Look Out, ANT!

Advanced Net Tools (ANT) is a really versatile set of network utilities. There are port scans, DNS lookups, pings, scanning for network shares, and checking on routing tables among other things.

The security modules are quick-and-dirty, that is, easy network scans. There's a network port scanner that can scan all computers on your network and discover any open ports, and a share scanner that reports on all the shared drives on your network.

With the information modules you can examine your routing table and add and delete entries in it. You can also find out what IP addresses are available to be assigned on your network. Other modules do advanced DNS lookups, let you view all the network adapters connected to computers on the network and add and remove their IP addresses.

As I've been reviewing the free tools, I'll have to go back and rate them, one by one.

Latest in the Series of Free Utilities: Advanced IP Scanner

I use What's Running a great deal so I can know what is going on within my box but here is a small free utility which is a handy way to get a quick list of all the devices connected to your network. They are listed by IP address, along with information about each device. It quickly scans all IP addresses in a range that you specify, then specifies whether a device is present at each address. For each device, it lists the status, the machine name, NetBIOS information, ping information, and MAC address. I usually have difficulty keeping track so this can be useful.

Moreover, the program not only scans your network but it also gives you a set of tools that lets you shut down PCs remotely, use the "Wake on LAN" feature for any PC whose network card supports that capability, and connect to remote PCs via Radmin, if it's installed. I have used another remote site so this would allow an opportunity to combine functions in one use. You can also apply some operations, such as shutting down remote PCs, to a group of computers, not just individual ones.

This tool could be effectively used and handy.

Virtualization Trend

One of the biggest developments of the year will be in virtualization so I'll be reviewing topics along these lines.

Al Qaeda on the Run

Graphic source: Fred W. Baker

The combination of military operations and local population support in northern Iraq has forced quite a few al Qaeda fighters out of urban areas in order to flee to the desert, or even out of the country.

The northern division is about the size of Pennsylvania and includes Diyala, Salahuddin, Ninevah and Tamim provinces.

Some insurgents are hiding out in abandoned mud huts, canals or caves in the desert.

The desert hideaways are targets under six-week-long Operation Iron Harvest, part of the countrywide Operation Phantom Phoenix.

The insurgents are most likely thinking that the military if after them: a sound thought, because they are.

Note on Red River

Graphic source: http://www.filmsite.org/index.html.

I didn't know Red River was shot on location near Elgin, in Arizona and Mexico, but having Netflixed it recently I was curious about its background. The film realistically portrays the code and harshness of the West, and the journey, as in The Odyssey or in the Old Testament Exodus, is an epic yarn related to the audience with the vehicle of the Old West. John Wayne actually acted in this movie, thus Howard Hawks, the producer quipped, "the old lug can act." Wayne plays the hard bitten surrogate father to Montgomery Clift, in his first film, and hard-driving trail boss. The film appears over as the younger Clift mutinies, as in Mutiny On the Bounty, but he then successfully takes the herd to Topeka, of course, all is not well and he must still face the wrath of the soon-to-arrive, Wayne.

Chaotic State of Iraqi Executive Branch

The fragmented state of the Iraqi Executive branch is contrasted in this graphic with the U.S. We have a long, long way to go if democracy is ever to survive in Iraq.

Chinese Spies

The Chinese are at it again, or at least four more are allegedly spying. The U.S. Department of Justice announced two separate espionage cases for allegedly passing information to the Chinese government.

One case involves a former Boeing Company employee who was charged with economic espionage and other crimes, and the other includes three individuals who are charged with conspiracy to disclose national defense information.

In the Boeing incidnet, the DOJ claimed that Dongfan Chung, a 72-year-old, stole trade secrets related to the Space Shuttle, the C-17 military transport plane and the Delta IV rocket while working at Rockwell International Corporation, and then again once Boeing bought Rockwell's defense and space unit.

The alleged espionage stretched back for years and he also allegedly used Chi Mak to transmit information. Mak and four of his family members were convicted last year on charges of passing defense information to the Chinese government.

In the other case the DOJ arrested a U.S. Department of Defense employee and two New Orleans residents for an alleged espionage scheme.

Tai Shen Kuo, 58, and Yu Xin Kang, 33, both of New Orleans, were indicted for conspiring to disclose national defense information to a foreign government, while Gregg William Bergersen, a 51-year-old resident of Alexandria, Va., who works as a weapons systems policy analyst at the DOD's Defense Security Cooperation Agency, was charged with conspiracy to disclose national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it.

Kuo and Kang both face life in prison if convicted. Bergersen faces up to 10 years in prison.

The Chinese connection seems to proliferate as China seeks to re-engineer American products.

