

Supported operating systems

Microsoft® Windows® 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) Starter/ Home Basic/Home Premium/Professional/Ultimate
Microsoft® Windows® Vista (32-bit and 64-bit) Starter/Home Basic/Home Premium/Business /Ultimate
Microsoft® Windows® XP (32-bit and 64-bit) with SP2/SP3 or Home/Professional/Media Center
Microsoft® Windows® 2000 (32-bit and 64-bit)

Installation

Its quite fast and just a matter of few clicks.

Features

Password Manager : Manages your passwords and IDs with editable remark to keep your passwords safe and orderly.

Password checked : This feature can tell you how strong the newly generated random password is. It also marks out the weak passwords for you.

Privacy Protected : You can set a password for opening Random Password Generator. Then only you could access your passwords on your computer.

Download

Click download random password generator for downloading.

Do give it a try and share your thoughts through comments.

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Download McAfee SiteAdvisor Plus with 6 months Free Licence

Tech2know — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:33:39 +0000

You can download McAfee SiteAdvisor Plus for free with 6 months licence under a promotional offer from McAfee with ebay.

McAfee SiteAdvisor Plus goes beyond safe searching and browsing to provide active, real-time, comprehensive protection from sites that can compromise your identity and your PC. Benefit from advanced phishing protection, link checking in e-mails and instant messages, and `protected mode´ to disable interaction with dangerous sites.

Key features of McAfee SiteAdvisor Plus includes :

Protects you from adware, spyware, spam, viruses, phishing sites and online scams.
Advises you about the safety of sites using a colored button in your browser toolbar.
Enhances your online search by placing safety ratings next to search results.
Adds link safety checking to e-mail and instant messages, so you know which links are safe.
Warns you about dangerous sites and search results with clear messages.
Disables all interactions with dangerous sites with password-controlled `Protected Mode.´
Informs you about the important information you need to know about a site’s downloads.
Updates automatically to protect against new threats.

Follow below steps to download McAfee SiteAdvisor .

1) Click download McAfee SiteAdvisor Plus.

2) Click on ‘Download now’ button.

3) If you do not have an account with McAfee then create one in this step.

4) After creating account and clicking on ‘I agree’, you ill be redirected to order confirmation page. Just click on ‘Download now’ button.

5) Now you will receive a message in which you will be asked to activate the account. You just need to login to your mail id which you specified while account creation (step 3) and click on the link contained in mail from subscriptions@mcafee.com.

6) After the confirmation, you will be taken to a page Thanking you for the activation. Just click on the ‘My account’ on top right corner of the page.

7) Now, the download page will appear from where you can download McAfee SiteAdvisor Plus. Just click on ‘Download’ button.

That’s it friends. Enjoy the 6 months subscription of McAfee SiteAdvisor Plus.

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Via

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Free 90-days Subscription of Norton Internet Security 2010

Tech2know — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 15:03:42 +0000

You can download Norton Internet Security 2010 with 3 months of subscription under a promotional offer by Symantec with ING Direct Bank. You just need to go to the promotional page by clicking Download Norton Internet security 2010 and download the setup file by clicking on ‘Download Now’ button.

Once you are through with the download process, just install the internet security suit. It doesn’t ask for any key for enabling 90 days subscription.

Some of the key features of Norton Internet Security 2010 are as follows :

1) SONAR™ 2 Behavioral Protection
2) Norton System Insight
3) Norton Insight Network AntiSpam
4) Norton Download Insight
5) Professional Strength AntiSpam
6) Norton File Insight

System Requirements
1)Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 or later** Home/Professional/Media Center.
2)Microsoft Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit) Starter/Home Basic/Home Premium/Business/Ultimate.
3)Microsoft Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) Starter/Home Basic/Home Premium/Professional/Ultimate.

Minimum Hardware Requirements
300MHz or faster processor
256MB of RAM (*512 MB RAM required for the Recovery Tool)
300MB of available hard disk space
CD-ROM or DVD drive (if not installing via electronic download)

Enjoyyyyy. Thanks Genuine Promotions blog for the information.

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Facebook confirms problem with site

Tech2know — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:08:42 +0000

Facebook confirmed that there is some problem with the site. Because of the problem users are experiencing errors across a number of site features. This includes content occasionally disappearing, difficulty logging in or viewing profiles, and error messages when posting content. Facebook are working to resolve these issues as soon as possible but have not mention any reason for the problem.

