Windows offers you the option to encrypt files in other drives and many people prefer encrypting their files for security reasons. This option should be the preferred one for all computer users but they should also know about the downside of encrypting files.

Once you reformat your system, install fresh Windows then the files which you encrypted using the Windows installed before reformatting won’t work with the freshly installed windows. Yes, the files encrypted with one OS won’t work with other installations of the same operating system.

So next time before you re-install windows remember to decrypt the encrypted files else no decryption algorithm will be able to help you.

The port forwarding tester is a utility used to identify your external IP address and detect open ports on your connection. This tool is useful for finding out if your port forwarding is setup correctly or if your server applications are being blocked by a firewall. It is important to note that some ports, such as port 25, are often blocked at the ISP level in an attempt to prevent malicious activity.

This tool could be used to find if some important ports which must be closed are open in your system. Remember that unwanted opened ports are like opened doors from where a hacker can easily enter your computer for any activity which you wouldn’t have scripted for ever.

Fortunately all my ports were closed for the current external IP address.

YouGetSignal

Andreas Clementi, who runs the web site av-comparatives.org, has released his latest report that looks at how well antivirus programs do against threats that have not yet been identified and included in standard AV signatures. The test looked at 17 different products, including offerings from Symantec, McAfee, AVG, Kaspersky, and Microsoft, and tested how well releases dated February 2 (with no updates) fared against a swath of new malware—viruses, scripts, trojans, and other nasties—that were discovered between February 2 and May 2. Here I present a small summary of the same:

Tested Products:

Avast! Professional Edition 4.7
AVG Anti-Malware 7.5
AVIRA AntiVir Personal Edition Premium 7.03
BitDefender Professional Plus 10
Dr.Web for Windows 95-XP 4.33.2
eScan Anti-Virus 8.0
ESET NOD32 Anti-Virus 2.70.23
Fortinet FortiClient 3.0
F-Prot for Windows 6.0.5.1
F-Secure Anti-Virus 7.01
G DATA AntiVirusKit (AVK) 17.0
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6.0.2
McAfee VirusScan 11.1
Microsoft OneCare 1.5
Norman Virus Control 5.82
Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 14.0
TrustPort Antivirus Workstation 2.5

If you plan to buy an Anti-Virus, please visit the vendor’s site and evaluate their software by downloading a trial version, as there are also many other features (e.g. firewall, behavior blocker, etc.) and important things (e.g. compatibility, graphical user interface, language, price, etc.) for an Anti-Virus that you should evaluate by yourself. Even if quite important, the data provided in the test reports on this site are just some aspects that you should consider when buying Anti-Virus software.

Test Results:

[click on images to enlarge them]

Summary Results:

Overall, the tests seem to indicate that for dealing with malware, the two leading programs (McAfee and Norton) are quite firmly in the middle of the pack in terms of effectiveness, and Microsoft evidently has some work to do to bring OneCare up to the level of its competitors.

The PDF version could be downloaded from here.

This guide is to give you some tips, of which you may not have heard yet, and these can be useful to be on safer side when it comes to protecting yourself from hackers. Hopefully, it won’t come to a hacker getting in, but if it does…CompuWorld should NOT be held responsible

Tip 1: Hackers cover their tracks. Experienced hackers cover them more thoroughly, but amateur hackers sometimes leave things behind. Don’t expect them to leave any really big evidence behind; expect more of little things here and there you might find surprising. For example, if you’re writing a term paper and a black hat hacker accidentally saved it when he took a paragraph out- that’s suspicious. Where did that paragraph go? Well, for one thing, now you know he was in that area. Check the folders surrounding the file- you might find something.

Tip 2: Decipher between the type of hackers that are attacking you. Experienced hackers will have a more in depth look around when they penetrate your system. They won’t touch much because they know that that won’t add too much to their knowledge. But if you know a hacker’s been in, and some files are messed with, and you have a log of someone guessing passwords to a file or something of that sort, its probably some newbie who’s just starting out. These are the easiest hackers to catch. They usually get so caught up in thoughts like “I’m in!” that they forget the basics, such as work behind a proxy.

