TCP/IP Utilities

The following are the IP utilities available in Windows that help in finding out the information about IP Hosts and domains. These are the basic IP commands that every beginner in the field of hacking must know!

Please note that the the term Host used in this article may also be assumed as a Website for simple understanding purpose.

1. PING

PING is a simple application (command) used to determine whether a host is online and available. PING command sends one or more ICMP “Echo message” to a specified host requesting a reply. The receiver (Target Host) responds to this ICMP “Echo message” and returns it back to the sender. This confirms that the host is online and available. Otherwise the host is said to be unavailable.

Syntax:
C:\>ping gohacking.com

2. TELNET

Telnet command is used to connect to a desired host on a specified port number. Just like a house having several doors, a host or a server has different ports running different services. For example port 80 runs HTTP, port 23 runs TELNET while port 25 SMTP. Like this there are several ports on a server through which it is possible for a remote client to establish a connection.

For a connection to be established, the port has to be open. For example, in the following command, we are trying to establish a connection with the Yahoo server on port 25.:

Syntax:
C:\>telnet yahoo.com 25
C:\>telnet yahoo.com

The default port number is 23. When the port number is not specified the default number is assumed.

NOTE: If you are using Vista or Windows 7, Telnet feature may not be available by default. To enable it, you can refer my other post: How to enable Telnet feature in Vista and Windows 7?.

3. NSLOOKUP

Many times, we think about finding out the IP address of a given site. Say for example google.com, yahoo.com, microsoft.com etc. But how to do this? There are several websites out there that can be used to find out the IP address of any given website. However, in the Windows operating itself, we have an inbuilt tool to do this job for us. It is called “nslookup”.

This tool can be used for resolving a given domain name into it’s IP address (determine the IP of a given site name). Not only this, it can also be used for reverse IP lookup. That is, if the IP address is given it determines the corresponding domain name for that IP address.

Syntax:
C:\>nslookup google.com

4. NETSTAT

The netstat command can be used to display the current TCP/IP network connections. For example, the following “netstat” command displays all the currently established connections and their corresponding listening port numbers on your computer.

Syntax:
C:\>netstat -a
Type “Ctrl+Z” to exit.

This command can be used to determine the IP address/Host names of all the applications connected to your computer. If a hacker is connected to your system even the hacker’s IP is displayed. So, the “netstat” command can be used to get an idea of all the active connections of a given system.

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Software Run the Trial Program Forever

In this post, I will show you how to hack a Software and run the trial program forever. Most of us are familiar with many software programs that run only for a specified period of time in the trial mode. Once the trial period is expired, these programs stop functioning and demand for a purchase.

However, there is a way to run the software programs so that they function beyond the trial period. Isn’t this interesting?

Well, before I tell you how to hack the software and make it run in the trial mode forever, we will have to first understand how the licensing scheme of these programs work. I’ll try to explain this in brief.

When the software programs are installed for the first time, they make an entry into the Windows Registry with the details such as Installed Date and Time, installed path etc. After the installation, every time you run the program, it compares the current system date and time with the installed date and time. With this, it can make out whether the trial period is expired or not.

So, with this being the case, just manually changing the system date to an earlier date will not solve the problem. For this purpose there is a small tool known as RunAsDate.

RunAsDate is a small utility that allows you to run a program in the date and time that you specify. This utility doesn’t change the current system date, but it only injects the date/time that you specify into the desired application.

RunAsDate intercepts the kernel API calls that returns the current date and time (GetSystemTime, GetLocalTime, GetSystemTimeAsFileTime), and replaces the current date/time with the date/time that you specify. It works with Windows 2000, XP, 2003, Vista and 7.

You can download RunAsDate from the following link:

Download RunAsDate

NOTE: FOLLOW THESE TIPS CAREFULLY:

You will have to follow these tips carefully to successfully hack a software and make it run in it’s trial mode forever:

1. Note down the date and time, when you install the software for the first time.
2. Once the trial period expires, you must always run the software using RunAsDate.
3. After the trial period is expired, do not run the software(program) directly. If you run the software directly even once, this hack may no longer work.
4. It is better and safe to inject the date of the last day in the trial period.

