PaulSpoerry.com

KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).

Keepass comes in a portable version, perfect for keeping on a USB thumbdrive. The password database consists of only one file that can be transferred from one computer to another easily.

Keepass is open source and totally free (released under the GPL).  Version 2.x (the latest) runs on Windows 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, Mono (Linux, Mac OS X, BSD, …), the only requirement being that you have Microsoft .NET Framework ? 2.0 or Mono ? 2.0.1. It allows for exporting to XML, HTML, CSV, KDB3, XSL-Transformed, and importing from more than 25 different formats. KeePass 2.x already has built-in support for file synchronization and because it has a plugin architecture which allows others to extend the application you can also download a plugin to synchronize with online storage providers!

KeePass supports the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES, Rijndael) and the Twofish algorithms to encrypt its password databases, this is the same type of encryption used by banks and the government, so you know your data is safe.

Grab a copy of Keepass from keepass.info.

Alisa Miller has an excellent writeup on 50 tools to use if you want to protect yourself from Internet snoopers, want to spy on those out to get you, or want to be able to track trends that you know will lead to something big. All the tools listed are free or have a free trial.

Read the rest of this entry »

Researchers at TippingPoint Technologies’ Digital Vaccine Laboratories have found a way to infiltrate and seize control of one of the world’s largest spam-spewing botnets. By reverse engineering the encryption they have successfully cracked into the botnet. They basically have the ability to create a fake Kraken server capable of overtaking a redirected zombie.

Essentially, TippingPoint can now overtake the infected system and cause it to connect to TippingPoint’s fake Kraken server and receive a command to kill the target process handing the communication. In other words, they CAN stop the spam spewing from these machines. The catch is, they would be sending remote commands to someone’s computer without their knowledge which has caused an ethical dilemma. If they send the commands and stop the spam they are basically hacking the infected computer to do something the end user doesn’t know about.

Personally, I say they send the commands… the computers are already infected. I can however see the issue they have, nobody wants their machine doing anything without their permission. They don’t want to be as bad as the bad guys.

Read more on the issue at eWeek.

 TrueCrypt v5.0 has been released.

TrueCrypt is a software system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data are automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded or saved, without any user intervention. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys. Entire file system is encrypted (e.g.., file names, folder names, contents of every file, free space, meta data, etc).

New features:

• Ability to encrypt a system partition/drive (i.e. a partition/drive where Windows is installed) with pre-boot authentication (anyone who wants to gain access and use the system, read and write files, etc., needs to enter the correct password each time before the system starts). For more information, see the chapter System Encryption in the documentation.   (Windows Vista/XP/2003)
• Pipelined operations increasing read/write speed by up to 100%   (Windows)
• Mac OS X version
• Graphical user interface for the Linux version of TrueCrypt
• XTS mode of operation, which was designed by Phillip Rogaway in 2003 and which was recently approved as the IEEE 1619 standard for cryptographic protection of data on block-oriented storage devices. XTS is faster and more secure than LRW mode (for more information on XTS mode, see the section Modes of Operation in the documentation).

  Note: New volumes created by this version of TrueCrypt can be encrypted only in XTS mode. However, volumes created by previous versions of TrueCrypt can still be mounted using this version of TrueCrypt.

• SHA-512 hash algorithm (replacing SHA-1, which is no longer available when creating new volumes).

  Note: To re-encrypt the header of an existing volume with a header key derived using HMAC-SHA-512 (PRF), select ‘Volumes‘ > ‘Set Header Key Derivation Algorithm‘.

Get TrueCrypt now.