The Firewall

My little group of computer security consultants call ourselves "The Firewall." I must say that we are here to help you protect yourself and your computer from falling into the hands of those with malicious intent. Recently I've simply been posting random IT and Computer based info but hopefully, in the future, I will be able to post more directly security related info to you. First, A firewall.

A lot of people get Norton System Works, which uses Symantec, or McAffee's antivirus and think they're ok...This is far from true, keeping you computer safe and secure takes more than just that crap. First you do need a good antivirus and for that I suggest either Norton, not systemworks, or Panda Platinum. Panda is amazing because it updated every day and it can usually prevent you from getting something while the others simply piss about. As for a firewall a lot of people get Zone Alarm but upon trying to bypass this program I found that it was horrible and easily beaten. I suggest Kerio personal firewall which yo ucan download here. It's much more secure and easy to work with. On top of that you'll need a decent ad-blocker, popup-blocker, and spyware-blocker. Personally I just use Firefox and that prevents 90% of those things. On top of that I have several plugins that give me the other 10% blocking.

If you have any questions or want suggestions on what plugins to use drop me a line.

AK

The Basics of BitTorrent

OK, there are just a few parts of this that are harder to grasp so I'll dumb it down. This is for BitTorrent and if you don't know what that is: " BitTorrent is a protocol that enables fast downloading of large files using minimum Internet bandwidth. BitTorrent costs nothing to use and includes no spyware or pop-up advertising." <---just pulled that off a random site.

moving on...


1. The tracker. Many people have asked me what it does and what the point of it is and I gotta tell ya. I think they're obsolete. The tracker is actually a server that controls the transfer process.

2. Seeder. This isn't that hard. A seeder is someone who has a complete version of your file downloaded and are sharing it. People who don't share are normally called leeches because they take but don't give back.

finally
3. Torrent. This is the filetype that you will open with bit torrent. If you're using the original BitTorrent and no then the process of downloading should look like this.



First thing is that the file should look like this or at least have a .torrent extention



Next you open the file to begin the downloading process



Now you pick where you want the file saved



Finally you let the (whatever it is) download


There ya have it. Theres also some BitTorrent downloading programs like Azureus or the "BitTorrent EXPERIMENTAL download client".

AK

Ip Address Maddness

Ok, I recently read a thing where a guy(script kiddy) "hacked" himself because he was a dousche and didn't know the proper ip address knowledge that he needed to to even fake that he knew something. First some of the basics of an ip address:

IP is for "Internet Protocol." An IP address is a tool used by a computer to determine which computer is which. If you connect to a specific ip address then you are connecting to a specific computer. An IP address consists of 5 numerical sections. The first 4 are called octets and are seperated by periods and can be from 0 to 255 while the last is seperated by a colon and can have a much wider range. The last numerical section indicated the port that is used through the computer. The finished ip usually looks similar to this 68.3.25.255:27960

Now with the close to 4.3 billion combinations that arise through ip addresses there are several that are restricted for specific use:

127.0.0.1 is your computer. Yes I'm talking to YOU!!! If you ever go to 127.0.0.1 then you're going to your own computer. If you send someone else to 127.0.0.1 then you're sending them to their own computer. This ip address is also known as Home or the Loopback address. In the convo I read this guy sent the script kiddy the ip of 127.0.0.1 and said it was his own. The script kiddy not knowing jack shit believed it and "hacked", if you can call it that, himself.

192.168._._ The reason for the 2 blanks at the end of this ip have meaning. This ip address is to a physical firewall/router. If you ever connect to a ip that starts with 192.168 then you're going into a router. The most common ending for this is .0.1 but I've seen many many different ones. Some common ones are .1.1, .1.0, .11.1, etc. My personal favorite is 192.168.0.1 ;-)

0.0.0.0 is the current network. If you're on a home lan and wanna know what's crackin then 0.0.0.0 is the ip that'll get ya there.

255.255.255.255 is used for broadcasts.

There are a few classes of ip addresses. Class A is for huge networks that giant companies or international companies would have. If your ip's first octet is somewhere from 1 to 126 then you are part of this vast class. These account for half the total number of ip addresses. Class B is used for medium sized networks and their first octet starts at 128 and ends in 191. Class C addresses are commonly used for small to mid-size businesses and consist of addresses with a first octet from 192 to 223. The other 2 classes are a good bit different and you probably won't encounter them so I won't bother.

Well, there you have it, If you have random ip addresses and want to know more about em go here and type em in. It's a nifty little tool.

AK

Farb-Rausch

Ok, Imaging and video. Farb Rausch is an amazing group who can create these amazing little graphics sequences in a 64k file. This seems to be the tool they use to create those programs. I found this link on The Produkkt. I've had a chance to play around with this a bit and the tutorial helped immensely with the creation of the effects and such. They also put out a little 96k first person shooter which is amazing. I see this group becoming one of the monst renound online groups when it comes to graphics and such.

Screenshots to the game:
One
Two
Three
Four
Five

For 96k, thats pretty amazing. Go here if you want more specifics on the game.

Thats it for now
AK