Spyware Terminator is a small memory footprint real time anti spyware scanner, it can be configured to do a quick, full or custom scan excluding trusted selected folders which will speed up the scan. You are likely to get lots of hits after the first scan as all Internet browser tracking cookies will be flagged as spyware, tracking cookies are not an extreme privacy concern like real malware that hijacks your computer, but they are better off erased. The software interface is clean and easy to use, with its main window showing only three tabs from where you can perform everything you need besides options configuration that is only used once in a while.
Scanner reports are stored for reference and easy to understand, threats are rated and classified, helping the user get an idea of what steps to take next, antispyware scanning can be scheduled, it is probably best to set it up once a week, this is a reasonable timeframe for a home user to get rid of tracking artefacts acquired during normal Internet browsing.
Free antispyware Spyware Terminator
Before uninstalling something SpywareTerminator will create a restore point, if you make a mistake by going to Tools>System Restore the system can be restored to what it was before, if you have doubts about a file already in your computer you can manually select it and force a hard scanner, if you come across a locked file that can not be erased SpywareTerminator lets you select it through the interface. A common trick used by spyware is to change file permissions to lock the file so that users can not erase them, permissions can be changed using Windows right-click but this is not easy to find for the average user.
During installation you will offered to install a toolbar called Web Security Guard Toolbar, similar to Web Of Trust, allowing users to rate websites and warning you of sites flagged by people as dangerous, this is a nice addition but can be easily rejected, the default is to install it, you will have to uncheck the box. The paid for version of Spyware Terminator can be integrated with F-Prot antivirus engine, has high priority updates and other tools like junk file scanner, start up fine tuning to speed up the boot up process and an Internet browser addon scanner, support is provided by phone and email.
GPG4Browsers Merged with OpenPGP.js a Javascript implementation of OpenPGP that can be used to encrypt and decrypt webmail, at the moment it is only available as a Google Chrome extension and it only works with Gmail, using HTML5 for local storage of public and private encryption keys, OpenPGP.js supports all encryption ciphers (AES, Twofish, TripleDES, CAST5, Blowfish) and hashing algorithms (SHA, MD5, RIPEMD160) supported by OpenPGP specifications (except IDEA). It can be used to digitally sign messages using standard public/private RSA, DSA or ElGamal asymmetric cryptography, however it can not create signing keys, you will have to import them. OpenPGP.js is not available in the Chrome Web Store, it needs to be manually installed following the instructions in Recurity Labs website
OpenPGP.js webmail OpenPGP encryption
Its main features are encryption and description of messages, signing and verifying of message signatures, and the importing and exporting of certificates. Unlike GnuPG, it can not compress data, this can be a problem to create messages compatible with GnuPG, the whole idea of using standard OpenPGP encryption is that it does not matter what software people is using to encrypt and decrypt email as long as they use OpenPGP specifications they should be able to communicate. The developers advise that to create a GnuPGP compatible messages you add the option –compress-algo none in settings.
Although lacking features and restricted to Gmail encryption right now, being an open source project open to everyone for improvements this applications has the earmarks of being promising, if someone can manage to port it to other Internet browsers and support other webmail providers it should be quickly adopted, a GPG Javascript tool like this one can be used in portable browsers, and it does not require administrator rights or installing anything in your computer which is a big bonus.
Undelete is a data recovery app for Android phones that needs root permission to operate, it lets you recover data erased from your internal Android phone memory and external SD cards, it only supports the FAT format, this is the most used format in smartphone memory cards. The app can recover any kind of data, images, audio, video, text, zip, etc. It only works if the erased data has not been overwritten yet, if you saved a new file on the empty space after erasing the data or securely wiped the file using a data shredding app, the files won’t be recovered.
Android phone Undelete App
After installing this app you will be asked about the memory card where you want to recover data from, click on “Scan storage” and the app will start scanning the selected memory card (internal or external), the scan shows the file path, size and name, to recover the file simply tap on “Restore“, if you have many files on the recovery window you can use the search feature. Recovered files are placed on the directory they resided in before being erased.
Undelete is a good free alternative to Hexamob Recovery PRO, another Android phone undelete app, but I don’t know if Undelete will still be free once it comes out of beta stage (trial), if the app is successful there are plans to add support for EXT4 formatted cards, a filesystem often used in Linux. The developer claims to succesfully have tested this undelete app on Incredible S, Nexus S, Xoom, Transformer, Sensation, Galaxy S I/II, Galaxy Ace, Desire. On Tegra devices it only supports external SD memory cards.
Tip: If you are using an external SD memory card for data storage, you should be able to plug it into your computer and use standard Windows data recovery tools.
A list of normally secretive companies and products used by over 150 Governments from around the world to spy and hack into people’s computers has come to light thanks to the Wall Street Journal Surveillance Catalog project, these confidential brochures explain what products are used by Governments for mass surveillance, some of the prospectuses have been partially blacked out as specific technical information is only available to authorised law enforcement personnel.
