Some Free Resources, Programs, etc.

Excellent programs!

- 7-Zip is free and powerfull program to compress and encrypt your files. Supports zip, rar, etc. file formats and uses AES-256 for encrypting.

- A2 Free is free antitrojan program. :)

- A2 HiJackFree is similiar to Hijackthis. It points out what is running in your computer and starting up in your computer. Excellent tool to find malware manually.

- Abtrusion Protector is used to PREVENT malware or ANY other software that you have NOT personally installed on to the system, from running. Basicly speaking, boys and girls, if you have Abtrusion Protector running in your computer, you can doubleclick any files (yeah, even viruses, trojans, whatever you want to) or allow them to automatically executed somehow and try to run them (OK, this is NOT a wise thing to do in any situation but please listen). They will NOT run in your system and therefore can NOT infect your system in any way. Period. :) And when you need to update Windows, no problem, this baby knows Windows updates automatically, so you can go ahead and install (it uses strong crypto and Microsofts digital signatures to verify the files so that they ARE safe). When you want to install something else (that you are SURE is safe to be installed into your system!), just tell this program to go to "install mode" and when you are done, turn of the "install mode" and again no other software can be executed in your system. This baby is SOOOOOOOOO great!!! :D

- Active Ports is a good tool to check what is happening in your network traffic. What programs are connecting to where etc. etc. Great tool to see if some spyware or trojan is contacting outside world and otherwise to keep in control of your network traffic. Sure, its NOT a firewall like ZoneAlarm, but it gives you information in more detailed way.

- Ad-Aware is similiar to Spybot, but Ad-Aware is perhaps a bit better in finding and removing spyware. Hard to tell, but to be sure, run them both.

- AntiVir for antivirus

- AVG for antivirus. Good and reliable antivirus with solid reputation.

- CompuSecTM to encrypt your HDD:s. If you want to keep something protected, you MUST encrypt it with good encryption, good passphrase and good program that implements that all. CompuSecTM is one such product. Sure, you can and should use PGP perhaps too, but what is great about this one is that it encrypts WHOLE HDD. This means, that ALL the temporary files, hidden data, history markings, etc. etc. are always in encrypted form. Its transparent to user so you wont even know its there after you have once set it up. A word of caution however: You might be having a lot of trouble with imaging software, or to be more precise, on restoring or using images/clones you have created from encrypted HDD:s...

- CrucialADS to detect alternative data stream files in your NTFS partitions.

- CrypTool is nice tool to encrypt/decrypt/crack and learn about crypto, both modern and classical. You can also create pseudorandom numbers and publickeys with this excellent tool. The help file and guide will give you huge amount of information related to crypto.

- Deskman Personal is excellent tool to lock Windows settings and options so that users cannot change them.

- Doc Scrubber is excellent (and only) tool to view and remove hidden metadata on Word documents. If you didnt know it before, Word documents contain a bunch of information about their creator, creating date, versions, etc. This is usually very serious threat to your privacy, especially if you alter or send Word documents to other people. This tool is recommend for everyone who is dealing with Word documents. If for nothing else, be curious and check what information is leaking out in some documents of yours, that you cant detect by "normal means"!

- Eraser 5.7 for erasing data from your media. Now, when you delete something, it really isnt gone. It can be restored usually very easily. Even when you encrypt something (like move file to PGPdisk or EFS encrypted folder), the original file that was in cleartext, is simply removed, not erased. With Eraser, you can fix this one. You can wipe individual files, folders, or drives from Windows Explorer! And, you can wipe free space, directory entries and file slacks from your hdd, so that the hdd space (that still has your old files that you havent wiped and that can be recovered) can be "purified" too. Also, it has "Nuked" bootable diskette that you can use to wipe HDD:s without booting up OS (be carefull when using that one!). One important thing is to be mentioned. Eraser IS good. It uses well documented wiping patterns and has good pseudorandom number generator. It REALLY wipes the data for good. :)

- eTrust EZ armor is combined firewall and antivirus solution for free! They offer this as a part of Microsofts attempts to secure home users against internet threats. The value of this package is almost 50$ but they give it out for free now.

- Filezilla is open source FTP/SSH client. Try it out!

- F-Secure Blacklight is similiar to Rootkitrevealer, that is, it locates hidden backdoor/rootkit programs in your computer.

- Hijackthis is good tool to peak under your registry and other hives where malware/spyware might be lurking. If you are not sure what you see with this baby, DONT remove it. But if you take few lessons and use Google, you can and will find this program VERY usefull!

