Digital Payag

It has always been my practice having two anti-virus on my computer due to the fact that most antivirus vendors these days lacks the ability to detect and clean all of the known viruses. This is true even when I have the most updated version of my software with the latest virus definitions on it. To keep myself protected I always make it a habit to install “two” anti-virus in one machine instead of having only one which is a common practice by most users.

The first software is for real-time background scanning and the other one is for on-demand scanning.

Your always ON antivirus is a must have for your computer. It runs in the background to check almost every file your computer writes and reads. One example of a good anti-virus that can do the job is Avast! 4 Home Edition, it is free and the company behind it Alwil has been in the market since 1988.

Second is your ON-DEMAND scanner which acts like a utility. This anti-virus only runs when you do a manual scan or if you set it to run on a certain time. The only anti-virus I can recommend for this is Clamwin.

 

Here’s a personal trick I’d like to share to everyone. Make the most of the said two anti-virus by doing a scan using Clamwin while Avast is enabled in the background. Why do this? I call this “aided scanning” wherein Clamwin helps Avast scan and detect viruses which the later cannot detect by itself alone. This technique really works because Clamwin is designed to do so..

Some points to take note from the makers of Clamwin

ClamWin should be used only as a complimentary scanner.

You don’t need to disable ClamWin Free Antivirus as it does not yet include on-access scanner. It won’t conflict with the software you are trying to install.

This is one of the most irritating virus in the year 2007. It comes in different names and it infects your system by adding autoplay.inf files in all of your system drives, making your hard drives unaccessible when you double click on it. The solution, is a single exe remover that scans your drives and removes the virus in just about 4-5 seconds. In my experience, this is the best way to remove the infection because it is fast and it leaves your crucial data intact.

NO need to reformat your drives.

NO more technical instructions

NO more delays!

NO sweat!

Warning: I cannot be held responsibe if it does weird things on your computer. It works fine on my Windows XP SP2 set up, best guess it will work on your system too.

DOWNLOAD HERE Autoplay Remover.zip (97.39 KB) - file is hosted by mediafire.com

Comment here if you need a fresh copy of the exe if the download link expires.

Happy virus-free holidays!

This guide is almost similar to my previous article about using your camera for this function. However, the beauty of this guide is that we are going to use one of Windows Powertools called Timershot. It is a free lightweight program that works perfectly right for this guide.

Things to remember

Software required: Windows Timershot
System requirements: Windows XP on a basic desktop PC
Installation difficulty: Easy
Optional requirements: Apache server software and a broadband connection

Let’s now get started:

1. Run your Timershot exe to install
2. Open Timershot.exe
3. Look for active device (This is your usb camera)

4. Expand your settings

5. Adjust some Timershot settings

- Take pictures every – I suggest you set this to 3-5 seconds.
- Resize the picture – Set this to Large (1024 by 768) to have a clearer picture.
- Save In – Browse to your folder of choice. You can save this in your Apache’s folder, if you want to view your pictures on the internet. You need to have an “always online computer” to make this work.
- Check save a new copy of this file every time a picture is taken. This is to have a copy of each picture taken with the exact time and date displayed when you browse your pictures online.
- Click Apply Settings

6. Click Close Window to send the window to your taskbar.

That’s all you’re going to need to turn your ordinary pc camera into a surveillance camera. This is ideal for monitoring a home office or a small shop.

One user at Kalibog asks us if there is a way he could delete he’s files without being recovered again by any means. I said yes there is actually a feature bundled in CrapCleaner that allows him to do that. Why bother installing a separate software just for this purpose alone, when CrapCleaner has this feature already. For only around 400kb of download size, now you can have your own personal file shredder completely for FREE.

CrapCleaner’s Secure Deletion offers three levels of data shredding. From the basic form of secure deletion to the

Simple Overwrite (1 pass)

This is the most common form of secure deletion. Retrievable and unreliable.

DOD 5220.22-M (3 passes)

U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) standard for hard drive sanitization as specified in the 5220.22-M operating manual

NSA (7 passes)

This is for the paranoid user, developed by the National Security Agency of the United States of America for the purpose of deleting critical files.

Ok now let’s delete those pesky files.