The surveillance tools are sold to law enforcement agencies and some corporations, its legality depend on the laws of the country where they are being applied, the tools have often been found in the hands of repressive regimes like China or Iran, since censoring of the web and mass spying is allowed in those countries, it is perfectly legal.
Note: In addition to these private contractors products, well resourced countries also develop their own custom hacking tools in-house.
Software for Internet surveillance
Mobile phone tracking: Septier Location Tracking provides mobile phone tracking, lawful interception and intelligence gathering analyzing and retaining location data from mobile phone networks, it uses triangulation to find out where a mobile phone is, a technique that looks at the signal strength in between a phone and a mobile phone tower to determine its location, the system can handle all modern mobile networks like 3G, GSM, Wi-Fi, WiMax, etc.
Linguistic Analysis: A company called Expert System Semantic Intelligence has semantic software called Cogito that is capable of searching linguistic data using strict parameters, categorize data and extract entities like people and organizations, after data has been sifted through events are flagged, further parsed for early warning indications, ranked and then extracted and categorized.
Social network analysis: Intellego studies the relationships in social networks, representing emails, websites and targets as nodes then interlink them with other nodes showing a graphic of all the links. The diagram shows a clear picture of the network communication. This kind of analysis does not necessarily involve public data in Facebook, it can involve private data analysis, it allows the investigators to easily spot target’s relationships.
Social network analysis
Installing trojan horses: FinFly ISP can disguise a trojan horse in the form of popular software like updates for the Firefox browser, Adobe Flash or Java, once the user agrees to update this as he often does, a trojan horse that sends private data to a surveillance agency and is not detected by any antivirus is downloaded to his computer. This British company (Gamma Group) claims that it can work with an ISP to distribute a trojan horse to users. Its latest product, FinFly Web, can infect targets with a trojan on-the-fly by just visiting a website.
Deep packet inspection: OnPath technologies claims to provide “lawful interception” of Internet communications taking all the traffic from the Internet backbone (ie. ISP) and funnelling it through hardware devices that inspect data packets, determine what’s inside them and decides if it is necessary to forward the data to a law enforcement agency for inspection.
Deep packet inspection device
Hide computer IP: A company called ION (Internet Operations Network) solutions claims to provide random rotating IP addresses that look ordinary and are untraceable. Even law enforcement agencies need to hide their computer IPs, if someone is posing as a bad guy online he does not want his IP to reveal that his computer is located inside the FBI Headquarters, hiding a law enforcement agency computer IP is also useful to avoid warning a target that he is under investigation by visiting their potentially illegal website for research (servers log visitors IPs).
Trojan horse on a USB: When physical access to a computer is possible, a solution called FinFly USB can install remote monitoring software (aka trojan) on a target machine by just inserting a USB thumbdrive, it does not require any IT trained agent to do this. They claim that it has been used by surveillance teams to install “remote monitoring” on target computers that where switched off (booting the computer from the USB thumbdrive).
Interception of encrypted traffic: Using a man in the middle attack approach a company called Packet Forensics can intercept encrypted SSL & TLS connections and decrypt its content, with this technique they can listen in to Voice over IP encrypted calls and read email messages sent through SSL tunnels. The company textually claims on its brochure “users are lured into a false sense of security” which allows staff to obtain the best evidence. Packet Forensics devices can easily be placed at an ISP or private network without causing any noticeable interruption in the service.
NetSurveyor is a free wireless network discovery an analysis tool showing real time information on wireless access points around you, various charts and graphics display Access Point, Channel Timecourse and usage, Wi-Fi channel heatmap and a 3D Spectogram. Data can be logged for later analysis and exported to a PDF file including a full report with screenshots or playing back the recorded data on an included application called NetPlayer.
Physical barriers weakening wireless signals are impossible to spot if the Access Point is not in view (e.g. multiple floors), that is when the graph of the beacon strength (signal quality) of each access point updated every few seconds comes in handy, allowing you to position your laptop in the best possible place. A single click (View>Adapter information) can show wireless card properties, like NDIS name, description, MAC address and 802.11 driver in use.
NetSurveyor wireless network scanner
Access Point signal data is nicely presented in colors, if you have various access points it can get confusing with so many lines, selecting one of the Access Point names highlights its own graph in bold and unchecking a box next to the Access Point name makes it visible or invisible on the grid, using these tools you can tailor NetSurveyor to only monitor the Access Point you are interested in.
As soon as NetSurveyor is launched a snapshot of the beacon strength is taken, refreshed later on, a chart shows each access point beacon qualities, displaying a comparison using colored bars. The heatmap is useful to spot which are the most used Wi-Fi channels by just looking at the colors it is easy to work it out, alternatively you can look at the Channel Spectogram displaying a 3D representation of channel usage in relation to time.
