"jhead"

My latest column explores a tool called "jhead". Here is the excerpt.
"Smartphones are feature packed and owned by nearly everyone in developed countries. We cannot get by with our daily lifes without them. They provide us with a pocket sized gadget to surf the World Wide Web, direct us to where we want to go via the built-in Global Positioning System (GPS)and even permit us to take videos as well as photographs on the go. The caveat of this device is that it records a lot of sensitive data about its owner by default."

"WebHTTrack"

My latest column on the "Linux" version of "HTTrack". Here is the excerpt.
"HTTrack Website Copier is aopen source tool to download an entire website from the Internet locally onto your desktop for offline browsing. It is a Windowssoftware that spawned WebHTTrack, its Linux/Unix/BSDrelease. The tool dumps and mirrors the complete contents of the source website you specify to a local directory by replicating the exact directory structure, files and links.
This is beneficial for a security practitioner who wants to perform offline security testing against a website without impacting the server hosting it ."

The latest issue of "Hakin9" also features an article by my friend, Remus Ho.

"Hb4most"

My latest column on a front-end GUI for "Foremost" and "Scalpel". Here is the excerpt.
"Scalpel and Foremost are the De facto tools harnessed to recover deleted files as evidence during Digital Forensic investigations."

"Windows Update" compromised

A lot of news recently about "Flame" and one method that the malware used to spread itself was via "Windows Update". Fascinating read.

"Secure Deletion"

My latest column on ensuring endpoint privacy using secure deletion. Here is the excerpt.
"The Internet has empowered us to do more with our electronic devices. We do everything from our taxes to shopping and sending private messages. Our devices become a hotbed of personal data that is of interest to malicious parties. Deletion of files and caching is insufficient in preventing harvesting of your information that resides on your devices. The solution is secure deletion or wiping to overwrite those files with random data to eliminate the chances of data recovery."

"Digital Forensics Platform"

My latest column on the DEFT 7 forensics environment. Here is the excerpt.
"Digital Forensics is a niche domain within Information Security. It can be further divided into System and Network Forensics. System Forensics requires an indepth knowledge of Operating Systems (OS) and file systems whilst Network Forensics requires an extensive understanding of network protocols and discernment of application behaviour."

"Secure Your DNS"

My latest and first column of the year is out. Here is the excerpt.
"Do you trust your ISP’s DNS setup? I don’t! DNS is susceptible to attack by malicious entities to target innocent victims just like any other protocol. The solution is to engage OpenDNS as your trusted DNS service which is harnessed by home and enterprise networks globally."

Common sense

Technology is never foolproof and here is an excellent example where common sense is overwhelmingly essential.
I received the highlighted link in my Gmail which wasn't marked as spam. A quick glance at the path and I knew this was obviously a ruse but I wondered why Gmail's spam detection didn't pick this up. I quickly ran the suspicious link against the scanners hosted on VirusTotal and was utterly disappointed that not a single engine was able to mark it as malicious.

"Wireshark: The Secrets of the Shark"

Rushed out 2 columns drafts ahead of schedule and Hakin9 decided to use them in consecutive issues. Here is the excerpt of the latest one.
"This column was inspired by the international screening of the Tintin movie by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. Just like Tintin, Wireshark is an international icon too. It is primarily harnessed for network troubleshooting and packet analysis but did you know that there are other applications of this powerful tool?"

v4.0

I upgraded "Firefox" to v8 and realised that it was sluggish due to configs being wiped by v3.0 of my "ubuntuprivacy" script. I modified the script as follows.

#!/bin/sh
echo "\033[0;34mProceeding to clean your system to ensure your privacy.\033[0m"
echo
echo "\033[0;31mWiping Firefox history and cache.\033[0m"
#sudo srm -rllv .mozilla/firefox/*.default/*.sqlite
sudo srm -rllv .mozilla/firefox/*.default/addons.sqlite
sudo srm -rllv .mozilla/firefox/*.default/chromeappsstore.sqlite
#sudo srm -rllv .mozilla/firefox/*.default/content-prefs.sqlite
sudo srm -rllv .mozilla/firefox/*.default/cookies.sqlite
sudo srm -rllv .mozilla/firefox/*.default/downloads.sqlite
#sudo srm -rllv .mozilla/firefox/*.default/extensions.sqlite
sudo srm -rllv .mozilla/firefox/*.default/formhistory.sqlite
sudo srm -rllv .mozilla/firefox/*.default/permissions.sqlite
#sudo srm -rllv .mozilla/firefox/*.default/places.sqlite
sudo srm -rllv .mozilla/firefox/*.default/search.sqlite
sudo srm -rllv .mozilla/firefox/*.default/urlclassifier3.sqlite
sudo srm -rllv .mozilla/firefox/*.default/webappsstore.sqlite
sudo srm -rllv .mozilla/firefox/*.default/Cache/*
echo "\033[0;32mFirefox history and cache wiped.\033[0m"
echo "\033[0;31mWiping Trash.\033[0m"
sudo srm -rllv .local/share/Trash/
echo "\033[0;32mTrash wiped.\033[0m"
echo "\033[0;31mWiping Applications history and cache.\033[0m"
sudo srm -rllv .recently-used
sudo srm -rllv .recently-used.xbel
sudo srm -rllv .thumbnails
sudo srm -rllv .macromedia/Flash_Player/#SharedObjects/*
#sudo srm -rllv .openoffice.org/*/user/temp
#sudo srm -rllv .openoffice.org/*/user/backup
sudo srm -rllv .libreoffice/*/user/temp/*
sudo srm -rllv .libreoffice/*/user/backup/*
sudo srm -rllv .purple/logs/*/*
sudo srm -rllv .xsession-errors
sudo srm -rllv .gimp-*/tmp
echo "\033[0;32mApplications history wiped.\033[0m"

#"ubuntuprivacy" written by commandrine.
#Please send comments and queries to commandrine[at]gmail[dot]com.
#Version 4.0 dated 9th Nov 2011.
#Pre-requisite is having "secure-delete" installed. Install it using "sudo apt-get install secure-delete".
#Save this script to your home folder. Run "sudo chmod +x ubuntuprivacy.sh" to make it executable.

You can also download the script from here.

"HTTPS Everywhere"

Finished this column months ahead of schedule and it was finally published in this month's issue of "Hakin9".
An excerpt of it below.
"HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox extension that was developed and is maintained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). It was first released in June 2010 and is not available from Mozilla but can be downloaded from EFF’s site (https://www.eff.org/files/https-everywhere-latest.xpi)."
I should really get started on my next column draft.