Hackszine.com: Windows Archives

Archive: Windows

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October 3, 2007

HOWTO - read RSS with a POP email client using FreePOPs

FreePOPs is an open source, plugin-based POP proxy that you can run on your local machine. It was originally designed to allow you to use a normal POP email client to read your mail on a multitude of webmail systems. You point your mail client at the FreePOPs server, and it connects and screen-scrapes your webmail account so that you can read your email in the comfort of your favorite mail reader.

The great thing about FreePOPs is its filter plugin architecture. There are a number of different plugins to support the specific requirements of most of the popular web-based email systems. There's even an RSS plugin that will pull an RSS feed and make it look like a normal POP mailbox. Thankfully, you don't need to configure anything on the server. Instead, you connect to the FreePOPs server using a particular username and password format to activate the appropriate plugin.

Here's how to set up an RSS-to-POP mailbox using FreePOPs and the standard OS X Mail.app email client.

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October 1, 2007

HOWTO - use Gmail with your Windows Mobile Smartphone

An anonymous reader sent us a few hacks today for the Samsung SGH-i600 phone - Link. This is basically the US Blackjack, except that it's released in the UK with Orange's branding and a bit of crippleware. One of the hacks that's mentioned is using GMail with the device, and it's a cool hack that can be applied to any Windows Mobile Smartphone or Pocket PC with internet access.

Overview
One of the things I've liked about these devices, in addition to the free dev tools, is that the mail client supports IMAP and POP email servers, not just the corporate Exchange setup. If you use GMail, you can set up your phone to send and receive email via GMails POP and SMTP servers.

This howto will guide you through the necessary settings. The screens may look a little different depending on what device and OS version you have, but the basic settings information will be the same throughout.

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September 27, 2007

Packet Garden

Packet Garden is a network visualization tool that maps your network traffic into a 3D representation, sprouting little plants on a globe whenever a connection is made.

To do this, Packet Garden takes note of all the servers you visit, their geographical location and the kinds of data you access. Uploads make hills and downloads valleys, their location determined by numbers taken from internet address itself. The size of each hill or valley is based on how much data is sent or received. Plants are also grown for each protocol detected by the software; if you visit a website, an 'HTTP plant' is grown. If you share some files via eMule, a 'Peer to Peer plant' is grown, and so on.

Packet Garden is GNU licenced and written in Python, so you can give it a try on supported Linux, Windows, and Mac machines. It doesn't run on Intel macs, unfortunately. As far as I can tell, Soya3D (the 3D library it uses) is the culprit and has not been compiled under this architecture. Anyone want to take a stab at porting this? I'm not familiar with the package, but it might be as simple as installing all Soya's required libraries and running a python make script.

Packet Garden. Grow a world from network traffic - Link
Soya3D - Link

September 26, 2007

Turn a Symbian Series 60 phone into a webcam

Smartcam is an open source utility that will turn a bluetooth-enabled Symbian Series 60 camera phone into a webcam that you can use on your Windows PC. Half of the application runs on the phone, reads from the camera and sends video frames to the PC via bluetooth. The other half of the application runs in Windows, receives the video frames and creates a virtual web camera that can be used in programs like Skype or Yahoo messenger.

There's not much documentation, and the project is still alpha, but if you can grep the source, you technically have everything you need to make other applications which pull live video from the phone.

SmartCam project page on SourceForge - [via] Link

September 23, 2007

HOWTO: check if malware is secretly connecting to the internet

Here's a quick command-line hack that you can run on your Windows boxes to see if there are any unsavory apps running in the background and making internet connections without your knowledge. Just run the following to trace applications which are opening sockets while you're not using the machine:

Start->Run->cmd
netstat -b 5 >activity.txt (In XP, use -o instead of -b)
Wait a few minutes, then press Ctrl-C
type activity.txt | more (or open activity.txt in wordpad)

This will repeatedly run netstat every 5 seconds until you hit Ctrl-C, logging all active TCP/UDP connections (legitimate or otherwise) to the activity.txt file. The -b flag will also show the name of the binary .exe file that's making the connection. In XP, the -o flag will do similar, showing the process id. If you see any connections being made that don't look legit, either to strange ip addresses or by processes that look fishy, you can check the task manager to kill it, and then run your virus scanner / anti-malware software to clean things up. [via] Link

August 20, 2007

HOWTO - iPod and PSP movies on Windows Mobile

Last week I mentioned that you can use TCPMP on Windows Mobile Smartphones and Pocket PCs to view H.264 encoded MP4s. I glossed over a few details, so here's a quick guide for getting everything running.

What You Need:

TCPMP: download the latest version for Pocket PC or Smartphone (currently 0.72RC1)- Link
H.264 ffmpeg plugin: under "additional plugins" - Link
AAC plugin: grab the Windows Mobile download under the "BetaPlayer AAC plugin" heading - Link

You'll also need your Smartphone or Pocket PC, a PC with ActiveSync, and enough space on the device (or SDCard) for storing the video you want to watch.

