Trick To Launch Multiple applications With Lacuna

If you always open certain set of applications like I always open my browser, Yahoo messenger and GTalk whenever I connect to internet. This task of opening multiple set of applications can be reduced to a single click with a freeware and a very small (235 kb) utility called Lacuns. The download link for Lacuna is provided in this post. The set of Tasks that you can do with this application is as follows

• Set a delay for launching applications at startup
• Space out the launching with a pause in between them
• Control the order in which applications were opened
• Launch many applications with a single shortcut

In this tutorial I will Explain to you about How to use this application

1. Download Lacuna Launcher (235 Kb). It will be zip file.
2. The zip file will contain list.txt and ll.exe
3. Enter the paths of the .exe files of the softwares you want to launch simultaneously in List.txt one per line. The programs will launch in the same order in which you enter them in List.txt
4. Now whenever you will click on ll.exe all your applications will be launched simultaneously.

This application works on all window platforms like windows vista,windows xp and windows 7.

I recommend you that you should also Readme.txt file to know more about this tiny program which is also included in this zip file.

Learn How To Make Your Own Anonymous Email Service

Do you want to send an email anonymously because, for example, you fear your views might not be appreciated by your boss? When avouching your opinion in public — critically important under more favorable circumstances — is unhealthy, anonymity becomes vital. Here i will show you how to setup your own anonymous email service. I am writing this post because there are some things that must be said, even when the speaker must remain anonymous. Lets start:

1. First of all you need to find a free hosting service that supports PHP and SendMail. Here is one that works perfect, and without ads: x10hosting.com. Create an account there.

2. Now open notepad and paste this PHP code: the code.

3. Save it everywhere u want as mail.php, then upload it in your host you created (x10hosting) via FTP.

4. Now we are done. Just go at yourname.x10hosting.com/mail.php, and start sending your fake emails.

Why sending anonymous emails is important:

• Anonymously report sensitive information to the media
• Send crime tips to law enforcement agencies anonymously
• Report wrongdoing or theft at the workplace
• Voice concerns to school principals anonymously
• Report child or any other abuse
• Initiate an anonymous chat discussion
• Share suspicions regarding a friend or loved one

Shut Up and Be Secure - Power of Social Engineering

Human is the most weakest part of the Information Security chain. Psychologists have identified many benefits people receive when they help others. Helping can make us feel empowered. It can get us out of a bad mood. It can make us feel good about ourselves. Hackers find many ways of taking advantage of our inclination to be helpful.

Because Hackers often target people who don’t know the value of the information they are giving away, the help may be seen as carrying little cost to the helper. Most of Humans tend to explain their behavior and of others, while doing this we give away alot of information about us.

Security is too often merely an illusion, an illusion sometimes made even worse when gullibility, naivety, or ignorance come into play. The world’s most respected scientist of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein, is quoted as saying, “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” In the end, social engineering attacks can succeed when people are stupid or, more commonly, simply ignorant about good security practices.

With the same attitude as our security-conscious homeowner, many information technology (IT) professionals hold to the misconception that they’ve made their companies largely immune to attack because they’ve deployed standard security products – firewalls, intrusion detection systems, or stronger authentication devices such as time-based tokens or biometric smart cards.

Anyone who thinks that security products alone offer true security is settling for. the illusion of security. It’s a case of living in a world of fantasy: They will inevitably, later if not sooner, suffer a security incident.

Protect Yourself Against Viruses, Spyware and Web Bugs – For Free

You don’t have to spend a penny to keep your PC safe from viruses, spyware and web bugs. Fight back with these tips and tools—for free.

Kill Viruses

Big-name antivirus software such as Norton AntiVirus or McAfee VirusScan forces you to pay for a subscription every year, but they have another drawback as well. They also tend to suck up a lot of system resources and use plenty of RAM, and your PC can take a big performance hit from them just to keep itself protected.

There’s a better way. Use avast!, nifty antivirus software that’s free for personal use and that takes up so few system resources and RAM you won’t even notice it’s there. It includes seven different shields, and it’s a good idea to install and use them all. Once avast! is running, you can customize each shield. Double-click the avast! icon running in the System Tray and from the screen that appears, select the shield you want to customize. To change the sensitivity of the scanner—how aggressively the shield should act—move the slider. Move it to the left to make it less sensitive, and to the right to make it more sensitive. To customize the shield even further, click the Customize button. The dialog box that appears will vary according to the shield you’re customizing.