Real Life Example
My friend was setting up a webserver once. His first time too, and he wasn’t to anxious to set up some good software to protect against hackers and viruses. He didn’t put up one IDS, and before you know it, the obvious happened. But this time, a newbie had struck. The nice log files showed, bluntly across the screen, multiple instances of a foreign IP address that stood out. Some stupid newbie had tried to login as “uucp” on my friend’s XP computer, with a password of “uucp.” Well, that’s great, but he also had tried the same user/pass combination three times, enough to get himself logged nicely. Even a semi-brainless user with some form of neurological system knows that uucp isn’t a default XP account. Again, excitement toiled this hacker’s brain, and maybe if he hadn’t done that, along with a few other stupid things, he wouldn’t have gotten caught. What other things did he do? Well, lets see. He opened 35 instances of MS-DOS. He tried to clean the printer’s heads, and he edited a .gif in notepad. Then he uninstalled a few programs and installed some html editor, and replaced four files with the words “14P.” he might as well have posted his phone number. In a few days, we had tracked him down to suburban town in Ohio. We let him go, not pressing any charges, because he had done nothing really damaging and had provided me with an example of a moron for this guide.

Tip 3: Don’t go crazy if you lose data. Chances are, if it was that important, you would have backed it up anyway. Most hackers nowadays wish they were back in 1989 when they could use a Black Box and having a Rainbow Book actually meant something. Most hackers aren’t blackhat, they are whitehat, and some even greyhat. But in the end, most hackers that are in systems aren’t satisfied by looking around. From past experiences, I have concluded that many hackers like to remember where have they been. So, what do they do? They either press delete here and there, or copy some files onto their systems. Stupid hackers (yes, there are plenty of stupid hackers) send files to e-mail addresses. Some free email companies will give you the IP of a certain e-mail address’s user if you can prove that user has been notoriously hacking you. But most of the time, by the time you get the e-mail ID it’s been unused for weeks if not months or years, and services like hotmail have already deleted it

Tip 4: Save information! Any information that you get from a log file (proxy server IP, things like “14P”, e-mail addresses that things were sent to, etc.) should be saved to a floppy disk (they’re not floppy anymore, I wish I could get out of the habit of calling them that) in case there’s a next time. If you get another attack, from the same proxy, or with similar e-mail addresses (e.g: one says Blackjack 123@something.whatever and the other says Black_jack_45@something.znn.com) you can make an assumption that these hackers are the same people. In that case, it would probably be worth the effort to resolve the IP using the proxy and do a traceroute. Pressing charges is recommended if this is a repeat offender.

Tip 5: Don’t be stupid. If you’ve been hacked, take security to the next level. Hackers do talk about people they’ve hacked and they do post IPs and e-mail addresses. Proof? Take a look at Defcon Conventions. I’ve never gone to one, but I’ve seen the photos. The “Wall of Shame”-type of boards I’ve seen have IPs and e-mail addresses written all over them in fat red, dry-erase ink. Don’t be the one to go searching the Defcon website and find your e-mail address posted on the Wall of Shame board!

Tip 6: Don’t rely on luck. Chances are, sometime or another, you’re going to be targeted for an attack. Here you can rely on luck. Maybe they’ll forget? Maybe they don’t know how to do it? If you think this way, a surprise is going to hit your face very hard. Another way you could stupidly rely on luck is by saying this: It’s probably just a whitehat. On the contrary, my friend, it’s probably just a blackhat. A blackhat with knowledge stored in his head, ready to be used as an ax. It’s your data. You take the chance.

Try these links to learn some of the terms which were too goofy for your ears…
White Hat Hacker
Black Hat Hacker
Grey Hat Hacker
Traceroute

[hacking tips article via Computer and Sofwares]

[Click here to see the Original Video]

Have you been curious about the paypal’s security key lately? Here we have a video for you which explains the ifs and buts of paypal security key, bundled with silly jokes on AIDS. Have a look and decide yourself if it was worth some view?