How Different Internet Browsers Update themselves

Importance of Internet Browser Updates

Internet Browsers are the windows through which your computer can see and interact with outside world. It is highly important to protect it with a shield, which can safeguard your security from the dangers of outside world. And browser updates are like enhancing the effectiveness of these protective shields.

Running the latest updated Internet browser is the single most important step you can take towards ensuring your security on the web. I have seen many people not taking any pain for updating their browsers. They think it as the waste of their time.

Please DO NOT overlook it. No other task is as important as updating your browser. Yes, believe it.

The mechanism of Browser Update

There are hundreds of Internet Browsers used by people depending upon their choices, requirements and preferences. But the most common are only 4-5 like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Google Chrome. Each of them uses a different mechanism for the update. But the effectiveness of the mechanism depends upon how less the user is involved in the process of update.

How Google Chrome Updates itself: And the winner is Google Chrome, because of its unique update component code-named Omaha, which keeps polling for updates even when Google Chrome is not running. Once a new update is found to be available on the server, the client automatically downloads and installs it in the background without prompting the user.

The new version of Google Chrome gets applied at the next restart of the browser. The user is not even prompted to restart the browser after a new update was ready. Given that the whole update process happens without any user interruption, Google Chrome is said to have a “silent update” mechanism. As of April 2009, the user could not disable update checks. A manual update can be initiated by choosing “About Google Chrome” in Google Chrome’s settings menu.

How Mozilla Firefox Updates itself: Web browser checks for updates periodically in a frequent schedule while the browser is running. The user can also check for updates manually with the menu command “Help” – “Check for Updates …”. When and how often Mozilla Firefox checks for updates can be set by typing “about:config” in the address bar.

safariHow Apple Safari Updates itself: It is updated through Apple’s “Software Update” service integrated in OS X, which also takes care of other system and application updates. The user can choose to check for updates daily, weekly, monthly or not at all. When updates are available, the user is prompted to initiate the downloads and get them installed.

operaHow Opera Updates itself: Opera Web browser, by default, checks for updates every week and notifies the user when a new update is available. A user choosing to update his browser is then forwarded to the Opera download Web site, where the update follows the same procedure as if the user were to install Opera for the first time. This update procedure requires serious user activity.

How Microsoft Internet Explorer updates itself: IE Web browser gets updated through the Automatic Updates service integrated in the Windows operating system.

How to Delete Web Browser History with Wipe 2.35

Web browsers is the weakest link in your computer with which your Internet Security can be compromised. It is understandable also, because it is the place, where your computer interacts with the outside world.

Importance of Web Browser History

Web browsers remember your browsing history. They keep a record of the websites, where you have visited, they know where you clicked. They use this data to customize your browsing experience and make it faster to surf the web depending upon your browsing history. This way, browsing history is an itegral part on any internet browser and add to the convenience of the user.

But, this data also reveals a lot about your personality; your preferences, your choices and sometimes sensitive pieces of information about your financial positions etc. This data, if landing in the hands of wrong persons, can potentially do a lot bad things to you. So, taking appropriate actions to safeguard your web browsing history is an important aspect.

How to Delete Web Browser History?

Every Web Browser has its own set of menu and settings. And the settings to delete your browser’s history is sometimes not so obvious. Many of the users, who are aware of the importance of clearing their web browsing history while working on a public computer, doesn’t know exactly how to delete their browser history and so overlook it.

Wipe 2.35 is a neat utility just for them.

Wipe 2.35 is a free, easy and powerful tool to clear user browsing history, clean index.dat files, remove cookies, cache, logs, delete temporary internet files, autocomplete search history and any other tracks that user leaves after using PC.

Wipe supports clearing tracks in Windows Xp and Vista, in the most popular browsers (IE, FireFox, Opera, Chrome), and in many other program that you use. Every month new version comes that help Wipe recognize and clear tracks in newly released software.

And the best part is that is it 100% clean.

Download Wipe 2.35

How to synchronize files

If your online life is divided at different locations; like office and home, you may be wanting to synchronize different files and folders, which are located at your office computer, your home PC, your laptop and your USB drives.

There are many options. Simple copy and paste. But that is too crude.

A few freeware like Allway Sync etc. They are nice but, somehow, I am always skeptical of using third party software.

