Things you should do to protect yourself on a public computer

Most of us will occasionally have to use a public computer for one reason or another. Maybe it’s an emergency situation (your own computer crashes or you get caught without your laptop when traveling) or perhaps the opportunity is just too convenient to pass up. Whatever your reasons, using public computers will always carry an inherent risk of exposing your personal data. Luckily, there are some things you can do to protect yourself and lessen that risk.

Delete your Browsing History

This should be the first step you take to protect your privacy when Web surfing on a public computer. When you’ve finished browsing, it’s a good idea to delete your cookies, form data, history, and temporary Internet files. In Internet Explorer 7, you can do this all at once under Tools | Delete Browsing History. In older versions of IE, each of these must be deleted separately, under Tools | Internet Options.

In Mozilla Firefox, go to Tools | Options, click the Privacy tab, and select Always Clear My Private Data When I Close Firefox. By default, this erases your browsing history, download history, saved form information, cache, and authenticated sessions. Click the Settings button and select the options to erase your cookies and saved passwords, too.

Don’t save files locally

When you’re using a computer other than your own, even if it’s a trusted friend’s machine, it’s polite to avoid saving files locally if you can help it. This is basically equivalent to not cluttering up another person’s home with your junk. On a public machine, though, this goes beyond politeness and is an important security practice. Many of the files you would normally save locally, such as e-mail attachments, can contain private or sensitive information. An easy way to protect this data is to carry a flash drive and save files there when necessary. It’s also a good idea to attach the flash drive to your key ring so you’ll be less likely to misplace it and create a new security problem.

Don’t save passwords

This should be obvious when using a public computer, but if the option is already turned on, you might forget about it. To make sure passwords are not saved in Internet Explorer 7, go to Tools | Internet Options | Content. In the AutoComplete panel, click the Settings button and verify that the Prompt Me To Save Passwords check box is deselected. None of the other AutoComplete features needs to be enabled either, so deselect them as well. In Firefox, choose Tools | Options | Security and deselect Remember Passwords For Sites.

Delete temporary files

Temporary files (often abbreviated to “temp files”), as opposed to temporary Internet files, are created when you use programs other than a Web browser. For instance, when you create a Word document, in addition to the actual document file you save, Word creates a temporary file to store information so memory can be freed for other purposes and to prevent data loss in the file-saving process.

These files are usually supposed to be deleted automatically when the program is closed or during a system reboot, but unfortunately they often aren’t. To find these files, do a search on all local drives (including subfolders, hidden, and system files) for *.tmp,*.chk,~*.* This will bring up all files beginning with a tilde or with the extensions .tmp and .chk, which are the most common temp files. Once the search is complete, highlight all and Shift + Delete to remove them. (If you don’t hold down Shift, they’ll usually be sent to the Recycle Bin, which you would then have to empty.)

Clear the pagefile

The pagefile is the location on the hard disk that serves as virtual memory in Windows. Its purpose is to swap out data from RAM so that programs can operate as if they have more RAM available than you actually have installed in the computer. Anything that can be stored in memory could also be stored in the pagefile. To have this automatically cleared on shutdown, you need to use Local Security Policy.

To access Local Security Policy, open Control Panel, double-click on Administrative Tools, and double-click on Local Security Policy. Then, click Security Options in the right-hand pane and scroll down to Shutdown: Clear Virtual Memory Pagefile. Double-click that item and make sure it’s enabled.

Note: On many public machines you won’t have the rights to get to Local Security Policy, and while this task can also be accomplished from the registry, on these machines you likely won’t be able to use regedit either. In this case, you can delete the page file manually. First you’ll have to change the settings in Windows Explorer. Click View | Folder Options and the View tab, then scroll down and click Show Hidden Files And Folders. Deselect the Hide Protected Operating System Files check box. Now, find the file named pagefile.sys. It is usually (but not always) on the C: drive. Delete it; a new one will be created when the system reboots.

Reboot

When you’re finished using the public computer, the final thing you should do is a hard reboot. This will not only clear the pagefile, if you’ve enabled that option, but it will also clear out everything you did from the physical memory (RAM).

Boot from another device

This is a fairly advanced option, and one that is often overlooked. If you boot from either your own USB drive or from a CD, many of the problems mentioned above can be avoided. Today, many Linux distributions have the option of running completely in memory after booting from a CD. If a public computer has had its BIOS options left at default (which happens more often than you would think), this could be an option. If you are able to do this and remember not to save any other files to the local hard drive, everything will be gone when you reboot.

Pay attention to your surroundings and use common sense

Finally, you need to remember to pay attention to things outside of the actual computer that could be a risk. Be aware of strangers around you (potential shoulder surfers) and remember that a public computer is just that — public. Don’t view any truly sensitive documents you couldn’t bear for others to see. Remember the security camera over your shoulder. Cover your hands from view when entering any login information to prevent any casual spying.

Most important, remember that there is nothing you can do to make a public computer completely secure. A truly malicious owner or user could install a hardware keystroke logger that would be impossible to detect without actually opening the case and inspecting it. With that less-than-comforting thought, use common sense and use public computers only for nonsensitive tasks.