You can also take a look at Facebook’s security page if you think your account was hacked or “phished”. This page contains help on various useful topics like Not able to login to my account, My account has been hacked, Post and messages were sent automatically from my account and many more.

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Hacking a Facebook account costs $100 only

Tech2know — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 07:06:18 +0000

Panda Labs has discovered an online service that promises to hack into Facebook accounts for $100. They claim they will provide “clients” with login and password information to access any account on the social network.

The first thing they request you is to register in their site. The next step to hack an account was to provide them with the ID of the Facebook account you wanted to hack. Once the account is hacked, you can view the password of the hacked account only if you have paid the required amount. The service is using Western Union money transfer for the payments and you have to send the money to Ukraine. Below is a screen shot of the service.

In the website there is a FAQ place, where they say they’ve been doing business for more than 4 years, and provide a link to a Webmoney account that is in fact 4 years old.

I tried opening the page Hacking-Facebook.com in Google Chrome but its said The link appears to be broken. Then I clicked on View cached copy of page from Google and got the page. I am really not sure that if the service is still working because I didn’t try to hack any account because of obvious reasons.

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Mozilla releases three critical updats for Firefox

Tech2know — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 04:16:22 +0000

Firefox users should upgrade to new versions of Firefox 3.0 and 3.5. Mozilla has fixed 3 critical bugs in Firefox 3.5.3 and 3.0.14 and the updates were released on 9 September 2009 for the users. Below are the same :

1) MFSA 2009-51 : This fixes a vulnerability in BrowserFeedWriter.Using this vulnerability, an attacker could construct an object containing malicious JavaScript and cause the FeedWriter to process the object, running the malicious code with chrome privileges.

2) MFSA 2009-49 : This fixes a vulnerability wherein columns of a XUL tree element could be manipulated in a particular way which would leave a pointer owned by the column pointing to freed memory. An attacker could potentially use this vulnerability to crash a victim’s browser and run arbitrary code on the victim’s computer.

3) MFSA 2009-47 : This involves fixing of stability bugs in the browser engine which shows crashes with evidence of memory corruption.

There are two other less critical fixes. Click Mozilla Foundation Security Advisories for more details.

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Microsoft released 5 security updates

Tech2know — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:01:02 +0000

As part of monthly routine security update cycle, Microsoft released 5 new security updates on September 8, 2009. Below are the same :

1) MS09-045 – addresses a vulnerability in Jscript (KB 971961)

This security update is rated Critical for JScript 5.1 on Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 and Critical for JScript 5.6, JScript 5.7 and JScript 5.8 on all supported releases of the Windows operating system except Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. This security update addresses the vulnerability by modifying the way that the JScript engine processes scripts in Web page.

2) MS09-046 – addresses a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows (KB 956844)

This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in the DHTML Editing Component ActiveX control. An attacker could exploit the vulnerability by constructing a specially crafted Web page. When a user views the Web page, the vulnerability could allow remote code execution. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the logged-on user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

This security update is rated Critical for all supported editions of Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP and Moderate for all supported editions of Windows Server 2003.

3) MS09-047 – addresses a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows (KB 973812)

This security update resolves two privately reported vulnerabilities in Windows Media Format. Either vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user opened a specially crafted media file. If a user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

This security update is rated Critical for Windows Media Format Runtime 9.0, Windows Media Format Runtime 9.5, Windows Media Format Runtime 11, Microsoft Media Foundation, Windows Media Services 9.1, and Windows Media Services 2008.

4) MS09-048 – addresses a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows (KB 967723)

This security update resolves several privately reported vulnerabilities in Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) processing. The vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if an attacker sent specially crafted TCP/IP packets over the network to a computer with a listening service. Firewall best practices and standard default firewall configurations can help protect networks from attacks that originate outside the enterprise perimeter. Best practices recommend that systems that are connected to the Internet have a minimal number of ports exposed.

This security update is rated Critical for all supported editions of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, and Important for all supported editions of Microsoft Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 and Windows Server 2003.

5) MS09-049 – addresses a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows (KB 970710)

This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Wireless LAN AutoConfig Service. The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a client or server with a wireless network interface enabled receives specially crafted wireless frames. Systems without a wireless card enabled are not at risk from this vulnerability.
This security update is rated Critical for supported editions of Windows Vista and Important for supported editions of Windows Server 2008.

You can get detailed information about these updates on 5 New security updates from Microsoft.

So, don’t forget to apply the updates.

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