How to fix greyed out uTorrent files

So today, as i am sure all IT enthusiasts have experienced, a friend came to me all serious and stressed out of his mind rambling something about his internet wont work on his dads computer. So being the good friend and all I said I would help. I got to his computer and obviously the first thing I do is open a browser and check what happens if I try to connect to the internet, and wadya know, it works... and now the story changes, actually his torrents won't download.

So this is what i found when i opened uTorrent:

So first of all I found that there is still connection, (obvious from the top left corner showing the total up/download speed, and the bigass graph at the bottom).  Now I know that the program itself has connection, and is also somehow (and for some reason)  not allowing the torrents to start, this is also further confirmed when I force start a torrent, this works. But now to figure out why it just greys out the torrents and waits for kingdom come. I start at the usual suspects, the connection preferences, but no, this is all correct. then I see somthing intersting in the left hand menu:

 

The transfer cap, when i opened it, this is what i saw ^^^  (with different numbers though). So then it hit me,  uTorrent just hit its up/download cap, I unchecked the 'Enable Transfer Cap' checkbox and presto, problem solved.

Now my friend can go back to downloading illegal content... :|

Happy Hacking
MiniMite

How to make a CD autorun

Wow, it has been quite a while since i have posted anything on my blog, sorry for that. but i am back now and can't wait to tell you about all the things i have learned. so let us start off with something really simple, something that has baffled me since i started burning my programs to disk. how to make the main program automatically run on your disc when you insert it.

So you have a program that you want to distribute on a disc, but you dont want users to have to open the disc and look for the main program and run it etc. because like all IT proffesionals and hobbyist alike know, end users are really dumb, even with the simple things. so we want windows to show us that nifty "splash screen" to install the product. But first we have to know what windows looks for to create this screen, and also to know what to display on this screen. so when a disc is first inserted to the drive windows scans it for any setup information files, this file tells windows what to do with the disc, like open a specific program. these files have the extension .inf . Like most of you should have guessed by now we are going to make one of those files.

First a .inf file is really just a simple short and small text file with the .inf extension.
-open your text editor like notepad or  Notepad++

-write the following to the file

     [autorun]
  open=example.exe

  icon=example.ico

where "example.exe" is the name of your program to run and " example.ico" is a picture file (.ico fileformat) or icon to be used. *note this is optional.

 -then save the file as a "Autorun.inf" and not "Autorun.txt ." meaning goto saveas and select all file fomats from the dropdownlist and type the full filename with extension.

now that you have created this file you are ready to burn to disc, all three these files eg. "Autorun.inf", "example.exe" and "example.ico" need to be in the root directory of the disc. meaning dont put them in folders.

and there you have it making a program run when disc is inserted.

Happy Hacking
MiniMite

Networked Virtual machines

Well like promised here is some more examples on how to hack inside virtual machines.

After you have installed virtual box and atleast two operating systems you can do a lot of things with them but the most important thing you must know how to do is to put them in the same network and let them communicate. For this tutorial i have used backtrack and windows xp in the network.
before you boot into one of your two operating systems you have to tell virtual box to connect them, and this can only be done before booting.  so open up virtual box and select one os and go into its network settings, on the adapter1 select nat and on adapter 2 select Host-only adapter.

after you have done this you can boot up your operating systems and start your hacking. for starters you must find each of the machines ip addresses for windows you can use the ipconfig command in command prompt and for backtrack the ifconfig command will work perfectly. after you have the ip adresses you can start hacking, for starters you can do a port scan on windows with nmap scanner preinstalled on your backtrack os.
I would suggest switching off the firewall in windows as this can stop alot of your hacking attempts. after you get bored with that you can switch on the firewall and find some more vulnerabilities.

Till next Happy Hacking

Finally some practical hacking.

One of the biggest problems most budding hackers have is the fact that hacking is illegal without written consent from the owner of the other computer. and what business owner is going to let you stuff around on his half-a-million dollar network? nobody! And if you are like me you can't afford much more than a plain simple bottom of the range laptop and snailspeed internet, But there is a solution.