Now Microsoft has released latest version of SyncToy 2.0 beta for letting you synchronize your files. It is free and comes from a trustworthy source like Microsoft. And so, I like it. With this, you can easily copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers so as to achieve perfect synchronization

Test Computer for Installed KeyLoggers

Apart from Phishing, Keyloggers are one of the key factors contributing to the rise of cases of Identity theft in recent times. Keyloggers are not the old hardware types anymore, which could easily be spotted by a careful visual inspection of your computer wires and cables.

Today’s keyloggers are smart. They have the capabilities to hide themselves deep into your software applications and operate from there. And they are easy to install and control for a remote person, thanks to some careless attitude of many of the victims.

How to check, if your computer already has a Keylogging Software installed?

Many of the Security Software suites available today are able to detect most of the common keylogging software. As soon as some keylooger is attempted to be installed on your system, your security suite warns you about that and you can take appropriate action.

But, are you sure that your security software is capable of identifying keylogging activities? There is a simple test software available from Zemana, which lets you simulate a keylogger on your computer. You can download it absolutely free and run it on your computer. If your security software is able to detect it, then you may be confident about the effectiveness of that against keyloggers, otherwise it is time to have a second look at your choice of security software.

My Testing of Zemana

I have been using Norton 360 on my Laptop and it was not able to intercept this keylogging simulator software. But at the same time, I am also using KeyScrambler, which encrypts the data you enter through your keyboard. I was happy to note that all the text, which Zemana Keylogging Simulator could cpature was the encrypted text and not the actual keystrokes.

Thus, KeyScrambler was actually performing its job quite effectively and I was protected against such Keylogging activities.

Nice tool, and I recommend you to give it a try to test, if any keylogger is installed onto your system. You never know, when huge surprise start staring on your face.

Download Zemana Keylogging Simulator Test

UltraVPN – Free VPN Service for Blocked Sites

There are many forms of Internet censorship. Many a times, a corporate environment, a schools administrations or University IT department blocks the use of certain websites to enable them to restrict the use of Internet. Many a times the IT department blocks the use of chat clients like MSN and Yahoo thinking that they are a big time wasters and affect the productivity of their employees.

Besides that, there are many users, which are overly concerned about their privacy while using Internet and want to hide as many details as possible including their IP and other details.

If you are also working in such an environment and want to access blocked websites, or you want to hide your IP while browsing over Internet, then you may consider using Virtual Private Network, or VPN services. There are lots of VPN services available on Internet using different mode of operations. Some of them are free, while others are paid solution.

UltraVPN is one such Free VPN Service.

What is UltraVPN

UltraVPN is a client/server SSL VPN solution based on OpenVPN. It works by encrypting and anonymizing your network connection. You have to register first on their website and then you can download the free VPN client absolutely free. It simply sits on your system tray. Whenever you want your browsing session to be secured and encrypted, you can just right click it and choose “connect” to use this free VPN service.

Your browsing data passes through the secured servers of UltraVPN, and your privacy is protected.

Is UltraVPN Secure

There are always concerns about the sharing your private browsing data with a third party. However, UltraVPN is an open source applications, which ensures that you can be sure about the source code of the application. However, you have to generate and keep faith in them about the security of your private data, when using this useful free VPN service.

There is yet another concern about the speed of your browsing, because now there is another layer between you and your target webpage. It depends on user to user, and you are advised to keep this factor in mind while opting to use it.

[Download UltraVPN]

Crack, Recover or Remove Lost or Forgotten Password in Excel

Passwords are your key to security. We have often advised against the use of weak passwords and not to repeat them at different websites and applications. But using strong passwords has its own inconveniences and hassles.

There are many instances when you may need to crack or recover a lost or forgotten passwords. For instance, an employee might have just left your company and that important client spreadsheet created by him last Friday had a password only known to him. Or you yourself had a locked an important Excel file with a strong password and you are not remembering it just because it is already six months back. Orone of your family members has put a not-so-easy password on your important file.

Or may be, you just want to break the Excel password of a colleague’s file.

We just found a nice tool to crack or recover passwords from Microsoft Excel Files with ease.Petri IT Knowledgebase Team has come out with an Excel Password recovery, which does the job of cracking Excel Passwords in a few clicks.

They have a useful step-by-step guide to help you out for recovering excel passwords. This guide outlines how to use a simple Excel password recovery application to crack lost or forgotten passwords, allowing you to unlock password-encrypted Microsoft Excel documents quickly as possible.