References:

- TechRepublic

Use multiple identities on Google Talk

Want to run Google Talk with multiple Gmail identities?If you have several Google Gmail accounts you also may want to run multiple instances of Google Talk. This is especially important for families that share a single PC. Nothing worse than a family member signing you out so they can sign in under their own account!Basically, to have “Google Polygamy” you need to run Google Talk with the following switch: /nomutexStep 1: Right-click on the desktop

Step 2: Select NewStep

Step 3: Select ShortcutStep

Step 4: Paste this into the text box:”c:\program files\google\google talk\googletalk.exe” /nomutex

Step 5: Click Next and choose a shortcut name such as Google Talk1, Google Talk2, or something related to your Gmail account for easy remembering which account is which.

Step 6: Click OK a few times.

Social Engineering And Email Account Cracking

Social engineering is an art of science that makes use of some psychological tricks on users to get the information you want. Looks very simple but it requires patience, approach towards the target, should be quick to respond and many more…

In this article we will discuss some of the possibilities of social engineering to crack email accounts and some ways to overcome such attacks.

I think many of the enthusiastic people who want to become hackers have visited websites that contain many tutorials like “Hacking Hotmail”, “Hacking Yahoo!” etc…

But actually all these texts are useless and they trick on the users who want to learn hacking. Let’s see an article I saw before written by Risabhdara for ASTALAVISTA.

Verification Auto Bot

This method is probably the lamest, least known but also the most successful method of hacking hotmail.

By continuing on down this letter you agree that Hack_Attack69 will not be held responsible for any misuse of information within these pages. This letter is purely for educational use. If your intentions are similar proceed but if not you will be held responsible for your own mistakes.

Hello Hotmail users. There have been many attempts to hack hotmail.com. Unfortunately all of them have failed, EXCEPT this one. I though have found out a revolutionary way to hack hotmail. And might I add it’s as easy as ABC. After 8 months of research we have found the broken link. VerificationAutoBot to be exact. VerificationAutoBot@hotmail.com is a bot, an auto bot. You send it a letter and within a week it will send you one back. The ULTIMATE hack for hotmail is as follows:

First send a letter to verificationautobot@hotmail.com, second within the Subject heading place the word “Password” (not in quotes but has to have a capital P) this way the automated bot recognizes what you are after. Then in the text field place the name of the person at hotmail that you want to hack (Do not put @hotmail.com after their name). No capital letters are to be put in this place. Then skip three (3) lines and place your own hotmail account information such as: “My login: My password” (a semicolon makes it easier for the bot to recognize). This way the bot can verify that your account actually exists. And then supplies you with the password for the person’s account that you want it for. Here is an example:

——————————————————————————–

To: verificationautobot@hotmail.com

bcc:

cc:

Subject: Password

login of the person you want to hack

yourlogin:yourpassword

——————————————————————————–

This IS the only way to hack hotmail. Use it with care.

Thank You Hack_Attack69

After reading the above article if you give that a try, you’re caught. You are just revealing your username and password for the person at verificationautobot@hotmail.com. The above is a social engineering trick played by the author of this article.

If you ever saw some article saying about the “Auto password reminders” of Hotmail, they are all useless. The people at Hotmail or Yahoo! are not fools to install such servers. Below are some of the tricks you can do on users to get some info for password cracking.

1) To know some information about an user, the best way is to chat with that person.

# If the victim is a newbie mostly he will use the same username as his password (Even I too when four years back did the same ;))

# If the age of the victim is between 15-30, above 90% users will be using his/her lover or spouse’s name as their password.

# Some others use their pet’s name, their job title, their DOB, their place of living etc… as their password.

You can gain such information during chat time. Below is an example of such tricks used by me during chat-time in an Indian room.

Me: hi

Victim: hi

Me: how r u?

Victim: fine. What abt u?

Me: Very fine J

Me: Where r u 4m?

Victim: I am from Hyderabad.

Me: I am also from Hyderabad.

Me: where in Hyderabad??

Victim: gr8

Victim: Somajiguda

Me: Today is my birthday

Victim: Oh! Many many happy returns of the day

Me: Tnx

Me: What is your DOB?

Victim: DOB???????????

Me: Date of Birth

Victim: 22/2/1979

Me: Oh god! My girl friend’s B’day was also the same day.

Victim: I C

Me: Do you have any g friends?

Victim: ya. Neeta

Me: Ok.

Me: gtg now

Me: bye

From the above conversation we have sufficient information to crack his email account. Let’s see what information have we collected.

$ From his screen name we can know his email address

$ The victim said that he is from Somajiguda, Hyderabad. I know the postal code of Somajiguda, it is 500082

$ Saying today is my birthday I got this date of birth

$ Also I got his girl friend’s name

Afterwards I went to the homepage of the mail service he is using and clicked “Forgot Password”. In the next page it requested to give the date of birth and his postal code. Fortunately the service he is using doesn’t ask any secret questions, it just shown up the current password.

But this method may not work all the times. You have to quickly gather the information you want.

2) The second and one of the best ways is to design a fake login screen for the email account the victim is using. You can find a lot of services on the net providing the CGI send mail accounts for free. Using these scripts you can easily get the username and password of the user directly to your email account when ever an user logs in through those screens.

But for making him to logon through your screens you must use some social engineering tricks and send an email to him.

3) Another way is to make the person, who is reading your article about hacking hotmail, a victim. Just as I’ve mentioned above, the trick played by Risabhdara.

There may be many other methods to reach your target. There are the ones I know and I use and I’ve succeeded.

Credits

by assassin007

http://www.hrvg.tk