Enter VirtualBox. virtual box lets you install as many os's as your space allows you too on top of your host operating system. For instance you can install and run linux on top of your native windows seven (no need for dual-booting and partitioning your hard drive) that means you can have as much os's running on one computer as you want at the same time! The smart people have already figured out this one, if  you dont know what i am on about, think about it you can use the one operating system to hack the other or a program on the other. and the best part is whatever happens inside a virtual machine can not affect your host os, so you can even try those untested viruses of yours inside one of these virtual machines with no danger to your host os. ( be careful though some viruses don't attack software but hardware, so try not to corrupt your hard drive).
These virtual machines can be connected to each other in a network to simulate network attacks
You can install a server os like ubuntu server, and host a small website (not on the internet) to hack around with.

You can download Oracle virtual box for free at https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Once you have downloaded and installed virtualbox you are ready to install some operating systems some suggested free operating sytems are:
Backtrack which is a free linux based operating system with a twist, it was designed for security profesionals and boasts all the hacking tools that you will need in one package. (but beware it is quite a large download approx: 1.9GB).
Ubuntu  which is also linux based and free but has more of the everyday programs on it.
Ubuntu server same as the desktop version but is of course a server operating system.
For those who like their windows, you can download a cracked copy of windows XP here
Note: you must download the iso image file for each one

From her on it is fairly easy to set up a virtual machine.
open up Virtualbox and you should see a button that says "new" with a blue star at the top of it. click it.
This should open up a welcome menu just press next
Now it will ask you for a name for the VM and what type it is, complete this for this example i am going to run you through the installation of Ubuntu, well call the VM "Ubuntu" (or whatever you want) and you will see that it guesses that you are going to install Linux Ubuntu. Click next
Now it asks you how much of your ram you want to make available to the OS,( don't worry you wont lose the space you gain it back once you close your VM again), the default value is perfect. click next
Now it asks you if you want to create a start up disk, it is basically a virtual disk on your actual hard disk, your host os sees it as a big file and the os you are installing sees it as the whole disk. make sure "create new hard disk" is checked and click next
Now it asks you what type of hard disk you want to make, for now  VHD or virtual hard disk is perfect. click next.
Now the program asks whether you want it to be a fixed size or dynamic re-sizable hard drive, dynamic is perfect. click next
next you can leave location as is, and preferably the size aswell. click next.
click create.
click create.


Now you will see your newly created virtual machine in the left pane, but it still needs an operating system installed, it is like a brand new computer with no software on it.

Double click your VM to start it this will open up a first time use dialog,click next
Now it wants you to show it where to find the os, the default is the CD drive, but next to it is a small file icon, click it, navigate to where your Ubuntu .iso file is and open it. Click next
Now click start, it will start to boot from Ubuntu
when it asks you if you want to try or install Ubuntu, install it
when it asks where, you can erase all data on disk and install Ubuntu (dont worry it wont affect your base system just the virtual drive you created.)
Follow the prompts and youre good to go.


I will in the future give more posts on actual hack attacks using virtual machines but for now you can atleast start enjoying virtual machines.

Happy Hacking!

Want to hide encrypted files in other files?

Have you ever tried to email an application? or maybe you wanted to send personal information via email, but you are afraid that it ends up in the wrong hands?

Sending encrypted information across the internet is called steganography. I have tried out a lot of programs that claim to encrypt data and store it in another file, but all of them have short comings like some can only support small files, others can only encrypt a text file.
I have come across 1 tool that can do all this and more! it is called StegoMagic and you can download it here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?mr05s8c2rjxw8bi

How it works:
You first have to unzip the program to a file of your choice like example c:\StegoMagic\.
When you unzip the package you will see three files, two programs "StegoMagic_bin.exe" and "StegoMagic_txt.exe", and also a text file named "instructions.txt"
Copy both the files you want to use to the same folder as StegoMagic, eg. if you want to encrypt and save a file named "info.docx" in another file named "encrypt.txt", you have to copy both files to where StegoMagic is saved. The file names and sizes don't matter.

Read through the text file for complete instructions on how to use it. after you are done you can send your final file to who ever you want to, all they need is the encryption key generated during the process (saved in a text file in the same folder) and they also need StegoMagic to decrypt and view the file you sent them.

If you have ever tried to email an application, you will know that most email clients don't allow this no matter how hard you try to conceal the file, with StegoMagic this won't be a problem, all you have to do is encrypt the application in a text file, or any other file for that matter, then you just send the file and your email client won't even know you are sending a application.

I really hope this post helps you, for more information contact me minimite69@gmail.com