I never was a great fan of programs that would hide files or information but I can see that some people might find this kind of tools useful. I can think of several reasons why someone would want to hide files in pictures; maybe it is because a file needs to be sent by email and no one that would intercept the email would find the file or a way to bypass a filter easily.

Hide in Pictures is one of those tools that lets you hide files of in bmp and gif images. The file size has to be in relation to the size of the image which means that you can’t add a 700 megabyte avi file in an 2k gif image. Double-clicking the image displays it as usual and normally most users would not suspect that a file is hidden inside the image. Bmp files seem to be better suited for this because they are usually larger than gifs by default.

continue reading "Hide Files in Pictures"

Why would you need another program to block IP addresses if you already have a firewall ? A good question that can be answered easily. Peer Guardian uses a database of bad IP addresses and blocks them automatically as soon as the IP is added to the database of blocklist.org. A single user would have to know that a new IP (range) poses a thread and add it manually to his firewall.

Peer Guardian already has many IP addresses blocked that are uses by the MPAA to spread fake torrents and record IP addresses of the peers that download the torrents. Blocklist distinguishes the following categories: ads, bogon, edu,game,gov, p2p,phishing, spam and spy. The most important category for most users will be p2p of course and a installed Peer Guardian client will make sure that your client will not connect to the fake torrent clients and IPs. (if they are in the range that is blocked)

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Normally you do not see which devices have been connected to your computer in the past. It could be interesting to say the least to find out if someone else connected a device to your computer in your absence. You have to change a value in windows using the command prompt.

Open the command prompt by pressing Windows + R, typing cmd and hitting enter. Type the following line and hit enter at the end:  set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 ; Once this is done open your device manager from the control panel and enable the option to view hidden devices in the View tab.

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USB Virus Scan is a nice little command line utility that performs predefined operations if a usb drive is connected to your computer. It is able to distinguish between various drives which means that you can add custom operations for the drives that you own and a general option for drives that are not recognized. The tool uses the volume serial number of the drives to identify them and perform the operation.

I can use the tool to start true crypt automatically when I insert my hard drive that has been encrypted by it, could start iTunes when I add my iPod and start a background virus scan if I, or someone else, connects a usb drive that is not known. Please note that the user who is adding the usb device has full control over the system which means that he could abort everything that you autostart. (like a virus scan)

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I really had troubles finding an appropriate title for this article. Windows XP displays a list of the most recent programs that you have accessed by default in the start menu. Did you know that those information are continuously updated even though the option to show them has been disabled ? A check on my personal account revealed that Windows stored information from 2005 until today.

The information are stored in the registry using a simple ROT-13 encryption. Windows XP saves the full path and name of the program, last access and the number of total executions. UserAssist is a nice little tool that decrypts the information and displays them it its main window. You can clear single entries by right-clicking and selecting clear. If you do have many entries in that list you might want to clear them all by clicking on commands, clear them all.

continue reading "Windows stores information about the programs that you use"