NewFileTime is a small Windows utility to easily change files and folders timestamps, the application doesn’t need any installation, it can be run from a USB thumbdrive in portable mode and lets you change the Modified, Created and Accessed timestamps (day,month,year and time). To change a file or folder Created and Accessed date it is as easy as dragging and dropping the file inside NewFileTime main window or manually selecting the files using the import button. Its best feature is that you can add multiple files and folders and change all dates at once.
NewFileTime change file folder timestamp
The menu lets you to quickly add and subtract hours or days to the file timestamps using one of the preset values, timestamps can also be exported or imported using the txt button. Overall this program does what it says on the tin with and you won’t need any administrator rights to run it. There are other free utilities to change a Windows file timestamp like Mooo TimeStamp or Timestamp modifier but I have found NewFileTime to be the easiest to use.
Hashcat is a free brute force attack tool (aka password cracker) to perform security audits on database password hashes or recover forgotten passwords, it is available for Linux and Windows, unlike the better known command line only dictionary attack tool John The Ripper, HashCat comes with an interface (aka GUI, Graphical User Interface). After downloading Hashcat you will need a password list (aka wordlist), you can download one from OpenWall. A common approach to recover a forgotten password is to try and guess it using dictionary words, the time to crack the password is linked to its length in bits, the most difficult to crack passwords will have been made up using a lump of special characters, punctuation signs and capital/small letters.
Brute force tool HashCat
HashCat is not only a dictionary attack tool, it can use precomputed hashes, using a pre-computed dictionary made up of hashes saves time when cracking passwords because the the words have already been converted into hashing algorithms which is how passwords are stored. This kind of brute force attack can be slowed down when cryptography uses a technique to force all password entries to be recomputed at each try, in cryptography this is called salt.
The more you know about the the password constitution the quicker it will be to crack it, HashCat lets you specify password length, you will also want to determine the hash mode, encryption software use different hashing algorithms for password storage, the algorithm used is normally found within the software technical specifications. Computer graphic cards with a processor (Graphics Processing Unit, GPU) can notably speed up password cracking efforts, HashCat takes advantage of them being able to use up to 16 GPUs. Finding out a hard to guess password out of a hashing algorithm is not easy with just a single desktop computer, when the opponent has access to supercomputers or botnets, if the passwords is weak, a couple of days might be all one needs.
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.
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.
Spywareblaster is a free program to stop spyware from being installed in your computer, instead of allowing tracking artifacts to sneak in and having to scan your hard disk to remove them, Spywareblaster stops tracking software from installing in the first place, protecting the computer against adware, browser hijacks (anchoring your homepage), malicious ActiveX scripts, tracking cookies and flash content. You can enable and disable displaying of flash content through the easy to use Spywareblaster interface, another section allows you create your own custom list of blocked ActiveX controls and another section stores a backup of the Hosts file, a file used by your operating system to resolve IP addresses to an URL, commonly tampered with by malware to redirect you to other pages, the Hosts file can be rolled back to a certain time and date if that ever happens.
Spywareblaster stops adaware
This software consumes very few computer resources and can be used in conjunction with a firewall, antivirus and other antispyware tools without any compatibility problems, it should save you time in the long term by not having to continuously scan the hard disk searching adware. Unfortunately browser support is somewhat limited to those using Internet Explorer rendering engine (Maxthon, Avant, IE, etc) and Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Chrome users have been left out, if you do most of your Internet browsing with something other than Internet Explorer or Firefox, protection will be very limited.
The necessary database updates to keep up with the latest Internet threats are only automatic in the paid for version of this program, the free version has to be updated manually which is easy to forget, I wasn’t too impressed with Spywareblaster, is not bad but I do not see this as a must have, my main grudge is the lack of support for browsers other than IE and Firefox.