1. Install and open CrapCleaner
2. Go to Options
3. Click the Settings Button
4. Under the secure deletion choose Secure file deletion (Slower)
5. Then select your preferred level of secure deletion

It is a common telltale amongst internet cafe users to avoid accessing e-commerce sites believing that they might expose personal data like credit card and email passwords. The fear of invasion of privacy and data theft is a reality most users face when stepping inside a public computer shop. This concern is a problem brought by cookies and auto saving of forms on most browsers that are insecure by default. Moreover, it is misconceived that just by using Firefox is enough to conclude that users are already SAFE without knowing that they are far from being safe not unless the safety settings are applied.

The question now is what are those safety settings we often fail to perceive?

The answers are just a few clicks away.

1. Open your Firefox browser
2. Under the Tools menu, go to Options…
3. Click the Privacy tab
4. Follow the instructions below

As you browse the web, Firefox keeps information about where you have been, what you have done etc. in the following areas.

History tab
Set to 0 days for Firefox to remember visited pages.

Saved Forms tab
Uncheck Save information, I enter in forms and the Search bars.

Passwords tab
Uncheck Remember Passwords

Download History tab
Set Firefox to remove files from the download manager when Firefox exits.

Cookies tab
Set Firefox to keep cookies until I close Firefox.

Then we use the Clear Private Data tool to clear all of the data left behind after using Firefox.

Click the Settings… button and select the following items to be cleared when closing Firefox.

Browsing History
Saved Form Information
Download History
Cookies
Cache
Authenticated Sessions
Check clear private data when closing Firefox.
Uncheck Ask me before clearing private data.
Click Ok to save your new settings

This is a follow-up post to my first post about how to secure your mIRC client. Securing your IRC connection is important in order for you to stay anonymous.

One way of securing your IRC connection is by encryption using SSL.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS), its successor, are cryptographic protocols which provide secure communications on the Internet for such things as e-mail, Internet faxing, and other data transfers. There are slight differences between SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0, but the protocol remains substantially the same. The term “SSL” as used here applies to both protocols unless clarified by context. Read more…

I stumbled upon this article from indymedia.org that shows you step-by-step set of instructions on how to easily secure your irc connection.

* Downloading the software (Windows) *

Go to http://www.stunnel.org/download/binaries.html

Download two files:
the latest stunnel file (will have a red asterisk beside it probably)
scroll down to the bottom of the page and download the file openssl.zip
Make a new directory (folder), maybe call it “working” or something
Copy the “stunnel-4.05.exe” into the “working” folder. The file may be called something a little different, like “stunnel-4.06.exe” if there have been updates since this was written.
Copy the openssl.zip file into the “working” folder
Unzip the openssl.zip file in the “working” folder. If you get a folder as a result, maybe called “openssl”, copy the files inside it back out into the “working” folder and delete the empty “openssl” folder. Read more…

Just an addition, not all IRC servers supports SSL. Ask a server admin or a channel operator if you can use SSL.

People tend to avoid the integrated relay chat (IRC) as a means of communication primarily because of two things. Most of the irc clients are not user friendly and they lack strong security against known security issues. It is a fact that IRC clients are susceptible to the wide spread of worms, viruses & trojans since the early days of the internet. However, things didn’t change since then, more and more computers had been victimized due to poor irc precautions being made. The least we can do to stay out of harms way is by properly configuring our irc client to withstand those destructive codes from infecting our computers.

For this guide i’m going to use the popular mIRC client.

Open miRC then go to Tools. Select Options... or press the shortcut key Alt+O.

Enable Flood Protection
Tick the Enable flood protection. The default settings should work on most users. (see the screenshot)

Disable DCC
I strong advise users to disable DCC if they intend to use mIRC for chatting purposes only.

On Send request:
Tick Ignore all

On Chat request:
Tick Ignore all

However, if you’d like to use the DCC feature, you should do the ff precautions.

1. You MUST not set the On Send request and On Chat request to Auto-get.

2. Set if file exists to Ask or if you can’t avoid to use the Auto-get file. However, you should at least assign nicknames of trusted chatters using the Trusted button.

3. Change the default DCC get folders (download folder) from the default path which is C:\Program Files\mIRC\download to C:\Documents and Settings\YourUsername\Desktop. This way you can easiy monitor what files you are receiving.

4. Make sure you set the following file types to ignore. You can delete the specific file type if you are expecting a legit file from a friend or from someone you trust.