Note, by the way, that before you install avast!, you’ll need to first uninstall whatever antivirus software you’re already using; otherwise it might not work properly.

Protect Yourself Against Spyware

For most people, spyware has replaced viruses or worms as the most-feared and obnoxious danger on the Internet. A relatively few number of people become infected by viruses or worms, but it seems as if almost everyone you know has been hit by some kind of spyware.

Spyware is a catch-all phrase that encompasses many different types of obnoxious programs. The least intrusive of the bunch report on your surfing activity to a web site, which tracks what you do and then delivers ads to your PC based on your interests. But increasingly, they are becoming more intrusive. Some of them spawn pop-up swarms of ads that appear so quickly they overwhelm your PC, slowing it down and making it unusable. Others hijack your browser home page so that no matter what you do, you’re sent to a home page of the hijacker’s choosing, which might be a pornographic site, or perhaps a web site that spawns even more pop ups. And some kinds of spyware, called keyloggers, literally spy on you by watching every keystroke you make, and then send that information to someone on the Internet.

Even more fearsome is spyware that turns your PC into a “bot” or a “zombie” and forces it to spew out tens of thousands or more pieces of spam, all without your knowledge.

But you don’t have to be a victim; there’s a good deal you can do to protect yourself, and you won’t have to spend a penny to do it:

Get a free spyware detector and eradicator

One of the best and most popular free program is Ad-Aware. It checks your system for spyware, finding not only program files, but also Registry entries and cookies. After it does a check, you can choose which spyware problems you want the program to fix, and it’ll go about its work, deleting files, folders, and cookies, and fixing Registry entries. Because no one spyware-killer is perfect, I suggest getting another free one, Spybot Search & Destroy. If you’re a Vista user, you already have a free piece of antispyware, Windows Defender, shown on the picture below, on your system. If you use an earlier version of Windows, get a free copy of Windows Defender.



Be vigilant about what you download

There are plenty of free programs available on the Internet, but not all have good intentions in mind. Some are spyware. So be careful before downloading any free software. Go to reputable download sites, such as the download library run by PC World or to CNET Download.com and read the descriptions and reviews, to make sure the software doesn’t carry a spyware load. In addition, head to the Index of Known Spyware page run by Gibson Research, the SpywareGuide, and the Spyware Warrior List of spyware for a list of spyware programs.

Use a personal firewall such as ZoneAlarm

A personal firewall will let you block any program on your system from contacting the Internet without your approval. With one installed, spyware can’t “phone home” and alert others to your surfing habits. Windows XP’s Windows Firewall doesn’t have this capability, so you can’t use it to block spyware. Windows Vista’s Windows Firewall is better than XP’s at blocking these kinds of outbound connections, but it may not block all of them. For maximum safety, get a free firewall such as ZoneAlarm.

Kill pop ups

Pop-up ads are a common way of delivering spyware. Click a pop up, and you might get infected with spyware. So, kill pop ups. Internet Explorer includes pop-up killers, as does Firefox. But keep in mind that sometimes pop-ups make it through their pop-up killers. If one does, close it down and don’t click anything inside it (especially fake close buttons; be sure to use the real Windows controls in the upper corners of the window).

Be wary of files and links sent in instant messages

Increasingly, spyware is propagated via instant messaging programs. Spyware can in essence take over someone’s instant messaging program and then send itself to everyone on the buddy list, either as an executable file or a link—and it appears that a person, rather than spyware is sending the file or link. So before clicking a link or using a file sent via instant messaging, double-check with your friend that he is actually sending you something, and that spyware hasn’t done the job.

Stop drive-by downloads

A web site might attempt to download software to your PC without your knowledge, and it might carry a spyware payload. Internet Explorer includes tools to stop drive-by downloads, as does Firefox. However, they’re not necessarily 100 percent effective. So don’t click links sent to you in spam, which can lead to sites with drive-by downloads.

Watch Out for Web Bugs

Web bugs are invisible bits of data, frequently a single pixel in size (sometimes called clear GIFs), that can track all your activities on a web site and report them back to a server. They are one of the more pernicious ways your online activities can be tracked, no matter which browser you’re using. Sometimes, the web site the bugs send information to isn’t the one that contains the web bug; for example, a web bug might send information back to an online advertising network.