Install the Files:
The TCPMP download is a CAB file. You can either drop this on an SDCard in the device or copy it to the device with ActiveSync. Once it's there, use the file explorer on the device to find the CAB and execute it to begin the install.

After you've installed TCPMP, you'll need to also install the H.264 and AAC codecs so that you can view and hear videos encoded for the iPod. Both of these plugins are downloaded as a ZIP file. Inside you'll find EXE and CAB installers for the Smartphone and Pocket PC Windows Mobile platforms. You can install the CAB files just like you did with TCPMP, or you can execute the EXE installer on your synced PC and ActiveSync will take care of moving it to the device for you.

Transfer and Play Videos on the Device
The fastest way to get large video files to your device is just to drop them on a large SD or MiniSD card and insert it into your device. I did this with a few MP4s I had lying around from MAKE podcasts and Google Video downloads.

You'll find the TCPMP/Core icon in your Start Menu. After executing, you can choose "File->Open" to browse and select an MP4 file to play. There are some settings under options to adjust the video buffer and playback settings. You'll have to experiment to see what works best for your device.

On my test Smartphone, the MP4 video playback is pretty poor, but it does work. The audio doesn't skip, but there are a bunch of dropped video frames during playback. From what I can tell, the device just doesn't have the CPU muscle to decode the video fast enough without hardware acceleration. I have a feeling the Pocket PC hardware might be more up to the task. Please leave a comment if you can confirm this.

August 18, 2007

Coding plugins for Internet Explorer

Pete Warden wrote in about his completion of the IE port of the GoogleHotKeys (formerly PeteSearch) browser plugin.

In addition to the blog posts covering the port I've also put together a public wiki with full documentation on creating your own Internet Explorer extensions, and there's the full source code for the completed plugin for reference too.

When I checked out PeteSearch back in June, it was a pretty cool Firefox plugin that pre-scanned search results and added keyboard shortcuts to Google. Pete was just starting an IE version at the time, so it's cool to see a first version released along with all the documentation you need to make your own IE plugin.

How to write extensions for Internet Explorer - Link
GoogleHotKeys (info, download and sourcecode) - Link
HOWTO: Port Firefox extensions to IE - Link

August 17, 2007

YouTube and iPod video content on Windows Mobile

Out of the box, Windows Mobile devices can only play WMV files. Formats like Flash video or Quicktime are not supported. Using the open source media player TCPMP and some Pocket IE tweaks, however, you can view the FLV video content available on several popular video sites like YouTube and Google Video, right on your WM5 or WM6 Pocket PC or Smartphone.

For all you Tube-aholics, this is it! You now have direct, unfettered access to Youtube, Google Video & Veoh, in all their glory. Install the CABs listed below, go directly to these websites, and click on a video to play. That's it :)

Even better, you can also use TCPMP to watch H.264 MP4 / iPod encoded videos. With a large enough SD card, you should be able to use the same MP4 encoded videos on your Treo that you play from iTunes or on your iPod or iPhone.

Correction:
dankirkpatrick comments that the device referenced in the MP4-to-Treo article at jaydryden.net is actually a PalmOS device, and not the lookalike Windows Mobile Treo 700w. TCPMP is available for Windows Mobile, though, so I'll try and put together some instructions for this and verify that it works (it should). The encoding info on the Palm article should still apply, you just need to install TCPMP for WM, not for PalmOS.

Full Youtube and Google Video access - Link
Watching MP4 video on ~~Windows Mobile~~ PalmOS using TCPMP - Link
Wikipedia entry on TCPMP - Link

July 25, 2007

HOWTO: spoof Windows TCP/IP stack and IIS server headers

Pavs sent in a link to a program for Windows XP called Security Cloak, which can be used to tweak your machine's TCP/IP fingerprint to look like something else:

Security Cloak is designed to protect against TCP/IP stack fingerprinting and computer identification/information leakage via timestamp and window options by modifying relevant registry keys. The settings used are based on the results of SYN packet analysis by p0f. While the OS reported by other OS detection scanners were not identical to those of p0f, testing against Nmap, xprobe2, queso and cheops showed that they were unable to identify the correct operating system/version after Security Cloak settings had been applied.

Another way to detect a server type is to look at the HTTP "Server:" header, which will report the type and version of the OS and web server software that is running. MS has a support article about using a tool called URLScan to change your system's server header. You could change this to something completely bogus, or maybe impersonate the header from another system. Presumably, you'd want to match the OS fingerprint that you tweaked with Security Cloak.

The exact utility of all this? It could be slightly useful for deterring some types of automated cracking tools, namely those that use OS fingerprinting to guess the possible ways to compromize a machine. It might also be a nice way to trick your Linux hacker buddies so they stop teasing you about those Windows boxes that corporate is forcing you to keep running.

Security Cloak (overview and instructions) - Link
Download Security Cloak - Link
Mask IIS Version Information - Link

July 18, 2007

WiinRemote: Wiimote as a Windows input device

I wish I had a Windows box handy at the moment, as I'd like play around with this. Using WiinRemote, you can have the Wii Remote control your PCs mouse. Tilting causes the mouse to move up, down, left, and right. In addition to a mouse click, the remote's buttons can also be assigned to various key combos.