Scrappy Chinese Entrepreneur

One fascinating story in the rise of Chinese entrepreneurship is that of Zhang Yin, owner of the Nine Dragon Paper Company. In the 1990s, she cashed in on China’s paper shortage by collecting scrap and shipping it to mainland China for recycling. She astutely saw a bigger opportunity in the empty container ships that returned to the U.S. and Europe after unloading their full loads of goods in China. She filled those empty ships with wastepaper collected in the U.S. and Europe to recycle the contents in China into cardboard boxes to be used for shipping Chinese goods back to the American and European markets. The shipping continues so she has a steady stream to recycle. In seemingly no time at all, according to the Hurun Report’s 2006 China Rich List, Zhang has become the wealthiest person in China and one of the richest female entrepreneurs in the world. Her wealth is not unconnected with simply taking a sound, simple, but profitable idea and creating wealth: from scrap of all things.

Network Notepad Diagrams Live

My network site actually allowing me access to my network has limitations so Network Notepad may ease in the designing of a network. I don't really have an adequate tool so this tool will be easy for creating a network diagram.

Not only can I design my network and draw schematics but they are live and include links so that I can Telnet or employ other networking tasks to access any device on the network simply by clicking on a button on the diagram.

The palette is equipped with icons for routers, servers, printers, boxes, hubs, modems, and other network devices. The way to do this is by simply dragging and dropping them onto a diagram, and then connect the devices using a set of drawing tools. You add names and IP addresses. You can also import a host file, and Network Notepad will automatically populate the devices with the right IP addresses.

This method seems quite handy because the diagram becomes a live, interactive drawing.

Spiceworks IT Desktop, Better than Network Magic

Another free tool that may be helpful to a small network or business is the Spiceworks IT Desktop. It is a bit difficult to navigate for just a home network so be forewarned although it does includes a significant number of features for a free tool: it does perform as an all-in-one network inventory and management tool.

Spiceworks IT Desktop provides a substantial bit of information about each PC connected to your network. The program will inventory a network and provide information about each device on it and I found it deeper than Network Magic. The types of information it provides about each PC and device, is free and used disk space, anti-virus software being used, and problems on the device (such as server connection errors). It will even provide an inventory of the software installed on each PC, in quite a bit of detail.

There are other features as well, such as, easy access to ping and traceroute functions. And it attempts to be a help desk application as well. You can create help tickets with it, assign the ticket to others or yourself, and include due dates, priorities and so on. For someone like me with simple home network needs it is sufficient.

How a DNS Works (And What a DNS Is)

Graphic source: OpenDNS

A DNS stands for Domain Name Service which is how a browser can navigate the Web. The URLs (Uniform Resource Location) that are typed in a browser are translated into a computer readable format which lead you to a specific Internet page.

Bush Requests Greater Security Spending

Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell warned Congress that terrorists are showing an increasing desire to use cyber attacks against the U.S. By the same token, the Bush administration is proposing a federal budget that calls for the government to spend one out of every 10 IT dollars on information security. The budget proposal earmarks $7.3 billion for information security, a 9.8% increase over what was budgeted for the current fiscal year. If approved as is, security spending would account for 10.3% of the entire federal IT budget. Bush's proposal continues a trend in which security spending has been increasing at a rate that's greater than the growth of the overall IT budget.

Al-Qaeda Training Children as Terrorists

Al-Qaeda is training children from 6-14 according to a news story released today.

Network Magic, Simple, Free Management

While always on the lookout for simple, free, and in this case, all-in-one network management tools for a small peer-to-peer network, Computerworld, as is their usual, noted some handy tools. Network Magic looks like one of the best. It handles all the basic network chores, including adding new devices to the network, fixing broken network connections, setting up wireless encryption and protection, sharing printers and folders, and for me, one of the most important features, reporting on the state of the security of each PC on the network. I have several geographically dispersed machines so Network Magic will come in handy.

I appreciate the visual network map which displays every connected device, shows whether it's online or off line, and displays details about each, including the computer name, IP address, MAC address, operating system being used, shared folders, and system information such as its processor and RAM. It is hard to believe you can get that much network information out of a free tool. I also like the fact that it displays alerts about each device, such as if it isn't protected properly. It displays overall information about your network, such as whether there are any problems with overall security or with an individual PC. It also lets you troubleshoot connections, shows whether there are any intruders on the network, and displays information about wireless protection. The tool can create reports about Internet and network use of each PC connected to the network. For example, the software can monitor the use of any individual PC on the network for the Web sites it visits, the times the computer is online and which programs are being used, and then mail a daily report about it to an e-mail address. I have not seen Windows Vista's Network Map offer a comparable level of detail.

There is a paid version of the software as well. The paid version, which costs from $24 to $40 (depending on how many PCs are on your network), delivers daily reports of Internet activity and supports remote access to your network's files.

You Should "X" Active-X: How To

The U. S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT), part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has advised in no uncertain terms: "US-CERT encourages users to disable ActiveX controls as described in the Securing Your Web Browser document." Too many vulnerabilities have arisen from the feature, it is not worth having. CERT released a "how-to" so users can disable the feature easily.