Web bugs can send the following information back to a server:

• The IP address of your computer
• The URL of the page on which the web bug is located, so they know you visited the page
• The time the web bug was viewed, so they know exactly when you visited the page
• The URL of the web bug image
• The type of browser you have
• The values of certain cookies (generally only cookies set by the web site that the bug resides on)

A free piece of software called Bugnosis will alert you whenever it comes across web bugs on pages you visit. It reports on the URL the bug reports to, and, for some bugs, it lets you click a link it creates so that you can send an email of complaint to the web site that runs the bug. It runs inside Internet Explorer as a toolbar and doesn’t work with any other browsers.

The software can’t actually protect you against web bugs, but it can alert you when you visit pages that use them, so you’ll know to stay away from them in the future. When you visit a site, the Bugnosis toolbar reports on the number of suspicious items that might be web bugs. To see detailed information about each suspicious item and web bug, click the down arrow next to the Bugnosis logo, and choose Bugs Found in This Session. You’ll see a list of every suspicious web bug. Click the item, and you’ll see a more detailed description, and an analysis on whether the item is truly a web bug or only suspicious.

Bugnosis can’t actually block web bugs; it can only alert you to their presence. If you want your privacy protected when you surf the Web, your best bet is to surf anonymously.

If you want to keep up with the most recent spyware news and research, visit the Web site of perhaps the foremost spyware researcher in the world, Ben Edelman.

How To Use Gmail as a Virtual Hard Drive

With all of that extra space on Gmail, wouldn’t it be nice to use some of it for storage rather than mail?

You can, with a free piece of software called GMail Drive shell extension. Download it from here, and install it.

Google doesn’t look kindly on people who use software like this to turn Gmail into extra storage for your PC. In fact, it may lock your account if it finds you doing this. For details, see item #3 on this site.

After you install it, run Windows Explorer. A new drive will appear, called the Gmail Drive. Double-click it, and type in your Gmail password and username. If you don’t want to have to log in every time you click the drive, check the box next to Auto Login.

You can use the Gmail drive as you can any other folder on your hard drive. (You’ll of course have to be connected to the Internet for it to work.) This means you can copy files to it using Windows Explorer in the same way that you do any other files, and you can create sub-folders as well.

The Gmail drive looks like any hard drive on your system, but remember that it’s a virtual drive and you’re connected to it over the Internet. So, you can transfer files to it only at the speed of your Internet connection. On a dial-up connection, this will be exceedingly slow.

When you view the contents of your Gmail drive, the icons for the files won’t necessarily look like the normal ones. Instead of showing the native icons for each file type (such as pieces of paper for Word files), in some instances, they’ll show as gear-type icons.

When you copy a file to your Gmail drive, you’re actually creating an email and posting it to your account. The email will appear in your Inbox, with the file as an attachment. If you want to open any of the files from inside Gmail, click the email to view it, and then click the Download button. The file will be downloaded to your PC. Using Gmail as a virtual drive can make your Inbox pretty messy. Luckily, you can create a filter that will automatically route the files to your archived mail folder. That way, you’ll never see them in your Inbox, and they’ll be in your archives.

The emails with the files attached to them all show up preceded by the letters GMAILFS. So, create a filter that will move all files with that prefix to your archived mail by first clicking Create a Filter from the top of the Gmail screen. In the Subject box, type GMAILFS, check the box next to “Has attachment,” and then click Next Step. Then check the box next to “Skip the Inbox (Archive it)”, and then click Create Filter. All your files will be sent straight to your Archive, bypassing the Inbox.

You can also have them labeled so that you know at a glance which files you copied from your hard disk. Before clicking Create Filter, check the box next to “Apply the label.” From the drop-down box next to it, select New Label, and from the screen that appears, type in the label name (such as Hard Drive), and click OK. From the drop-down list, choose your new label. Now click Create Filter. The files will be archived but will also have the label next to them, so you can easily view only your files by clicking the Hard Drive label when you log into Gmail.

It’s not a good idea to use Gmail as your hard drive if you’re going to use POP3 to retrieve your email from Gmail with your email software. If you do that, whenever you retrieve email from Google, you’ll also retrieve all the files you’ve copied to Google when you used it as a virtual hard drive, which can be hundreds of megabytes.