For example, if the trial period expires on jan 30 2009, always inject the date as jan 29 2009 in the RunAsDate. I hope this helps! Please express your experience and opinions through comments.

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C Program to Print it’s Own Source Code

Ever wondered how to write a C program that can print it’s own source code. Well, here is the source code of a C program that when executed will print it’s own source code. In other words, the output of this program is exactly same as it’s source code.

Here’s the program:

#include

char *program=”#include%cchar *program=%c%s%c;%cvoid main()%c{%cprintf(program,10,34,program,34,10, 10,10,10);%c}”;

void main()
{
printf(program,10,34,program,34,10,10,10,10);
}

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Identify Safe Websites On the Internet

On the whole Internet, there are approximately more than 150 million active websites up and running. As a result, it often becomes a real challenge for the users to identify safe websites that are trustworthy and reputed.

Have you ever wondered to know the reputation of a website before placing the order? Need to know whether a given website is child safe? Well, here are some of the ways to identify safe websites on the Web.

1. WOT or Web Of Trust (www.mywot.com):

WOT is a great place to test the reputation of your favorite website. WOT gives real-time ratings for every website based on the feedback that it gets from millions of trustworthy users across the globe and trusted sources, such as phishing and malware blacklists. Each domain name is evaluated based on this data and ratings are applied to them accordingly.

• Trustworthiness signifies the overall safety of the website. A poor rating may indicate that the site is associated with threats like Internet scams, phishing, identity theft risks and malware. For more information on phishing, you may refer my other post on how to identify and avoid phishing scams.
• Vendor reliability tells you whether a given site is safe for carrying out buy and sell transactions with it. An excellent rating indicates superior customer satisfaction while a poor rating indicates possible scam or bad shopping experience.
• Privacy indicates about “to what extent the site respects the privacy of it’s users and protects their personal identity and data”.
• Child Safety indicates whether the content of a given site is appropriate for children. Site contents like sexual material, nudity and vulgarity will have a poor Child Safety rating.

In most cases, the WOT ratings are found to be highly accurate. To check the reputation of any given website, just visit www.mywot.com type-in the address of your favorite website and click on “Check now”. This tool alone can tell you a lot about the reputation and safety level of a website. However, in addition to this, I am giving you another 3 handy tools to identify safe websites on the Web.

2. McCafee SiteAdvisor:

McCafee SiteAdvisor is a free tool that is available as a browser add-on. It adds safety ratings to your browser and search engine results. You can download it from www.siteadvisor.com.

3. StopBadware:

Using this tool, you can check whether a given site is said to have involved in malware activity in the past. To check this, go to SB Website Clearinghouse and enter the URL or domain name of a website and click on “Search Clearinghouse ”. You will see the result something as shown below:

If you see a Red or Yellow icon (as shown in the above snapshot) next to the search result, that means the site currently involves in some kind of malware activity. If you see an uncolored icon, that means the site was once involved in such activity in the past, but not now.

If the search does not return any result, that means the site was never involved in any of the malware activity in the past.

Even though StopBadware is a great option, this factor alone cannot be taken as a serious indicator to measure the reputation of a website. Many legitimate websites are also found to have been flagged due to hackers uploading malicious scripts and other bad content by compromising the site’s security.

4. Google Pagerank:

Google PageRank is another great tool to check the reputation and popularity of a website. The PageRank tool rates every web page on a scale of 1 to 10 which indicates Google’s view of importance of the page. If a given website has a PageRank of less than 3, then it is said to be less popular among the other sites on the Internet.

However, PageRank will only tell you how much popular a given website is and has nothing to do with the safety level of a website. So, this tool alone cannot be used to evaluate a website’s safety and other factors.

PageRank feature is available as a part of Google Toolbar. You can download the Google Toolbar and install it to avail this feature.

I hope you like this article. Waiting for your comments…

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HOSTS File to Block or Redirect Unwanted Websites

What is a hosts File?

The hosts file is just like any other computer file that is used by the operating system to map hostnames and domain names on to their corresponding IP addresses.

