gHacks technology news » system-scan http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Mon, 23 Nov 2009 22:22:46 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Scan And Remove Potentially Dangerous Software http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/23/scan-and-remove-potentially-dangerous-software/ http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/23/scan-and-remove-potentially-dangerous-software/#comments Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:26:14 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=10079 FreeFixer is a free software program for Microsoft Windows that will scan the computer system for potentially dangerous software. The process has been streamlined to be as unobtrusive as possible. A click on Start Scan will initiate the system scan after starting the software program.

Several important locations will be scanned in the process including running programs, browser plugins, winlogon notifications, browser helper objects, Internet Explorer toolbars or Windows Services. FreeFixer does not rate the findings which means that it is up to the user to perform further research to find out if they are dangerous or not. The software makes however use of a whitelist to remove system processes, services and other official files from the list of results to narrow down the result list to potentially dangerous ones.

Each item will be listed with its name and location, other relvant values depending on the type of item and options to lookup information about it on the Internet and to delete it.

freefixer

Results can be saved in a log file for further processing. Selected items can be fixed (that means deleted) by clicking on the Fix button in the software. It is usually a good idea to perform a search on the Internet before deleting any files from the list. Some can be excluded just by looking at their names while some do not give the slightest hint at what they are.

Freefixer makes use of a database that is located on the developers website which contains additional information about each item. One interesting aspect of the database is that it will display user actions by displaying a pie chart detailing how many users kept and removed the item from their computer system.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2009/01/23/scan-and-remove-potentially-dangerous-software/feed/ 4 Gernova Keylock http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/05/gernova-keylock/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/05/gernova-keylock/#comments Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:02:12 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=5234 Gernova Keylock is a specialized software to detect keyloggers on a system. Keyloggers are used to log user input which includes urls that the user enters as well as usernames, passwords and even information like credit card data or account numbers. The application is portable and can be run from any location.

It’s unfortunately only available in German but since it does not require lots of user input it can be valuable for non-German speakers as well. The only required input is a click on the button “Suchlauf Starten” to start the scan of the system. A check of the box below that button will perform a long scan of the system that requires a reboot.

Once started the application moves the mouse around and tests several behaviors. After a while it asks the user to input text. This happens three times to see if any of the running processes are reacting on the data input.

keylock

In the end all potentially dangerous applications are listed. The software seems to have troubles with Mozilla software because it did list several Firefox and Thunderbird files as potentially dangerous. The most dangerous files are listed at the top with their system path.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/07/05/gernova-keylock/feed/ 2 AVG Anti Rootkit free http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/05/avg-anti-rootkit-free/ http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/05/avg-anti-rootkit-free/#comments Thu, 05 Apr 2007 08:46:31 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2007/04/05/avg-anti-rootkit-free/ Rootkits received a publicity boost with Sony’s rootkit infested CDs that was supposed to be some kind of copy protection. Since then rootkits have become an ever growing threat on the Internet in line with Viruses, Trojans, Phishing and Spam. The major problem with rootkits is that most users think that their virus scanner protects them from rootkits as well which is most of the time not the case. Rootkits are much harder to detect by normal means and software that can scan systems for rootkits should be used by inexperienced users to be able to detect at least the most common ones.

AVG Anti Rootkit is a free software that scans a computer for rootkits and removes them if one or more of those have been identified. The anti rootkit application can be used to either quickly scan the computer for possible rootkits and the other to make an in depth scan which takes longer but is more thorough. The in depth scan for Rootkits takes some time depending on the amount of files and size of your hard drives.

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