// archives

Security

This category contains 13 posts

Browse the web anonymously

On top of using “private browsing” or “incognito” mode, check out Tor to keep your presence anonymous over the Internet pipelines.  You can definitely use an anonymizer site, but the interface of Tor is way better. Tor offers an installer bundle or a “just-copy-and-execute” bundle.  I’ve been using it along with the Firefox add-on for [...]

Avira AntiVir Personal update failing solution

I’ve noticed the update failing more often for about a month … googling it mentioned that it was due to Avira’s server being overwhelmed.  So I was patient, updated manually each time, but it just became too tedious — tried this command, too, after reading it from a moderator in a thread in the Avira [...]

Microsoft’s forensic USB thumb drive

Here’s an interesting article on the Seattle Times website about a small plug-in device that Microsoft “quietly distributed to a handful of law-enforcement agencies.”  Dubbed the COFFEE (Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor), it contains “150 commands that can dramatically cut the time it takes to gather digital evidence, which is becoming more important in real-world [...]

Cold Boot encryption memory hack

I read an article wherein researchers from Princeton University cooled down memory to -58 degrees F which allowed them to examine the encrypted contents of the memory for as long as 10 minutes.  Microsoft, however, says its unlikely.  To be clear, encrypted data here is data that gets encrypted by apps like Vista’s BitLocker or [...]

PsTools communication errors

My friend Anthony was getting “access denied” and “logon failure” errors when trying to to run psexec (from one of the PsTools suite) from an XP machine on a domain to an XP machine in a workgroup.  It was something similar to: PsInfo 1.34 – local and remote system information viewerCopyright (C) 2001-2002 Mark RussinovichSysinternals – www.sysinternals.com [...]