In other words, when you type “google.com” on your browser’s address bar, your computer will look for the hosts file to see if it contains the corresponding IP address for the domain name you typed (google.com). In case if no entry is present in the hosts file, the request is then passed on to the DNS (Domain Name System) server to obtain the IP address.

hosts File vs. DNS

When it comes to resolving the hostnames, the hosts file is given the first priority over the Domain Name System. In most cases, the hosts file remains unconfigured on the operating system and hence the DNS is used by the computer to resolve the domain names to their corresponding IP addresses.

However, if the hosts file is found to contain a valid entry for a given hostname or domain name, then this is picked up and used by the operating system.

Where is the hosts File Located?

Windows: In case of the Windows operating system, the hosts file is located at:

%systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

NOTE: In most cases this should be: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Unix/Linux: In case of Linux it is located at:

/etc/hosts

How to Block a Website?

To block a specific website, all you have to do is just add a new entry for that site in the hosts file. I would prefer to backup the original file and create a new one instead of modifying it. So, if something goes wrong, you can just delete it and restore the original one! Well, here is a step-by-step procedure on how to create a new hosts file on Windows:

1. Go to “My Computer” and you should see the “Menu bar” on top. In case of Vista and Win 7, just click “Alt” to unhide the “Menu bar”.
2. Now in the menu bar, click on “Tools -> Folder Options”. In the “View” tab uncheck the option that says: “Hide extensions for known file types” and click on “OK”.
   
   
   
   
   
3. Open a new text pad (New Text Document.txt) and rename it to: hosts. You will get a pop-up message with a warning. Just click on “Yes”.
   Please note that the renamed file hosts should not have any extension such as hosts.txt.
4. Open the hosts file using the notepad. Now let us assume that you want to block the sites Facebook and Youtube on your computer. For this all you have to do is add the following lines to your hosts file:
   127.0.0.1       facebook.com
   127.0.0.1       www.facebook.com
   127.0.0.1       youtube.com
   127.0.0.1       www.youtube.com
   
   Each entry should be placed on an individual line. The IP address and the hostname should be separated by a space or a tab. In this way, you can block any given website by just pointing it to the IP address 127.0.0.1.
5. Navigate to %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc. Here you should see the original hosts file, rename it to hosts_bak. Just copy and paste the new hosts file that you have created. That’s it. You’ve now successfully blocked those websites from loading on your computer.
   If you are using Vista/Win 7 you may have to take ownership of the original hosts file before renaming it.

How to Redirect a Website?

Suppose you want to redirect Friendster.com to Google.com, all you have to do is just add the following lines to your hosts file:

74.125.236.72       friendster.com
74.125.236.72       www.friendster.com

Here 74.125.236.72 is the IP address of Google.com. To find out the IP address of any given website, just go to command prompt and ping it. For example: ping google.com. You should get a ping response that displays the IP address as shown below:

From now on, whenever you type “friendster.com” on your browser, you will be redirected to “google.com”.

How does a hosts File work?

Whenever you block a website using the hosts file, you point it to the IP address 127.0.0.1 which in fact is the IP address of your own computer. In other words, the IP 127.0.0.1 points to your own computer and doesn’t exist outside.

So, whenever you type the URL of a website for which an entry is present in the hosts file, your computer will load the IP as 127.0.0.1 instead of the actual one and tries to establish a connection with this IP address (127.0.0.1) but fails. As a result the website doesn’t load at all.

The redirection of the website works by pointing the domain name of one website to the IP address of another website (as configured by the hosts file) instead of it’s original IP address. So, whenever you type friendster.com, it is pointed to Google.com’s IP address and thus, the Google page loads up instead of the actual page from friendster.com.

How to Block the Annoying Ads?

I have found a great solution to keep all the annoying ads, banners, pop-ups and other parasites at bay by using a pre-configured hosts called MVPS hosts file. This hosts file contains a long list of entries to block all those annoying ads and pop-ups that usually load while you are surfing the Internet. You can also receive regular updates on this to stay up-to-date. You can download MVPS hosts file from the link below:

Download MVPS hosts

If you are playing around with the hosts file and something goes wrong, just delete the hosts file itself and rename the original file from hosts_bak to hosts. This should bring back everything to normal. I hope you like my post after a long gap. 

Waiting for your comments.

1. 
   

