If you press the space bar right after the BIOS screen and just before the Windows boot screen appears, you will be taken to the Windows Boot Manager. Users can select which operating system to boot or hit F8 key for the normal recovery options. If you hit the Space bar when you  are prompted with “Press any key to boot from CD or DVD” will also lead you to the Windows Boot Manager.

The Azure solution has been designed to help developers deploy web-based services centred around Visual Studio quickly and easily by not having to worry about the infrastructure costs or overhead that are typically associated with application delivery.

Once a you are ready to deploy you can select how many nodes you want to use in the Microsoft cloud of computing power, you reserve a those nodes and pay for just those node.  As your web service becomes more popular, you can log in to the management web site and increase the node count with just a few clicks.
Windows Azure pricing is based on how much storage, bandwidth and computing time an application uses.

Visit the Windows Azure Community Technology Preview

Read the Microsoft Press Release

The Microsoft service is playing catch up to the Amazon.com service that has been around for quite some time, called Elastic Computing Cloud (Amazon EC2).

The major difference that pushes Amazon.com’s solution ahead of Microsoft is the fact that it is no based on one solution.   With just a few clicks you can deploy a Linux, OS X or a Windows solution with prebuilt images. 

Amazon’s solution is priced according to how much storage (cheap), bandwidth (not as cheap) and computing time (relatively cheap).
To use Amazon EC2, you simply:

• Create an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) containing your applications, libraries, data and associated configuration settings. Or use pre-configured, templated images to get up and running immediately.
• Upload the AMI into Amazon S3. Amazon EC2 provides tools that make storing the AMI simple. Amazon S3 provides a safe, reliable and fast repository to store your images.
• Use Amazon EC2 web service to configure security and network access.
• Choose which instance type(s) and operating system you want, then start, terminate, and monitor as many instances of your AMI as needed, using the web service APIs or the variety of management tools provided.
• Determine whether you want to run in multiple locations, utilize static IP endpoints, or attach persistent block storage to your instances.
• Pay only for the resources that you actually consume, like instance-hours or data transfer.

You can read more about Amazon EC2 here.

Users can make a system backup to VHD file and also boot from a VHD file. With Windows Vista you can easily mount a VHD file for offline editing in Disk Management.

Click on the Start Button and key in diskmgmt.msc and hit Enter.

Once in Disk Management, click on the Action in the menu bar and select Attach VHD.

Select the file location and check Read-only to prevent writes to the VHD file.

After you hit ok the drive will show up in Disk Management with a blue icon.

You can now access the F: drive in Explorer.
When you want to un-mount the VHD file return to Disk Management and right click on the left side of the drive listed on the device chart and select Detach VHD.

Obviously, the best bets are the commercial software since it is in their best interest to be at the top of the game.  The shareware solutions although they are excellent are not always the most up to date.  But if your bank account is empty, they will do the trick.

Spybot Search & Destroy v1.5 – is by far the best anti-spyware solution. It offers real-time protection through its TeaTimer function (even though it is a little annoying).  The signature database is quite comprehensive, containing about 106.700 entries at the time when I reviewed it.  You can find additional documentation here including how to automate the scans.

Ad-Aware 2007 Free v7 – is one of the most well-known anti-spyware solutions. Most of the features are disabled and only available if you purchase the software.  It is nonetheless an excellent product to use.

AVG Anti-Spyware Free Edition v7.5 – is a free trial version of AVG Anti-Spyware Pro that disables most of its features after 1 day of use. So, initially you get a fully featured anti-spyware solution that offers real-time protection and automatic updates. After that you will be asked to buy the "Pro" version or, you can continue using it for free but with less features. Eventually you will be left with only the anti-spwyare engine. You will have to manually update the application and also make manual scans of your system. Even so, AVG Anti-Spyware Free Edition v7.5 is a good solution that offers a good detection engine and a very nice and easy to use interface.

Comodo BOClean Anti-Malware v4.25 – is a strange application since once you install it, it runs silently in the background as a memory-resident application without giving you any warning messages, pop-ups, or anything else. The GUI appears ancient and has only minimal configuration options.  It is an excellent tool, but you will find yourself wondering if it is actually doing anything – but don’t worry – it is!

Spyware Terminator v2 – is probably the most full featured and robust spyware removal tools out there. It offers effective real-time protection without sacrificing too many system resources. The number of updates & signatures is excellent, the features and spyware detection rate are almost as good as the scanning speed.

