You might have already ready about Windows Alternate Data Streams (also known as System Forks on other operating systems) which are supported by most Windows operating systems that use NTFS (New Technology File System). Alternate Data Streams can contain any kind of information including textual, visual and executable. Malicious users can take advantage of the fact that the size of the additional content is not added to the size of the file in a directory listing. A 10 Kilobyte image will still show a size of 10 Kilobyte if someone else adds a 1 Megabyte executable to it.

Basically anything can be added to an existing file (and directory) which brings up an interesting method of hiding important data on the system. Say you want to keep your passwords on the computer but do not want to use a text document to have them in the open. Using Alternate Data Streams to hide them from prying eyes could be a relative secure method of storing the password list on the computer.

They are detectable if the right software is being used. Windows Vista users can also use the dir *.txt /R which is further explained at Bart De Smet’s on-line blog.

continue reading "Hide Information in Files"

Much like images that have been created with digital cameras Word documents contain hidden meta data that contain information about the author of the document. It can also contain additional information like comments and remarks, previous authors or revisions. While that is normally not a problem for the author because most recipients do not care or know that those information are available it can become a problem in some cases.

The most notable is that it is a privacy issue for the author of the document. I would not feel comfortable if I had to publish a document on the Internet that would contain information about me. The information could also be used by someone else to find out if you are the real author of the document.

Microsoft’s Remove Hidden Data tool for Office 2003 and Office XP is an add-in that provides the user with an option to remove that meta data from the documents. The application that created the document has to be installed to make this work though. I’m not sure if it is backwards compatible but it seems to be logical that it should be.

continue reading "Remove Hidden Data tool for Office 2003 and Office XP"

Each user account in Windows is connected to a user profile that defines several important parameters like the types of applications that are available for that user, information about files and shortcuts on the desktop, visual settings like screen size, network and printer connections, wallpapers and data like the Internet cache.

From an administrator’s point of view lots of things that can be altered in a way that make the computer or part of it unusable for that user. This can happen in a family that is sharing a computer as well if someone who is not that proficient with computers changes certain settings all the time or likes to “tweak” settings to optimize the computer.

There is a very easy way to prevent users of a computer to change the settings in their user profile permanently. They can still change everything but those settings will only be temporarily changed.

continue reading "Prevent User Profile Changes on Windows NT Systems"

Can you tell me how many hours your hard disk or Solid State Disk has been running and how many times it has been powered on since you started using it in your computer ? My Samsung 1 TB hard drive was powered on 106 times and active for 814 hours since I build my new computer a few months ago.

How I know that ? I looked it up in the software Crystal Disk Info. This software basically displays all kind of information about hard drives and Solid State Disks and two that are not displayed in every other of that type are the two I mentioned above.

It does display all the usual information as well. Begins with the hard disk temperature, serial number, transfer mode, drive letters and supported features among other parameters. Two of the aforementioned parameters are worth a closer look if you are experiencing crashes or slow downs.

continue reading "How many hours have your hard disks been running ?"

There are to many image resizers in this world. I think that’s a statement that I would immediately sign. If you develop a new image resizer you will have to offer additional features and value that others do not provide. Imgares comes with a few that are not that common. But first things first. The software supports batch resizing of images that can be dragged and dropped into the program interface. Users who prefer to browse for their files can do that as well.

The images are then shown as thumbnails in the left pane of the application and the user can tweak a few settings before he hits the start button. It’s possible to rotate the images, select an output folder and chose if the images should be reduced by percentage or constant values. It is also possible to change the output format to another image format.

The functions described above are supported by most, if not all, image resizers on earth. The additional features that might make Imgares interesting to some users are the following:

continue reading "Imgares Drag and Drop Image Resizing"