- HTAStop2003 is used to disable HTA scripting support for your IE. For security perspective, this is more than advisable.

- Use Microsofts own tool, MBSA, to verify that you have secured your settings and otherwise things are prettymuch OK. This baby checks for configuration etc. vulnerabilities/holes but dont count on it too much. Its always better know yourself that your system is secure than let some program tell you that... ;)

- Mozilla Firefox for browsing in the internet and reading emails & news. Firefox is much more secure browser than IE is. IE still has over tons of unpatched security holes (more information here). It has good privacy features, such as blocking popups etc.

- MRU-Blaster is used to delete (it does not wipe them) history files, caches, most recently used files lists, etc. etc. data from your computer. Its very easy to use. If you want to get rid of most history files in your computer, I suggest you first run Spybot S&D and remove history files it finds, and then use MRU-Blaster to delete the rest of them.

- NIS Filecheck is used to create hashes from files you specify and warn you if they are changed or new files are added. This way you can easily spot new files (like trojans) from your computer or what programs have been altered (like trojan that has replaced explorer.exe with itself) when you run it next time. Excellent tool indeed!

- Openoffice.org as office tool. Its safer than MS Office and is also very easy to use. Try it out!

- Panda online antivirus scan. You can use this tool to check and remove viruses from your computer. It is always updated. It is still recommend to install your own antivirus program into your computer, but sometimes its good to check your computer by using "outside tool" like this one. Internet Explorer browser is needed to use this tool and also you may need to add this domain to your "trusted sites zone" to be able to use this tool.

- Password Safe to secure and control your passwords. You should always have different passphrases in different locations. Now, when you have dozen or so passphrases, its hard to keep count on them all. Password Safe solves this problem by keeping ALL you passphrases behind ONE main passphrase in encrypted format. Easy to backup to floppy etc. etc.

- PGP 6.58ckt8 is good "tweaked" version of PGP. This baby has PGPdisk, supports very large key sizes (up to 16000bit RSA) and new hash algorithms. Its very easy to use as PGP always is. However, if you need some help with it, check these pages http://webpages.charter.net/archer/USA/ they have tips and guide on using it. If you dont install software to encrypt your entire HDD, PGPdisk is your second best option on secure storage of your data. Not to mention that you can use this for secure emails, creating secure packets (like backups, etc.), etc. etc.

- Process Explorer is a tool to see all running processes and .dll files.

- Rootkitrevealer is good (and only?) program to spot rootkits installed onto your computer. Using this program is pretty easy, but you need to be an expert to understand what it sayes... If you have effort to learn this program and what it should find normally, you can easily use this to spot most rootkits on your computer.

- Safe XP is excellent program to easily secure your WindowsXP settings. This safes a lot of time and effort!

- Script Sentry is good for preventing/monitoring scripts. You know, like scripts inside Word documents etc. etc. If possibly dangerous script is found, you can choose to abort running that file/document. I bet there isnt any better macro/script blocking program than this one.

- Spybot S&D to remove spyware, keyloggers, trojans, bots, usage tracks, etc. etc. etc. Excellent program indeed!!! A word of caution: If you are using F-Secure products, do NOT remove "Backweb" components you might find with Spybot S&D, or you cant update your F-Secure anymore!

- Sun Java JRE for java instead of Microsofts JVM. Also, Mozilla needs JRE anyway so why not also use it with Internet Explorer eh?

- Torpark is free and easy to use tool to encrypt and anonymize your internet browsing. It contains portable Firefox browser and its preset to run with Tor network. When using this, nobody who is snooping in your lines can monitor where and what and why are you surfing in the net.

- TrueCrypt is a free open-source on-the-fly encryption software for Windows XP/2000/2003. You can use TrueCrypt to create encrypted containers, that open up as virtual partitions (other hard drives, that is). Basicly this is similiar toPGPdisk.

- Windows Worms Door Cleaner is easy to use tool that closes are ports on WindowsXP that cannot be otherwise closed at all!

- WMP Scriptin Fix to disable scripting from Windows Media Player. You can never be too carefull with Microsofts products you see... :)

- XP-Antispy to remove WindowsXP "build-in" components that might violate your privacy. Easy to use and quick to set it up properly.

- ZoneAlarm is easy to use and very secure firewall. If you need some tips regarding it, you can check http://www.markusjansson.net/eza.html for some installation etc. tips. Firewall is basicly a "must-to-have" to ANYONE in ANY connection with internet. Period.