SpywareBlaster v3.5 – just like Comodo BOClean, this application acts like a prevention tool that protects your PC from spyware, adware, dialers, browser hijackers, and other potentially unwanted programs. Unlike Comodo, SpywareBlaster does not update itself automatically. If you want the ‘Auto Update’ feature you will have to buy a license key. The interface is better than Comodos but, even so, it still feels like an outdated application.

Before we begin, you need to have access to the system, this is not for breaking into a system, but rather recovering a password to an account without destroying it.  If you are looking to break into a Linux Box because you’ve forgotten the password follow the instructions here or here.

The passwords in linux systems are typically stored (encoded) in the file /etc/passwd, but with the shadow suite installed, you’ll see an ‘x’ in the password field in /etc/passwd, and the password will be stored in /etc/shadow.

Here is a portion of my shadow file. The password hash field begins with $1$.

Now if you want to get/crack/recover the password you need to use a program called John the Ripper.  To install it, open Terminal and type;

sudo apt-get install john

Then to crack the password type

sudo unshadow /etc/passwd /etc/shadow > mypasswd

sudo john mypasswd

Now in my scenario I purposefully used a simple password just for speed.  If the password is a dictionary word, or short, it will be cracked almost instantly.  If the password has special characters or is long, it will obviously take longer.

Once the password is cracked if you type;

sudo john –show mypasswd

You will see the username and the password in clear text, and the best part of all is that the account has not been damaged in any way.

When you play the video you’ll be presented with a screen telling you that you don’t have the appropriate player and that you need to visit a particular website to get the player.

http://download.domplayer.com/

Once you download it, it will most likely say that you are not in a country that they can accept payment from!  Bullshit!

They then redirect you to another site.  The 3wPlayer.  This is the spyware laden piece of crap.

Often the files themselves are pretty good, it’s just the header information that is being incorrectly read.  There are two tracks for video in an AVI file and most player read one of them.  This player picks up the other one, making the file play a few seconds and the rest appear to be garbage.

You can download a utility from Wildman Productions that will remove the crap and allow you to play the video normally.

It is mirrored on our site here.

Once you download it, just simply run the file.

In the Input File click the browse button to locate the file.

Click corresponding button in the Output File section to specify where you want to save the file.

When you are ready click Convert.

In about 20 seconds your file will be repaired and you can play it in Windows Media, VLC, Quicktime….whatever you want!

The technique involves modifications to the system’s HOSTS file.  What is the HOSTS file you ask?  For you newbies out there a HOSTS file is a computer file used to store information on where to find a node on a computer network. This file maps hostnames to IP addresses.

So?  Who cares right?  Wrong!!!!  Observe this simple technique to hijack your computer without you ever knowing or suspecting!

The trick is to get you to download and install my little program, or execute my ActiveX control, or for me to plant it in some shareware somewhere, a million different ways of me delivering it to your computer.  As part of the program I have a simple entry in your HOSTS file.  A typical HOSTS file should look like this;

No big deal.  But if my little program modifies your HOSTS file to appear as the one below;

When you launch your web browser and type in www.google.com you are redirected to www.goitexpert.com my friend!  Same with the Citibank Web Login.  You get sent to www.goitexpert.com.  You can use this technique to set up a fake web site.

Even the title in the address bar says http://www.google.com since as far as the browser is concerned, you are at Google’s web page.  Try the technique for yourself!

This is where you get into trouble.  If I wanted to “rip off” Citibank’s web site, I could and you would never know it.  The address would still appear as if it were Citibank’s and you would try logging in as you normally do, and you wouldn’t be able to login.  But I would have your username and password!

By the time you realized what has happened, you would be broke!

How do you stop this type of attack?  You can obviously buy Anti-Virus Anti-Spyware software, but they won’t help much.  My HOSTS file actually has several needed entries and neither my anti-virus or spyware software has ever complained about entries in the HOSTS file.

The sure fire way to prevent HOSTS file abuse is to mark it read-only.  Locate your HOSTS file in c:windowssystem32driversetc and right-click on it.

Go to Properties and put a checkmark in the box that says Read-Only.

As a result of this you will be prompted whenever an attempt is made to write an entry to this file.  The prompt will say that you are trying to modify a read-only file and will prevent the action.  Unless of course the coder was smart enough to try and modify the attributes before hand.

