Irongeek's Security Site

A Brief Intro To Cryptographic Hashes/MD5

Sat, 10 May 2008 20:33:02 -0400

New Video: A Brief Intro To Cryptographic Hashes/MD5
A cryptographic hash function takes an input and returns a fixed size string that corresponds to it, called a hash. Cryptographic hashes have a lot of uses, some of which are: detecting data changes, storing or generating passwords, making unique keys in databases and ensuring message integrity. This video will mostly cover detecting file changes, but I hope it gets your mind going in the right direction for how hashes can be used. Specifically covered will be tools for creating MD5 hashes in Windows and Linux.

Irongeek In Print: Books that mention Irongeek.com

Sun, 4 May 2008 14:24:43 -0400

Irongeek In Print: Books that mention Irongeek.com
I did some looking around and it seems my site is mentioned in a few books. I've decided so start this page to keep track of book references to Irongeek.com. If I'm missing any please let me know, I found these first few via Google Books.

A Quick Intro To Sniffers Updated

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:29:22 -0400

I've updated my A Quick Intro To Sniffers article to fix a stupid error I made where I mistyped 801.11 instead of 802.11.

Text to Speech to MP3 with the freeware program DSpeech

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 01:22:10 -0400

New Video:Text to Speech to MP3 with the freeware program DSpeech
This video is on Dspeech, a freeware tool that uses Microsoft's SAPI (Speech Application Programming Interface) to convert text to spoken word. What's special about it is it lets you make an MP3 of the text, so you can listen to it on your computer, in you car or on your MP3 player. It's great for listening to study notes.

As an unrelated side note, a friend of mine want's me to mention his humor page on celebrities, politics and gadgets. Hope you enjoy it.

IGiGLE: Irongeek's WiGLE WiFi Database to Google Earth Client for Wardrive Mapping Updated

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 01:05:33 -0400

IGiGLE is a little app I wrote that lets you directly import data from the online WiGLE WiFi Wardrive database into a KML file, then view it in Google Earth. I've made sure it works with the newest version of Google Earth 4.3, and recompiled it with the newest stable version of Autoit. If you want more details on how to use it, check out my video Wardrive Mapping With IGiGLE And WiGLE.

Getting Ubuntu Linux to connect to a PPTP Cisco VPN 3000 Concentrator

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 01:20:05 -0400

Just a quick notes page to help others that have the same problem I did. By the way, I plan to be at Conglomeration April 18th-20th. While it's not a Hacker/Security con, it's still a fun little Sci-Fi/Fantasy convention with plenty of geeky types running around. Let me know if you're a reader of Irongeek.com and plan to be there.

Irongeek's Infosec Wargame Servers Explained

Sun, 6 Apr 2008 13:50:29 -0400

I updated my post to explain that it was an April 1st joke, and link off to real ways to test your computer security skills. By the way, did anyone decode the QR Code I posted?

Irongeek's Infosec Wargame Servers

Tue, 1 Apr 2008 01:00:00 -0400

I'd like to announce the launch of my own wargame servers for testing out your computer security skills. The host names are:

hackme1.irongeek.com
hackme2.irongeek.com
dosme1.irongeek.com

Try out Nmap, Nessus, Metasploit and other tools on these boxes. Please let me know your findings. Thanks to my hosting provider Dreamhost. If you want to know more about Dreamhost check out my review (and coupon codes), they have been pretty good to me.

Hardware Keyloggers In Action 2: The KeyLlama 2GB USB Keylogger

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:20:45 -0400

This video will demonstrate one of the KeyLlama brand of hardware keyloggers in action, specifically the 2GB USB model. I know some of you are getting sick of me talking about hardware keyloggers, so I plan on this being my last entry on them for awhile.

Irongeek Campuses Page Updated

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:35:57 -0400

I've updated the Irongeek Campuses page with a few new schools, please contact me if your university uses my materials for teaching information security. Also, I've started to help out the The Mitzvah Group with their charity work. Check out and join their Myspace page, especially if you live in the Southern Indiana/Louisville Kentucky area.

Ghost 11 Plugin for Bart's PE Builder (BartPE)

Wed, 5 Mar 2008 01:49:56 -0400

I took the on Ghost 8 plugin and modified it a bit to work with Ghost 11.

