Pollywogs!

…alright, you can get your mind out of the gutter now…

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Back Orifice is a ‘trojan’ or a ‘remote network administration tool’ depending upon how you us it. I recently had an interest in remote access, and was wondering how to make it easier to traverse firewalls. As the vast majority of people on the Internet are now using firewalls and routers, having to have ‘clueless n00bs’ open ports for remote access ends up being quite an ordeal. However, the vast majority of people on the internet have firewalls and routers which only prevent incoming connections, the assumption being if your computer is sending it, you must think everything is A-OK with the data being sent. So…funny thing, not bothering users regarding outgoing communications…

I downloaded BOK2000 and spent some time playing around with it. Added plugins for security and reverse connections (the primary thing I was interested in). Reverse connections mean that once the server is running, it phones home, punching right through their firewall and router and back to the originators computer. After playing for a bit, I decided to try out infecting a ‘hapless victim’ so I emailed everyone in the office a ‘Hilarious ScreenSaver.zip’ file and waited for the incoming connections. Amusing from my point of view I suppose…

Having the remote server connect back to home is a genius idea as it is only detectable by someone actually paying attention. Who runs a real firewall these days? Or regularly checks their router’s logs (assuming their router even generates log files). The only thing which may catch it is an antivirus, and there are enough botnets and infected computers out there to show that huge swaths of the population are very willing to run strange .exe files, don’t use any real firewall protection and either don’t use a realtime virus scanner or never visit an online virus scanner…

You have run a virus scan recently, right? You wouldn’t drive your car with bald tires and no oil in it, so why be reckless with a computer?

With the concept of ’someone is in my house right now (or trying to get in) who has complete control over my computer without my knowledge, and yet I don’t want the expense or ass-grinding slowness of a realtime antivirus to help fight them off’, here are a couple links to free online scanners:

http://virusscan.jotti.org/ - this is neat, a website that submits your “file in question” to nearly every online scanner out there, and then provides the results to you.

http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html - if you use IE, I really like BitDefenders scan.

http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/ - NOD32 is ‘hardcore’, but also requires IE. Very, very thorough! If you run BitDefender and then NOD32 back to back, you’re probably cleaner than a nun…

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ - I’ve been pimping Housecall for years (not-so-interesting fact: I was running a 600Mhz Duron processor in 2000). Works with Firefox, finds a very wide range of problems. Me likely!

And, for your inner ‘conservative’:

http://www.tucows.com/preview/213160 - Sygate Firewall, my favorite incoming/outgoing firewall. It won’t let your computer blink an eyelash without you knowing about it…

http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html - Avast Antivirus, my favority free realtime antivirus. Along with a firewall, it will slow your shit down and make life more complicated. But it will keep you safer.

Combined with Sygate, think of them as ‘Big Government’ for your computer…actually, I guess instead of free solutions you should go buy the most expensive, intrusive and ineffective software suite you can find (if you really want to express your ‘inner neocon’)…