If you do not have a wireless adapter you can still use NetSurveyor in “Demo” mode to experiment with it and learn how it works, all of the features are available in “Demo” mode with the data being generated by a built-in simulation module. NetSurveyor is a must have tool for professionals troubleshooting wireless networks or home users who want to learn and see a wealth of information about their own Wi-Fi network and surroundings, a complete easy to understand NetSurveyor help manual with screenshots is available but only accessible online.
Unlike encryption, where it is evident that you are trying to hide something from others, steganography allows you to hide secret messages inside a photo (audio, video, etc), post that photo to Flickr, Imgsrc or any other online photoalbum and nobody looking at your activities will notice that you are sending secret data, the receiver will also be safe by visiting a harmless website instead of being seen downloading encrypted messages.
OurSecret is a free steganography tool that can hide text or files inside other any other file, for the receiver to be able to read the message he will have to be using the same software, you can password protect your data to thwart accidental discovery. The carrier file can consist of an image, video, sound file or anything else, the file can be viewed as normal even after data has been hidden in them, after hiding data inside a file you will be offered a location to save it, you should get rid of the original file, an easy way to detect hidden data inside photos is by comparing the original file with the one holding a concealed a message, by destroying the original file you make it very hard to detect that something is hidden unless your opponent is specifically looking for steganography messages and has access to steganalysis tools.
Steganography software OurSecret
Steganography tools take advantage of unused bits of data in a file to hide data inside them, data is made up of bytes, with 1 byte being made up of 8 bits, if the less significant bit of each byte is modified to hide something inside it, the original file will still work as usual, a file header is another good place to hide data, it normally contains file type information, the end of a file is normally predefined and can be used too, hidden data can be added in those places without significantly altering the original file. By not adding any extra bits to the file and only modifying those that already exist, the chances of discovering hidden data is made more difficult, there are steganography detection algorithms that can be successful finding hidden data but extracting that data is much more difficult, specially if it has been encrypted.
Uncompressed files are the best ones to hide big files, for example, a bitmap .bmp image file will have more spare bits than a compressed .jpeg image, and a .wav sound file will be able to conceal more data than an already compressed .mp3 file.
ProtectOrion Data Safe is an user friendly file encryption software made by an Austrian company, after installing it you will be prompted to create a masterpassword, a password strength meter will let you know how secure your password is, the user is forced to enter a password made up of a combination of letters and numbers or special characters, otherwise it will be rejected for being too weak.
ProtectOrion main window is very informative, a toolbar above lets you know the full file path where data is being stored in Windows, and below you are shown the remaining free hard disk space and encrypted database size. Through the interface you can create folders where to classify your encrypted data (files and folders), just like you would do working on your operating system but with the data encrypted, a wastebin securely keeps any files you erase in case you change your mind.
ProtectOrion file encryption software
A Windows widget, called SafePad, holds over your desktop at all times if you choose so, it can be used to drag and drop files or full folders for automatic encryption with the AES256 cipher (used by many government agencies and banks), after dragging a file you can choose in what encrypted folder you would like to place it, ProtectOrion options allow you to specify if the original file should be securely wiped after encryption or only copied, leaving the original file intact, the software can be set to autolock after a preset time or manually locked if you need to go away from your computer, the encrypted database can easily be backed up anywhere you like and restored.
Another feature is a password manager where you can create groups of passwords, usernames and URLs, all nicely put together, you can paste passwords to the clipboard with a single click, for security, the passwords are automatically erased from the clipboard after 15 seconds. There is a portable version of this software that can be installed on a USB thumbdrive with ProtectOrion ToGo (7MB), encrypted passwords can be synchronized in between the desktop and USB thumbdrive.
Most of the software functions are intuitive but a complete well structured PDF manual is included anyway, my main concern with this software is the existence of temporary files when you open them, a common Windows problem is that the operating system can create automatic unencrypted backups of photos or documents you are viewing in hard to find places.
Freeware encryption ProtectOrion
Protectorion Data Safe claims to securely wipe files after adding them to the encrypted database but besides the fact that it stops data recovery software, they do not mention anywhere what method and how many wipes they use.
I think this could a good program for people who want something very easy to use with no learning curve, an eye candy interface and have very low security needs, if your opponent is someone well funded stay away from this encryption software, I saw decrypted temporary files created on the hard disk while the safe was open, once you close the encrypted safe the temporary files vanish, but I don’t know if they are securely wiped or not, there is no information about this anywhere.
Other encryption programs (Safetica, DiskCryptor, etc) create encrypted virtual drives where to store the data, that appears to me a far more secure solution than encrypting and decrypting every single file when you view them, even if they were wiped, the data leakage risk is still higher, the more files need to be wiped, the easier it is something can go wrong (ie computer crash leaving files decrypted before they have been erased).
ProtectOrion is the living example of whyjust because certain encryption software is using an unbreakable cipher like AES256 does not mean it is secure, how encryption is implemented needs to be considered too.
Note: The free version of this software is limited to 100 files and 5 passwords, a popup window invites you to upgrade your version when you open the software.