Hardware Key Logging Part 3: A Review Of The KeyLlama USB and PS/2 Keyloggers

Tue, 4 Mar 2008 01:34:18 -0500

This article is about the KeyLlama brand of hardware keylogger, specifically the 2MB PS/2 model and the 2GB USB model.

Updated video on "Encrypting The Windows System Partition With Truecrypt 5.0"

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:25:52 -0500

Update:I made a small note at the top of my recent "Encrypting The Windows System Partition With Truecrypt 5.0" video. I used Photorec to do some file carving to see how secure Truecrypt's Windows system partition encryption was. Photorec was only able to recover two files, one ASP/TXT file and one PCX, but on closer examination both were false positives. They just contained seemingly random data, which Photorec mistook as real file headers. Truecrypt seems to do a very good job of securing the data on your system drive.

As a side note, if anyone else is using LinkedIn please feel free to add me and give me a recommendation for the work I've done on this site. Who knows, it may help me find a good career opportunity in my area.

Encrypting The Windows System Partition With Truecrypt 5.0

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 01:00:00 -0500

New Video: Encrypting The Windows System Partition With Truecrypt 5.0
Truecrypt 5.0 adds many new features, most importantly Windows system partition encryption. To put it in slightly inaccurate layman's terms, this means encrypting your entire C: drive. Even if you already write your sensitive data to an encrypted space, files are sometimes squirreled away in unencrypted temp space or in the page file where they may be recovered. Using Truecrypt to encrypt your Windows XP system partition will help eliminate this problem.

Hardware Keyloggers In Action 1: The KeyLlama 2MB PS/2 Keylogger

Tue, 5 Feb 2008 00:27:01 -0500

New Video:Hardware Keyloggers In Action 1: The KeyLlama 2MB PS/2 Keylogger
This video will demonstrate one of the KeyLlama brand of hardware keyloggers in action, specifically the 2MB PS/2 model. I hope this video will give the viewer a better grasp of how these hardware keyloggers work.

Encrypting VoIP Traffic With Zfone To Protect Against Wiretapping

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 01:02:30 -0500

New Video:Encrypting VoIP Traffic With Zfone To Protect Against Wiretapping
Some people worry about the easy with which their voice communications may be spied upon. Laws like CALEA have made this simpler in some ways, and with roaming wiretaps even those not under direct investigation may lose their privacy. Phil Zimmermann , creator of PGP, has come up with a project called Zfone which aims to do for VoIP what PGP did for email. Thanks to DOSMan for his help with this video.

Hacking and Pen-Testing With The Nokia 770/800/810 Notes Updated

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:58:48 -0500

I've updated my notes with a little more info on the n810 and links to new repositories (thanks to Andrew Lemay.)

Using GPG/PGP/FireGPG to Encrypt and Sign Email from Gmail

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:56:47 -0500

New Video:Using GPG/PGP/FireGPG to Encrypt and Sign Email from Gmail
This tutorial will show how to use GPG and the FireGPG plug-in to encrypt and decrypt messages in Gmail. GPG is an open source implementation of OpenPGP (Pretty Good Privacy) , a public-key-encryption system. With public key encryption you don’t have to give away the secret key that decrypts data for people to be able to send you messages. All senders need is the public key which can only be used to encrypt, this way the secret key never has to be sent across unsecured channels.

Nuclear War Survival Myths

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 18:46:58 -0500

I did not write this article, and while it's not about computer security it is about security. My interest in this subject was renewed after watching the TV series Jericho (watch it so it stays on the air). I thought this article was interesting enough to warrant mirroring, and it seems to jive pretty well with what I have read from other authors such as Duncan Long and Cresson H. Kearny on the subject. Please don't think I'm a paranoid, tin-foil-hat wearing freak, but I am a child of the 80's and a fan of post-apocalyptic fiction. Don't worry, my video on PGP/GPG is on its way.

Personal Privacy Programs

Mon, 7 Jan 2008 20:30:45 -0500

Hi all. I've decided it's time to start focusing on software that helps users maintain their privacy. I've already done videos on DBAN, Eraser, CCleaner, TrueCRYPT and Tor. I hope to have one on PGP/GPG/FireGPG up soon. What other must have privacy software do you recommend I cover? Let me know via my contact page, to which I've recently added my OpenPGP key.