How To Send Anonymous Emails - For Free

Proxy servers and other anonymizing tools are useful for web surfing, but what if you want to send anonymous email—for example, if you’re a “whistle blower” and don’t want your identity known? Use an anonymous remailer such as the webbased Anonymouse’s AnonEmail, Send Anonymous Email, or the downloadable QuickSilver.

Anonymouse’s AnonEmail

With AnonEmail it is possible to send e-mails without revealing your e-mail address or any information about your identity. Therefore you can communicate more freely and you do not have to worry that it might cause consequences for you. This service allows you to send e-mails without revealing any personal information.

Send Anonymous Email

Send Anonymous Email is a service that allows you to send anonymous emails by resending your email several time through random nodes, thus making it impossible to trace back.

In Send Anonymous Email, you can fill in your recipient, the subject, and a short plain-text message. Contrary to many other services Send Anonymous Email does not (seem to) log your IP. However, we do urge you not to use it for anything illegal.

QuickSilver
QuickSilver is PRIVACY software. It can give you complete privacy in your email and newsgroup postings. Why would this be of interest to you?

Do you have fears that taking part in newsgroup discussions could lead to your harassment or stalking by some internet kook? We’ve all seen stories about this on CNN. Using QuickSilver you can post articles with absolutely no traces of their true origin. A QuickSilver message cannot be traced to you.

In another scenario, you are 1 of several individuals under surveillance. Your government believes you are involved in subversive activities. Using QuickSilver all individuals can communicate freely. Observers will find they can neither read this mail nor trace it to its destination—even after tracing dozens of messages. Surveillance of the message recipient’s connections will reveal only the receipt of a message. Its origin cannot be determined nor its content.

Suppose you work for an organization that is involved in criminal activity. You believe you must inform the proper authorities regarding the activities. To ‘go public’ with this information would not only affect your employment adversely, it could indeed be life threatening. With QuickSilver, your privacy is effectively bullet-proof.


Note: By sending a fake email or prank email you may be committing the offence of fraud even you did not intend to. You are not allowed to use these services for any illegal activities at any time.

Great Social Engineering Techniques

I am having this "security" blog for more then a year now. Beside cyber security, technology, I am also interested in some social/natural science fields, like philosophy, and psychology. In this article I would share some manipulation techniques that i know about from my previous knowledge, and experience. Now these techniques can be used in many different ways and I will leave it up to the individual to decide what those ways are. Please realize this isn't mind control and it will not make you able to convince people to do extreme things but maybe change a simple idea in someones mind and make them favor your ideas more. This methods can come in handy for many people. Lets start:


Sympathy/Empathy - Believe it or not making someone feel sorry for you can wield great results. You can convince people to do many things with just a simple guilt trip. Examples include a family members death, recent job loss, an scarring event such as being robbed at gunpoint, losing money, or even a simple bad day. Using this can make somebody not only do what you want but they won't feel regret over doing it.

Split Personalities - No this does not mean be nice one second and mean the next. This tactic is great for pressuring someone into something from two fronts. The basic idea of this is to act as two people. This cannot be done in person and is best done online. An example of this methods usefulness is to maybe convince someone to sell something at a cheaper price by having one side of you as friend saying great deal while the other says that they can barely do this and they're unsure if they should. The trick here is to play opposites in a way that pushes the person you want to trick into doing something they wouldn't otherwise do.

If you don't then someone else will - Nothing puts more pressure on someone then giving them the idea of loss if they do not take advantage of the situation. This can be great for selling items. The general idea behind this is to make the person feel as if they will lose a once in a lifetime opportunity if they give up on this offer. You can even use the Split Personalities in mixture with this.

Being Over Understanding - Nothing softens the heart than making a person feel that they're doing a good job. If a situation comes where you have been wrong pretending to be completely understanding can go a long ways. This can general make the person feel more entitled to give you a better experience.

That is all I can come with at the current moment. Please throw suggestion and feedback. This is technically Social Engineering, an art of getting people to tell you stuff that they usually wouldn’t disclose, through the use of words and your appearance. I personally hate these type of people. A good Social engineerer (or as I love to call these types of people, “Bullshit artists”), can make people believe nearly anything. It is always a good idea to be aware of people who you don’t know, but it is also good practice to watch people you DO know. Don’t be getting paranoid about things, because that isn’t what i mean, but Social Engineering is the EASIEST way to anything. Hope this helps people gain the upper hand in a poorly setup situation.