*.bat *.com *.dll *.exe *.htm *.html *.ini *.js *.lnk *.mrc *.pif *.pl *.scr *.shs *.vbs *.wmf

Set Lock for strong security:

1. Disable Send and Get
2. Disable all commands - Com, Decode, Dll, Run (You won’t be needing this if you are not running any mIRC scripts.)

Hereafter we can say that your mIRC is more secured. Enjoy chatting!

I just recently installed AOL’s Anti-virus and I am quite impressed with it eventhough it has minor issues which I think forgivable at this early stage of its release.

Impressions:
1. AVS didn’t restarted well after I installed it.
2. CPU usage reached 20mb when AVS was set to High and while doing a full scan.
3. License is only limited for one year. That means I need to re-register to receive further updates.
4. It detected mIRC as a riskware which is TRUE. However, when I choose to skip it, AVS continued to detect it so I uncheck potentially dangerous software just to stop the notice.
5. The exclusion link did not work.

I hope the AOL guys will address the bugs and fix it on their next release. Nevertheless, this is a good AV for those who doesn’t have one yet.

You can get a free copy at this link
CLICK HERE

Lets say you have an IRC channel for your band, group, club & etc. The problem is you are going for a summer break at a near island and you are not sure if the local internet cafe has an mirc client installed on their computers and you are in dire need to monitor the latest conversations going on.

Your solution is to create web-based logs of IRC chat using a Log Bot. For this guide we are going to use jibble.org’s Logbot.

text from publisher’s site:

LogBot is an IRC bot that creates web-based logs in XHTML format. It uses the PircBot API to connect to an IRC server and create public logs for a channel. This is useful for disseminating online conferences and discussions of interest groups to those who do not use IRC.

You need these requirements to start logging:
1. Always online computer at home with a broadband connection
2. Personal web server (How-to make one)
3. download LogBot-0.1.0.zip

PART 1: Assuming you’re finish setting up your home server.

1. create a folder on your desktop
2. extact the LogBot-0.1.0.zip file to that folder
3. open the config file inside the folder then edit the following settings according to your liking.

Your bots nickname
Nick = LogBot

The server wherein your channel is created
Server = irc.freenode.net

Your channel name
Channel = #channel

Optional
JoinMessage = This channel is logged - http://www.somewhere...

This should be your web servers root directory
OutputDir = c:/temp/logbot/

4. save the config file

PART 2: Start your web server

PART 3: Start your LogBot

1. open the folder you created in part 1
2. double-click the MS-DOS file named run
3. wait until the bot joins your channel

PART5: Open your browser and visit your web server using your dynamic ip
e.g. http://121.12.12.12

and your DONE!

You can now monitor your irc channel even you’re away from home.

What are these tools?

I’m not talking about anti-spywares that needs to be installed and regularly updated. I’m talking about simple “no-install” tools that are easy to configure and apply. They protect us from the same threat even if they function a little different from those main anti-intrusion tools.

Windows Worms Doors Cleaner

WWDC is a simple no-install software that allows you to close insecure Windows services that are often difficult to disable using windows services console. These services are known to be exploited by existing and future exploits. There’s no harm closing these ports so there’s no need for you to worry about Blue Screen of Death (blue image screen that shows up when you get an error).

services such as:
DCOM RPC (port 135)
RPC LOCATOR (port 445)
NET BIOS (port 137/138/139)
UPNP (port 5000)
MESSENGER (NETBIOS/RPC ports)

download wwdc.exe

Secure-It

Secure-It is a tool that helps us harden our Windows system by either disabling the intrusion and propagation vectors proactively or reduce the attack surface by disabling underlying functionality malware uses to execute itself.

It acts almost the same way like WWDC. However, this tool secures other areas of your Windows system.

such as:
· Harden your Local Zone Security (My Computer) settings.
· Proactively disable scripting or Active-X controls which proved potential propagation vectors in the past.
· Reduce potential intrusion vectors by disabling non used services.
· Various other protections

download Secure-It.exe

IntelliAdmin Reduced Permission

If you are still using Windows IE (I command you to switch to Firefox! lol! just kidding.), you can secure your browser by running it as a limited user.

The shortcut created by this tool will allow you to launch IE with all of the power user and administrative images removed.

download ReducedPermissions.exe