Oh but you use Linux so you are safe from this technique?  WRONG!! The /etc/hosts file is just as vulnerable.  If you are logged in as a user that can modify system files, you are vulnerable, and often to install software you have to be logged in as root or at least with sudo rights.

You should mark the /etc/hosts file as read-only as well.

The latest version of SystemRescueCd, version 0.4, was released last week with several new features for repairing systems and recovering data after a crash.

It is a Linux system that is bootable from CD and is packed with loads of powerful tools that enable you to do everything from create and edit the partitions of the hard disk, re-image a computer, create an image, boot from a USB stick and boot discs can be customized through the addition of scripts to automate functions.

It contains a wide variety of system utilities, such as parted, partimage and fstools, and other basic tools for tasks such as editing and working on networks. For a list of system tools go here, for a detailed list of all the packages, go here.

The kernel supports most of the major file systems (ext2/ext3, reiserfs, reiser4, xfs, jfs, vfat, ntfs, iso9660), as well as network file systems (samba and nfs).

Major new features include:

• PXE Network booting
• Support for amd64/em64t architecture (x86-64bits processors)
• Support the the Sparc architecture (Sun architecture)

System tools:

• GParted is a partition clone tool for Linux.
• GNU Parted is text tool for editing disk partitions under linux
• Partimage is a Ghost/Drive-image clone for Linux
• A variety of file systems tools to format, resize, and debug an existing partition of the hard disk (e2fsprogs, reiserfsprogs, reiser4progs, xfsprogs, jfsutils, ntfsprogs, dosfstools).
• Ntfs-3g: allows you to mount your Windows partition and get a full read/write unlimited access to the NTFS partition.
• Sfdisk allows you to backup and restore your partition table
• Test-disk tool to check and undelete partition, supports reiserfs, ntfs, fat32, ext2/3 and many others Network tools (Samba, NFS, ping, nslookup, …)

Once you have created the CD, just place it in the drive and boot from it.  Once the following screen appears just hit Enter to boot, or you can hit one of the Function keys for more detailed options.

Most of your devices have native support on the CD, so most should be detected automatically.

Once all the drivers have been loaded, you will see the following screen.  Here you can enable NTFS support, start a text editor, start a web browser, start the imaging tool to create or restore an image.

Here is a shot of one of the text editors.

Here is a shot of Partition Image v. 0.6.6.

Boot debian linux into single-user mode

Boot using a boot disk (like knoppix,gnoppix) and edit the password file

Mount the drive on another computer and edit the password file

It is possible to boot a system and log on to the root account without knowing the root password as long as one has access to the console keyboard.

This is a procedure which requires no external boot disks and no change in BIOS boot settings. Here, “Linux” is the label for booting the Linux kernel in the default Debian install.

Solution 1
At the lilo boot screen, as soon as boot: appears (you must press a shift key at this point on some systems to prevent automatic booting and when lilo uses the framebuffer you have to press TAB to see the options you type), enter:

boot: Linux init=/bin/sh

This causes the system to boot the kernel and run /bin/sh instead of its standard init. Now you have gained root privileges and a root shell. Since / is currently mounted read-only and many disk partitions have not been mounted yet, you must do the following to have a reasonably functioning system.

# mount -n -o remount,rw /
# mount -avt nonfs,noproc,nosmbfs
# cd /etc
# vi passwd
# vi shadow

(If the second data field in /etc/passwd is “x” for every username, your system uses shadow passwords, and you must edit /etc/shadow.) To disable the root password, edit the second data field in the password file so that it is empty. Now the system can be rebooted and you can log on as root without a password. When booting into runlevel 1, Debian (at least after Potato) requires a password, which some older distributions did not.
It is a good idea to have a minimal editor in /bin/ in case /usr/ is not accessible.Also consider installing the sash package.

When the system becomes unbootable, execute

boot: Linux init=/bin/sash

sash serves as an interactive substitute for sh even when /bin/sh is unusable. It’s statically linked, and includes many standard utilities as built-ins.

Solution 2
Boot from any emergency boot/root disk set. If /dev/hda3 is the original root partition, the following will let one edit the password file just as easily as the above.

# mkdir recovery
# mount /dev/hda3 recovery
# cd recovery/etc
# vi shadow
# vi passwd

Scroll down to the line containing the root user’s information, which looks something like

root:weeWRSF!sfDFs:12581:0:99999:7:::

Delete everything between the first and second colons, so that the line looks like

root::12581:0:99999:7:::

Save the file and exit your editor.Type cd to return to your home directory.
Type umount mountplace to unmount the partition.

