This small and simple guide lists the best FREE solutions to secure your network.
Smoothwall Express
SmoothWall Express is an open source firewall distribution based on the GNU/Linux operating system.It includes a hardened subset of the GNU/Linux operating system and is configured via a web-based GUI. Best of all….it requires absolutely no knowledge of Linux to install or use.
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition
AVG Free is an excellent free anti-virus solution. Its very easy to use, needs low system resources, features automatic update functionality and real-time protection.
Snort
Snort is an open source network intrusion prevention and detection system. It is an exceptional product that uses a rule-driven language.
Nmap
Nmap (“Network Mapper”) is a free open source utility for network exploration or security auditing. Nmap can determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics.
Nessus
Nessus is an extremely powerful vulnerability scanner.
Alternate Data Stream as a method of steganography has the following pros:
1. Its FREE!
2. Its very easy to use. Check this out.
3. You do not need ant third party tools / software.
It has the following cons:
1. No support for passwords (unless you embed password protected files)
2. Runs only on NTFS (and Microsoft says that ” Alternate data streams are strictly a feature of the NTFS file system and may not be supported in future file systems. However, NTFS will be supported in future versions of Windows NT. “)
3. Hidden data will be lost if you email the parent file or for that matter transfer it to a non NTFS partition / device.
While on the issue of Steganography, also check out steganography, the easy way… No steganography software required
Alternate data streams (ADS) are a very interesting feature of of the NTFS file system .
In this post I am giving a simple code to hide an exe in a text file and subsequrntly run the exe using a batch file. I presume you are familiar with the basics of ADS. If not click here before you proceed.
Sample code:
In this example we will hide an exe named “sanya.exe” in a text file named “tanya.txt”. Both these files are in the g drive
Step 1: Go to WinXP command prompt and type :
type g:\sanya.exe>g:\tanya.txt:sanya.exe
Step 2: To run the exe, go to WinXP command prompt and type :
start g:\tanya.txt:sanya.exe
Thats it!
For a batch file you can use start %cd%tanya.txt:sanya.exe
Note:
1. If you want to run this from a pen drive, first convert the pen drive to NTFS using convert g: /fs:ntfs
Interesting day to begin blogging!
After several years of procrastination, I finally make my debut in the world of blogging.
I started using computers when floppy disks were hard disks, very few people had heard of the Internet and the creators of Google were still in school.
Its a different world today. This blog is my humble tribute to ToGg – the Great God of Technology!