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Ownership of Files and Folders in Windows 7

If you are a Windows 7 user, then you are most likely to be aware of the fact that you need to TAKE OWNERSHIP of files and folders before you can make any changes to them. This feature was introduced first in Windows Vista and later in Windows 7 in order to prevent any unauthorized changes from being made to the system files.

However, it can be little annoying to follow a long list of procedure every time you want to take ownership of a certain file or folder. So, to make this job simpler, I have found a nice tool called Take Ownership Shell Extension which adds the “Take Ownership” option to the Windows context menu itself. This makes taking ownership too simple and requires no more than a click.

 Just run the portable tool kit and click on the “Install” button. This will add the “Take Ownership” option onto the context menu. To take ownership of a file or folder, all you need to do is just right-click on it and click the option “Take Ownership“.

In case if you wish to uninstall this tool at any time, you can just run the tool again and click on the ”Uninstall” button. I hope you like this tool. This works on both Windows 7 and Windows Vista. You can download it from the following link.

Download Take Ownership Shell Extention

How to take the Ownership Manually?

In case if you are interested to know how to take the ownership manually, here is how you can do that:

1. Right-click the file or folder on which you want to take the ownership and then click on Properties.
2. Now go to the Security tab, click on Advanced button and then click the Owner tab.
3. Now, click on Edit and do the following:
   • Under the “Change owner to:” section, select the user or group to which you would like to grant the permissions and then click on the OK button.
   • If the user or the group to which you would like to grant permissions is not listed under the Change owner to: section, just click on Other users and groups and, under Enter the object name to select (examples), type the name of the user or group, and then click OK.
4. Now you should get the confirmation dialog box stating that the ownership is granted.

I hope this post has helped you!

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Rename Windows XP Start Menu Button

Ever wondered to know how to change the look and feel of your old boring start menu? Are you bored of having the name “start”? Would you like to rename it? Well, here is an answer!

This guide will show you how to edit/rename the Windows XP start menu button so that you can give it any name of your choice. Here is a step-by-step guide:

STEP 1: BYPASSING WINDOWS FILE PROTECTION

1. Launch “My Computer”, click on Tools -> Folder options -> View.
2. Select show all hidden files and folders option and uncheck the option hide protected operating system files. Also uncheck the option hide extention for known file types.
3. Go to C:\windows\system32\restore, select the file filelist.xml, right click it, go to properties and uncheck the option read-only.
4. Open it (filelist.xml) with notepad.
5. Add the line %systemroot%\explorer.exe as shown below and save the file:
   
   %systemroot%\explorer.exe
   %windir%\system.ini
   %windir%\tasks\desktop.ini
   %windir%\win.ini
   *:\AUTOEXEC.BAT
   *:\CONFIG.MSI
   *:\CONFIG.SYS
6. Go to C:\windows\system32\dllcache, you will find a backup copy of explorer.exe. Rename it to explorer.bak.

STEP 2: CHANGING THE NAME OF START BUTTON

1. Using the Resource Hacker tool, open the file explorer.exe located at C:\windows.
2. Expand string, expand 37, click on 1033.
3. On right side, rename ”start” to anything you want. For ex. “Hello!” and press “compile script”.
4. Repeat the same procedure for string 38, 1033.
5. Save changes in file menu (if error occurs close explorer.exe and repeat sub-step 3 and 4).
6. Restart your computer. After the restart, you can see the changes. Enjoy!

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How to Enable Telnet Feature in Vista and Windows 7

Most of you may be familiar with the telnet command. It is one of the well known Windows IP Utilities. If you are using a Windows XP computer, the telnet command is available by default. However, in case of Vista and Windows 7, the telnet command is disabled by default.

So when you try to use the telnet command in Windows Vista/7 you get the following error message:

‘telnet’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

You get this error because unlike Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 have the telnet feature disabled by default. So, in order to fix this issue, you will have to manually enable/turn on the telnet feature.

Here is a step-by-step procedure to turn on the telnet feature in Vista and Windows 7:

1. Go to the Control Panel.
2. Click on the sub heading “Uninstall a program” under the main heading Programs.
   NOTE: IF you are in the Classic View click on Programs and Features.
3. In the left panel under the Tasks select the option Turn Windows features on or off.
4. Now, a new window will open up. In this new window, select the following options:
   Telnet Client
   Telnet Server (optional)
5. After selecting click on OK.