This could really come in handy for presentations or classroom instruction. With a standard laptop/projector setup, this would let you run a slideshow or demo an application while being able to move about freely. On the down side, you'll have one less reason to hide behind the podium.

WiinRemote - Link

July 11, 2007

Play ripped DVDs with VLC

Steve Anderson wrote in about an underused feature of our favorite open source video player, VLC.

I discovered yesterday that the wonderful VLC media player has the ability not only to mount a DVD directory that's been ripped to the hard drive, but also to play a .iso image of a DVD. Seeing as I've been using it for ages without knowing this was possible, I figured a lot of other people would be ignorant to this feature!

Maybe you want to test an ISO that you've created before burning it to a disk. Perhaps you'd like to store your DVDs to your harddisk without transcoding them, retaining all the menus and special features. Using VLC, you should be able to do either by entering a "dvd:" url in the Open dialog box.

Example URLs to Open and play a DVD ISO:

Windows - dvd://c:/somedirectory/dvdimage.iso

Linux - dvd:///home/username/dvdimages/dvdimage.iso

Example URLs to Open and play a ripped DVD folder:

Windows - dvd://c:/somedirectory/DVDFOLDER

Linux - dvd:///home/username/dvdcopies/DVDFOLDER

Resources:
VLC DVD Trick - Link
Get VLC - Link

July 4, 2007

Pocket PC iPhone conversion

Call it superficial, but you can really help your Pocket PC's self esteem by giving it a face lift.

It's still Windows Mobile on the inside, so most of your apps will look and function as before, but a few free downloads will get you home screen and dialpad themes, an iPhone-like contacts list, and the cool slide-to-unlock gizmo.

Resources:
Turn your Windows Mobile phone into an iPhone @ Lifehacker - Link
iPhone-like home screen for PPC - Link
Slide 2 Unlock - Link
iContact (flick to scroll contacts) - Link
Dialpad and Calculator skins - Link

June 21, 2007

Whistle to control your computer

R2D2 was on to something. Think easier speech recognition with reduced error rates:

Use Linux® or Microsoft® Windows®, the open source sndpeek program, and a simple Perl script to read specific sequences of tonal events -- literally whistling, humming, or singing at your computer -- and run commands based on those tones. Give your computer a short low whistle to check your e-mail or unlock your your screensaver with the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Whistle while you work for higher efficiency.

This ought to be nostalgic for all of you who remember trying to whistle a successful modem handshake sequence. (Someone please tell me I'm not the only nerd in the room who did this for kicks.)

Whistle while you work to run commands on your computer - Link

June 16, 2007

HOWTO - Read/Write to NTFS drives in OS X

If you want to share an external drive between a Mac and a Windows machine, you typically format the drive with a FAT32 partition. One problem you'll run into, however, is that you can run into a file size limit if you're dealing with really large files. NTFS gets around this limitation, but unfortunately the OS X NTFS driver only supports reading from NTFS partitions.

Thankfully, there's a NTFS Fuse driver which you can use with the MacFUSE userspace filesystem driver. It supports full read/write capability, so you can use an external disk to swap large files between your Windows and Mac machines.

It's a bit of a pain to install, but here's the quick rundown:

Download and install MacFUSE - Link
Just get the DMG file and run the contained installer.

Download and install Fink. You need this for obtaining and building the NTFS Fuse driver - Link
- run the installer within the DMG file
- drag the FinkCommander application to your Applications folder
Get NTFS Fuse driver. You need to configure Fink to use unstable packages and then install the ntfs-3g Fuse driver. Open a terminal and run the following commands.
- /sw/bin/fink configure
Use defaults, except answer YES to use the unstable tree
- /sw/bin/fink selfupdate
- /sw/bin/fink index
- /sw/bin/fink scanpackages
- /sw/bin/fink install ntfs-3g
Reboot
Mount your drive
- First, make sure it's unmounted in disk utility (Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility - select drive - click unmount)
- Make a mount point: mkdir /Volumes/ntfsdrive
- Mount the drive: /sw/bin/ntfs-3g /dev/disk2s1 /Volumes/ntfsdrive
Replace /dev/disk2s1 with your external drive's device. You can find this in Disk Utility.

The last step is all that you'll need to repeat in the future to connect to your NTFS drive. After executing the mount command, the drive will appear on your desktop and you should be able to write files to it!

June 8, 2007

HOWTO: Port Firefox extensions to IE

Hackszine reader Pete Warden is the author of a cool Firefox extension called PeteSearch. He wrote in to tell us about his progress with porting the functionality to IE:

PeteSearch is an extension that mashes up Google (and Ask, Technorati, Live and Exalead) search pages to give you hot-keys, dead-link checking and split-screen preview.
Now I'm trying the IE port, and I've my own HOWTO with sample code and articles on that painful process!

Building a browser object for IE is a much more laborious process than making a Firefox extension. Welcome to COM DLL hell. Thankfully, Pete's done a nice job of documenting things while porting his app over, and it's this sort of first-hand experience that makes it bearable to start a project like this of your own.

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