How To Publish an ASP.NET Website from a Command Line

To test the tools which we develop on the team, at times I need to build a website and publish it. I use a simple way of publishing websites from the command line that saves me a LOT of time so thought I would share it.

Launch notepad and copy paste the code below and save it as Publish.cmd file. Run visual studio command prompt (as administrator) and run the publish.cmd.



1: @ECHO OFF

2: set WEB_ROOT=C:\inetpub\wwwroot\mytestsite

3: set PROJECT_ROOT=D:\Source\website

4:

5: echo Publishing site %PROJECT_ROOT% to %WEB_ROOT%

6:

7: del /S /Q %WEB_ROOT%\*.* || goto Error

8: rmdir /S /Q %WEB_ROOT%\ || goto Error

9: aspnet_compiler -p "%PROJECT_ROOT%" /v /commercesite /d "%WEB_ROOT%" || goto Error

10:

11: goto Success

12: :Error

13: echo Site was not published

14:

15: goto End

16:

17: :Success

18: echo Site published successfully

19:

20: :End

If there aren’t any errors the site will be published successfully as shown below

C:\Windows\system32>D:\Source\website\publish.cmd
Publishing site D:\Source\website to c:\inetpub\wwwroot\mytestsite Utility to precompile an ASP.NET application
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Site published successfully
C:\Windows\system32>

Modify the above script parameters appropriately to publish your site successfully!

How to: Restart a Remote Server Using Command Prompt

In our team am responsible for setting up and maintaining test servers. At times the servers are remotely located and doesn’t respond and you need to restart them. You can contact helpdesk which would involve some time. I found an easy way to do it so thought I would share it.

Launch command prompt (as administrator) and run the below command. User should have administrator permissions on the server.

1: SHUTDOWN /r /f /t 0 /m \\ /c ""

/r Shutdown and restart the computer.

/f Force running applications to close without forewarning users.

/t xxx Set the time-out period before shutdown to xxx seconds.
The valid range is 0-600, with a default of 30.

/m \\computer Specify the target computer.

/c "comment" Comment on the reason for the restart or shutdown.

If there aren’t any issues the system will be restarted

1: C:\Windows\system32>;SHUTDOWN /r /f /t 0 /m \\xyz /c "Hotfix Installation"

Modify the above script parameters appropriately to copy the files successfully!

Haraldscan – BlueTooth Discovery Scanner

The scanner will be able to determine Major and Minor device class of device, as well as attempt to resolve the device’s MAC address to the largest known Bluetooth MAC address Vendor list.

The goal of this project is to obtain as many MAC addresses mapped to device vendors as possible.

Requirements

* Python 2.6
* Pybluez
* PySQLite

Installation

1. Unpack to a directory
2. Run python haraldscan -b to build database
3. python haradscan [Options] to run Harald Scan

You can download Haraldscan here:

haraldscan-0.3.tar.gz
haraldscan_osx-0.3.tar.gz – Mac OS X Testing Version

Or read more here.

SWFScan – Free Flash Application Security Scanner

HP SWFScan is a free tool developed by HP Web Security Research Group, which will automatically find security vulnerabilities in applications built on the Flash platform.

HP is offering SWFScan because:

* Their research shows that developers and increasingly implementing applications built on the Adobe Flash platform without the required security expertise.
* As a result, they are seeing a proliferation of insecure applications being deployed on the web.
* A vulnerable application built on the Flash platform widens your website’s attack surface creating more opportunity for malicious hackers.


How SWFScan works and what vulnerabilities it finds:

* Decompiles applications built on the Adobe Flash platform to extract the ActionScript code and statically analyzes it to identify security issues such as information disclosure.
* Identifies and reports insecure programming and deployment practices and suggests solutions.
* Enables you to audit third party applications without requiring access to the source code.

You can download SWFScan here:

SwfScan.msi

Or read more here.

Graudit – Code Audit Tool Using Grep

Graudit is a simple script and signature sets that allows you to find potential security flaws in source code using the GNU utility grep. It’s comparable to other static analysis applications like RATS, SWAAT and flaw-finder while keeping the technical requirements to a minimum and being very flexible.

Usage

Graudit supports several options and tries to follow good shell practices. For a list of the options you can run graudit -h or see below. The simplest way to use graudit is;

graudit /path/to/scanYou can download Graudit v1.1 here:

graudit-1.1.tar.bz2

Or read more here.