Security

This tutorial will guide you through the steps required to set up everything in Windows XP to allow you to connect to an office (or other) VPN server. [click to continue...]

TrueCrypt is a free, open source, system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted filesystem. TrueCrypt is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Encrypted volumes can be used with any supported OS regardless of which OS they were created on. [click to continue...]

This is a brief one. Thanks to The How-To Geek for bringing this command into my troubleshooting repertoire.

A bit of background first. This command is helpful to determine who is causing the most hits to your web site. On my music blog, I post a fair number of (totally legal) MP3s. Some less than ethical people often use those MP3s to stream via their site, causing mine to be slower (and a larger bandwidth bill). By figuring out the IP address of the site/person “stealing” my bandwidth I can then block their IP from accessing any of my content. [click to continue...]

Adeona is an open source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop. You install the Adeona software on your laptop and forget about it - until your laptop goes missing. Then using the retrieval software, you can locate your laptop (assuming it has connected to the Internet since it was lost or stolen) and provide the retrieved information to the proper authorities. Adeona works on Windows, OS X and Linux. [click to continue...]

I got an email the other day from someone who used my How to use your PC and Webcam as a motion detecting and recording security camera tutorial to catch an office thief, complete with pictures. A few folks have left comments mentioning how they’ve used it to catch people doing things they shouldn’t be, but this is the first time someone has sent me pictures.

I thought someone was taking money out of a little change box I have on my desk, quite a lot of money, like $60 this month. So I finally set up a camera, with your help, at 5 pm last night (in the edited by Ross building in downtown Vancouver) and caught this at 7pm. So he’s been fired, by 9am this morning. Turns out he was taking change even from inside peoples drawers… Look at him going into the carpeted office with just a mop?!

So awesome.

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Yes, just like in the movie Along Came a Spider, you too can hide messages inside of jpg, gif, png and other picture files. [click to continue...]

If you’ve tried to install recommended updates in Windows Vista, and receive error 800B0100, this tutorial offers the most common solution to that problem.

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The days of confusing Linux firewalls are now over. Firestarter provides a very easy to use GUI for most Linux systems, allowing you to create specific firewall rules based on IP addresses, hosts or specific services (FTP, SSH, etc). Continue reading for a complete walk-through on using Firestarter. [click to continue...]

One of the benefits of being a Mac user is that generally you don’t have to worry about spyware, malware and viruses quite as much as a Windows user. In fact, until I ran across MacScan, I honestly didn’t even know there was a spyware scanner for OS X. Well it turns out there is - so I gave a run. The following tutorial will guide you through using MacScan to check your Mac for spyware, malware, tracking cookies etc. [click to continue...]

Using Shredder, a Dashboard widget, you can quickly, easily and permanently delete files in OS X.

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This tutorial will guide you through setting up TrueCrypt, an easy to use and open-source/free encryption utility that allows you to store files in a secure ‘volume’ on your hard drive. [click to continue...]

This tutorial will guide you in using Restoration 2.5.14, a free program that can help you recover files that you may have accidentally deleted (and removed from/emptied the Recycle Bin). [click to continue...]

If you’ve lost your Windows password and you’re locked out of your computer, you can use the Ophcrack LiveCD to recover your password(s). This tutorial will guide you through doing just that. [click to continue...]

This tutorial will guide you in using Darik’s Boot and Nuke (”DBAN”) - to securely wipe (delete) all of the data from your hard drive. Why would you want to securely wipe all of the data on your drive? Perhaps you’re selling your computer, donating it to charity, or recycling it. Before you do so, consider this - even when you delete files, they’re not actually removed from your hard drive. Using data recovery tools, many files can be restored from the average hard drive. In fact, even after a hard drive has been formatted, data can be recovered from it. Using DBAN “prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis”. [click to continue...]