Category Archives: Tools & Reviews

Complementary security tools

It’s interesting what vision has PC users with not a lot of experience about their antivirus, how they feel about that software. It’s more about a feeling, yes, they perceive the antivirus like a comrade who defend them fighting back against all kind of nasty malware and zombies for their safety and peace, look how people speak about their antivirus :  “my antivirus says this or says that…” Well, if it’s about a comparison between an antivirus and a bodyguard who must defend me against the Internet threats, the bodyguard is a blind person when it comes about new threats and here you must consider as a fact that daily …

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Programs analysis tools — Sandboxie "add-ons"

These days, when many software vendors are ready to do anything to increase  their incomes, including embedding adware and other unwanted programs in their products for advertising and marketing purposes, to analyse a program carefully before to run it, it’s a normal and desirable behaviour  install it fully in the computer. I’m  talking about less-known  programs, sometimes spreaded as freeware, sometimes advertised as program that will do “miracles” in the computer and finishing dropping adware and spyware in the computer of a naïve user. Using virtual environments as a VMware machine, or a sandbox which will emulate an Operating System are the preffered methods for analysis because they give the …

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Encryption software – Secure your data

TrueCrypt   The so-called “on-the-fly” encryption, is a method for encrypting and decrypting the files in RAM memory and only when them are used, as a result all the files on your encrypted partition or drive are permanently encrypted with an algorithm at your choice : AES-256, Serpent or Twofish. Can be used for any partition on your hard disk or for a storage device like an USB flash drive. It can creates a hidden volume or hidden Operating System that nobody knows it exists on your hard disk, it is created in the free space within another TrueCrypt volume for example but without modify the information about the free …

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Run SandBoxed

This little application–Sandboxie–  create a virtual environment(think at virtualization provided by VMware) in your PC, where you can run your browser, install an applications or run an executable without to makes permanent changes on your harddisk. The programs are able to run normally because they have read access to any file in your PC, only writing procedure is intercepted by Sandboxie and redirected in a safe place on harddisk in a sandbox. No real files,  folders or registries are affected by the running programs in Sandboxie. When you empty the sandbox or you shutdown the computer all the sandbox content is deleted including that temporary files from sandbox. If you …

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A better alternative for Windows System Restore

System Restore from Microsoft Windows creates a hidden folder in each partition with the name System Volume Information. There System Restore save all the important registry changes, save some deleted executable or dll files, save the computer settings for a certain moment called Restore Point, so if you want your computer restored to a earlier date in time, the information from System Volume Information folder is used. The big problem resides in fact that the viruses loves to hide themselves in this folder, due to the advantages it offers for viruses : this folder is hidden and protected by the system . There is two ways for viruses to infect …

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Anti-Keyloggers tips

A simple tip to defeat an eventual keylogger is the next : When you type a password for example begin typing the latest characters, click in front of them and type the rest. For example if password is : 123456, type first 456, right click in front of them and type the rest: 123 The keylogger will record as password: 456123 obviously wrong. You can do this in 3 steps if you want dividing the password in 3 sets of characters. You can download if you want a free small anti-keylogger from here. KeyScrambler is an add-on for your browser that encrypt anything you have typed on your web browser …

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"Must Have Tools" Series–sysinternals.com

Autoruns Always the malware, trojans, spyware, adware try to add an entry to run at system bootup, and all the malware are programmed to do so. There is a lot of ways to run an application at boot time and even if some AntiViruses claims to control 100% programs autostart, very often they miss some places. The most comprehensive knowledge of auto-starting locations are shown by Autoruns by Sysinternals.com. This little utility is far better than MsConfig utility or any other system tool. Autostart locations displayed by Autoruns include logon entries, Explorer add-ons, Internet Explorer add-ons including Browser Helper Objects (BHOs), Appinit DLLs, image hijacks, boot execute images, Winlogon notification …

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