Obstinate NATO Allies

The obstinacy of Germany, along with France, Turkey, and Italy, knows few bounds. As the U.S. and its coalition partners bear the brunt of fighting in Afghanistan, the NATO partners refuse to seriously commit themselves to initiatives in Afghanistan. These four countries will not send significant number of troops to the southern front lines. Troops from Canada, Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States are committed and seek support from their reluctant NATO cohorts. These nations criticize the U.S. for going it alone but they certainly have their opportunity to become more greatly involved in the fighting. They are not helping though. The U.S. shares a heavy load in the resurgence of Taliban violence with support from Denmark, Romania, Estonia, and non-NATO nation Australia.

New and Improved Al-Qaeda Encryption Tool

I had commented before on a new al-Qaeda encryption tool but now security researchers have had more time to analyze the piece, they have troublesome news.

The updated encryption tool improves on a first version, is well-written, and is an easily portable piece of code.

The messages that are encrypted using the tool, Mujahideen Secrets 2, should be relatively easy to spot and track, according to Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism at Secure Computing Corporation.

I disagree that this should be handled by law enforcement, though most counter-terrorism is, but it is better than no tracing at all.

The files can be identified because it puts a unique fingerprint on them. "You may not be able to read the messages, but you will be able to figure out where it was sent from and to whom," Henry stated.

Mujahideen Secrets 2 was released last month via an Arabic-language Web site set up by an Islamic forum called al-Ekhlaas. The two servers it was available on, from a Web hosting firm in Tampa, Fla., and previously on a system owned by another company in Rochester, Minnesota, both have ceased working.

The al-Ekhlaas site had been moved to a server based in Phoenix but the link to the site on that server also is broken.

Mujahideen Secrets 2 is sophisticated software, from an encryption perspective, in that the new tool is easy to use and provides 2,048-bit encryption, an improvement over the 256-bit AES encryption supported in the original version. Moreover, even more interesting is the ability to encrypt Yahoo and MSN chat messages in addition to e-mails.

Not surprisingly, I have noted my dismay with the ability to house terrorist sites, and use sites, all based in the U.S.

The tool also employs a more obscure manner of communication. The tool can take a binary file and encrypt it in such a way that the file can be posted in a pure ASCII or text-only format. What this means is that terrorists could use Mujahideen Secrets 2 to encrypt files and post them on sites that aren't on the Internet, for example, on a telephone-accessed bulletin board.

The portability of the tool is also impressive. The software can be loaded on a USB memory stick, then a person could employ an Internet cafe, plug in the USB device and run Mujahideen Secrets 2 to encrypt any communications from that cafe.

This would make it virtually impossible to track such an individual because the communication can be done so covertly and quickly.

The ease of use is improved in the new version, it has an improved GUI (Graphical User Interface) and the software appears to be easy to use by relatively low-level operators according to Henry. The tool and transmission of information allows relative novices to easily and surreptitiously access encrypted messages.

Note on Benjamin Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld

In Benjamin Barber's book, Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy, he presents an interesting interpretation of Jihad. He does not mean the typical Islamist struggle but he portrays, rather like Thomas Friedman's, The World is Flat, Jihad as a divisive impulse, as in Friedman's other work, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. Most people across the world need to decide which they favor, Jihad and the Olive Tree, or a Flat World with a Lexus. The choice is rather stark so Barber illustrates how American life is impoverished given as it is to rampant consumerism. Democracy and community and neighborhood involvement is at an all-time low so he points out how neighborhood and local initiatives must become engaged for democracy to work.

Women Urged to Jihad and Suicide Operations

Not only are mentally challenged women employed as suicide bombers but a host of women's forums on Islamist Websites are preparing women to carry out Jihad and suicide operations. Several of the Islamist websites include special forums for women which reveals that these forums encourage women to carry out suicide operations. Islamic history and the present is invoked to urge that women take an active part in jihad. They also promote jihad indoctrination from an early age and publicize the most radical sheikhs' fatwas on jihad and martyrdom.

The most active sites are sites: al-hesbah, shmo5alislam; and, al-faloja.

A typical example is: "How I Hoped to Turn My Body into Slivers to Tear the Sons of Zion to Pieces, and to Knock with Their Skulls on the Gates of Paradise."

Another typical Al-Hesbah subscriber entitled a message: "Secure Yourself a Chandelier under the Throne [in Paradise]," in which she encouraged Muslim women to carry out suicide bombings.

Cf. Memri.

Mentally Disabled Contribute to Iraq

I know there must be some sort of limit on the atrocities of the insane but news out of Iraq states that two mentally disabled women were strapped with explosives.

The women were sent into crowded Baghdad markets where they were blown up by remote control.

The bombs killed at least 98 people and wounded more than 200 during the holiest day of the week for Muslims.

The threat is real, the insurgents will use anything, and anyone to achieve their goal of de-stabalizing Iraq.