#unmount /dev/hda3 recovery

Type reboot to reboot your system
The advantage of this approach over the previous method is one does not need to know the lilo password . But to use it one must be able to access the BIOS setup to allow the system to boot from floppy disk or CD, if that is not already set.

Solution 3
Reseting passwords by mounting on another system and editing the password file is bit more work need to be done.first you need to Shut down the machine after backing up all important data.Now remove you machine hard disk and connect this hard disk as slave drive for another machine(this should be linux OS) and boot this machine.Once the system finishes booting, mount the slave drive’s root partition and edit the password file.If /dev/hda3 is the original root partition, the following will let one edit the password file just as easily as the above.

# mkdir recovery
# mount /dev/hda3 recovery
# cd recovery/etc
# vi shadow
# vi passwd

Scroll down to the line containing the root user’s information, which looks something like

root:weeWRSF!sfDFs:12581:0:99999:7:::

Delete everything between the first and second colons, so that the line looks like

root::12581:0:99999:7:::

Save the file and exit your editor.Type cd to return to your home directory.
Type umount mountplace to unmount the partition.

#unmount /dev/hda3 recovery

Type reboot to reboot your system

If you want to prevent others from resetting your root password you can use two options first one is protect your bootloader with password i.e your GRUB or LILO boot loaders and second one is protect BIOS with password.

Solution 4

Boot with LiveCD

mkdir /d
mount /dev/hda1 /d
chroot /d
passwd (or passwd root)

type your new password

press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and you are back in business.

• You do not need to know the old password to set a new one.
• It works offline, that is, you have to shutdown your computer and boot off a CD.
• Will detect and offer to unlock locked or disabled user accounts!

NOTE THAT THE BOOTDISK CONTAINS CRYPTHOGRAPHIC CODE, and that it may be ILLEGAL to RE-EXPORT it from your country.

THIS SOFTWARE COMES WITH NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER. THE AUTHOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE CAUSED BY THE (MIS)USE OF THIS SOFTWARE!

Download

CD Image – Bootable CD image – can also be burned onto a USB drive or key

How to make the CD

Unzip the file and there will be an ISO image file (cd070927.iso). This can be burned to CD using whichever CD Burning program you like, Nero is my recommendation.

The CD will boot with most BIOSes, see your manual on how to set it to boot from CD.

The chntpw binary is (c) 2004 Petter N Hagen.  Please see COPYING.txt The distribution of the floppy image is restricted by this if it contains that binary.

INSTRUCTIONS

Boot from the CD.
You will see the following screen begin to load;  Hit Enter when you see boot:

You will then need to select the partition on your hard drive where Windows is installed.  In this example it is simple since there is only 1 partition.  Type the number of the partition – in this case 1  and hit Enter.

You will then be prompted for the PATH and registry files.  In most cases the default value is fine.  Just Hit Enter.

You will then be brought to a menu to reset the password.  The option is 1.  Type the number 1 and hit Enter.

The next step is to select the option to Edit User Data and Passwords.  Type the number 1 and hit Enter.  The local user accounts will be displayed on screen.

Type in the name of the local account for which you want to reset the password, then hit Enter.

You have two real options here, to either blank the password (no password) or to enter a new password. We recommend blanking the password since it can do less damage if it goes wrong. You can always enter a new password once you get into Windows. Otherwise, type in the new password for the account and hit Enter.

When you are prompted if you really want to change the password, type Y for yes and hit Enter.

At the next screen type ! (exclamation mark) and hit Enter to quit.

You will be prompted to write the files to the hard drive so that the changes will take effect.  Type Y for yes and hit Enter.
This will then take you back to the main menu.  Type q for quit and hit Enter.

Type n for No when you are prompted to run the program again and hit Enter.

Type    reboot   and hit Enter.  Your computer will now restart. Sometimes the shutdown procedure will hang or take a long time, there is no harm at this point to hit the power button on your computer to restart the system.

When Windows loads select the username for which you reset the password, and type in the new password.   You will then be able to fully access the system.

NOTE:  YOU CAN ONLY RESET THE PASSWORD ONCE!  IF YOU REPEAT THE PROCEDURE ON THE SAME ACCOUNT YOU WILL RECEIVE AN ERROR MESSAGE!

To get around this issue, once you change the password, create a new one in Windows and you will be able to perform this operation again.