Now, wait for few minutes till the telnet feature is installed. Once the telnet feature is installed you can go to the command prompt and use the telnet command. System restart is not required.

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How to Change the ICON of an EXECUTABLE file

Some times it becomes necessary to change the icon of an executable (.exe) file so that the file get’s a new appearance. Many of the tools such as TuneUP Winstyler does this job by adjusting the Windows to display a custom icon to the user. But, in reality if the file is carried to a different computer, then it shows it’s original icon itself.

This means that in order to permanently change the icon, it is necessary to modify the executable file and embed the icon inside the file itself. When this is done the executable file’s icon is changed permanently, so that even if you take file to a different computer it show’s a new icon.

For this purpose I have found a nice tool which will modidify the executable file and embed the icon of your choice into the file itself. ie: The tool changes the icon of the executable file permanently.

I will give you a step-by-step instruction on how to use this tool to change the icon:

1. Go to www.shelllabs.com and download the trial version of IconChanger and install it (Works on XP, Vista and Win 7).
2. Run the IconChanger program from Start -> All Programs and you should see an interface as shown below:
   
   
   3. Now you will see a window stating that “Choose an object whose icon you want to change”. Click on the “OK” button.
   4. Now select the executable file for which you wish to change the icon.
   5. Icon changer will automatically search for all the icons on your “C:\ drive” so that you can select any one of those. If your desired icon is not shown in the window, you may paste the path of your icon file in the field which says “Search icons in” so that your desired icon gets displayed.
   6. Select the ICON of your choice and click on Set button.
   7. Now a popup window will appear and ask you to select from either of these two options.
      • Change embeded icon.
      • Adjust Windows to display custom icon.
   8. Select the first option (Change embedded icon). You are done. The icon get’s changed.
   I hope you like this post. Pass your comments in case if you have any queries or clarifications.
   
   

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How to Completely Erase a Hard Disk Drive

A new year has begun and perhaps you have decided to perform a system upgrade or get rid of your old computer system and purchase a new one. But, before you sell or donate your old computer, it is very much necessary to completely erase your hard disk drive.

Yes, every one of us are aware of this fact and so, we delete the contents of the hard disk either by using the DELETE key on our keyboard or by Formatting the hard disk.

Deleting and Formatting – Just Not Secure Enough

But the fact is, the data will still be on the hard disk even after deleting it or formatting the hard disk. Using the delete key on your keyboard will only remove the shortcuts to the files making them invisible to users. Deleted files still reside on the hard drive and a quick Google search will show many options for system recovery software will allow anyone to reinstate that data.

Formatting the hard drive is a bit more secure way to erase the hard disk. Formatting a disk will not erase the actual data on the disk but only the address tables pointing to the data are dropped. It makes it much more difficult to recover the files. However, a computer specialist would be able to recover most or all the data that was on the disk before the reformat. For those who accidentally reformat a hard disk, being able to recover most or all the data that was on the disk is a good thing. However, if you’re preparing a system for retirement to charity or any other organization, this obviously makes you more vulnerable to data theft.

Erasing the Hard Disk through DISK WIPING:

So it is necessary for us to use a 100 percent secure way to erase the data from the hard disk drive. This way of securely erasing the data is called Disk Wiping. Disk wiping is a secure method of ensuring that data, including company and individually licensed software on your computer and storage devices is irrecoverably deleted before recycling or donating the equipment. Because previously stored data can be brought back with the right software and applications, the disk wiping process will actually overwrite your entire hard drive with data, several times. Once you format you’ll find it all but impossible to retrieve the data which was on the drive before the overwrite. The more times the disk is overwritten and formatted the more secure the disk wipe is.

There are a variety of disk wiping products available that you can purchase, or freely downloaded online to perform more secure disk wipes. One of my favorite disk wiping software is:

WipeDrive/ WipeDrive Professional

You have to use this tool by burning the iso image file onto a CD or by using a floppy disk. After burning this tool you have to boot your PC and follow the screen instructions to completely wipe out the data from your hard disk drive.

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