Δευτέρα 6 Δεκεμβρίου 2010

CyberCafe programs and timers.

Although I strongly believe that you should not steal money by not paying at cyber cafes, there are always some cases that you may "have to" stay for a little bit more.
Imagine that you are playing Counter Strike in teams and there is a bet. What do you do in that case if nobody else can pay for you?

Disclaimer: The following information are only for educational purposes and should not be used even in case what mentioned above is true. This is a crime and you may have problems with the shop owners.

The explanation: 
What a cyber cafe client program does is it sends to the server (it may not be a server box or it may not run server OS) information on what is happening on the client. According to its quality it may have more or less capabilities some of these may be:
  • Block the entrance to a computer
  • Permit the entrance for a period of time
  • Taking screenshots of the client computer. (Could be even video and sound)
  • The administrator of the server may be able to control your mouse and keyboard
  • Automatically block porn sites or other harmfull programs such as viruses
These are some of the basics of these programs.


The hole:
What is the hole? All these require the client program running on the client computer and an established network connection between the server and the client.
Two are the ways:
  1. Terminate the client program
  2. Cut the connection with the server

You may have instantly thought of some ways to achieve these.

The ways: 
Some of the followining methods may be available to the program your cybercafe uses.
(Google the name of the program to find any necessery information about the way it works)

Terminating the client program:

tskill (aka taskkill)
  • Open command line (it may have been blocked. Google how to unblock or search this blog)
  • Type in tasklist. (Wait a second and you will  see all the active processes running.)
  • Find the one or two that are the client program (remember googling about it?)
  • Type "tskill <the_name_of_the_client_program>"
  • Repeat tskill for the other processes.
This may not work if the program runs as a driver.
(I won't answer questions on the basics of this way because it is anyway quite difficult. If you experience problems try one of the next possible ways. I answer questions on most of these.)

Note: *advanced (or not so much)* You may be able to create a batch file.

ProcessExplorer
  • Google and download the free program called ProcessExplorer.
  • Install and run (not sure whether it needs installation, mentioning it to be on the safe side.)
  • You will see in front of you all the processes including the one of the client program. (It is quite easy to understand it. It wont be any windows processes. You may need to test to find out what it is)
  • Select it (if these are two they will be "connected", so select the root of these).
  • Press delete.
  • You are done. (I hope so. It may be working as a driver so this won't be possible)
I DO answer questions on this, as it is considered as an easy one.

Cutting the server connection:
IMPORTANT: When the connection is cut the client program may block the computer.

Usually disabling the connection from: Control Panel->Network Connections won't be available, but you've got nothing to lose if you try.
Firewall

Using firewall to prevent connections on the desired port may be possible. Search the ports the program uses and block them or for the sake of simplicity block the ip of the server. (Using a sniffer program to find out this information may be an option. Google is your friend. I suggest Cain and Wireshark. There will be a post or more later on on these programs. Indeed they are a whole chapter of safety on networks and network attacks.) Any questions that occur will be explained on later articles.

Ethernet
By unpluging the ethernet cable you shut down all the network connections including other clients, server and internet gateway. You can still play singleplayer games.


There are some cases that none of these will work. First try and then ask for that particular program. I hope I will be able to find a way out.


REMEMBER: The above are crimes. I only use these hacks on my private Lan for the fun of it, and I present these here just to inform the CyberCafe owners to protect themselves.

Πέμπτη 25 Νοεμβρίου 2010

Deep Freeze. Unfreeze it.

Article Skills Requirements:
Technician: 7

Windows: 5
Linux:5
General: 7


One big mistake you may do believe is wrong.
Deep Freeze CAN become unfrozen, without any prorgam, and ofcourse without knowing the password.
We are talking about the 7.20 version, but as long as deep freeze doesn't know about this post, it may also work on newer versions as well.

The explanation:
Now I will explain what exatly does Deep Freeze.

Deep freeze is a driver. When you boot in frozen mode, it simply loads the driver of deep freeze instead of the NTFS driver (or FAT32 whatever it makes frozen) for the particular disk partition.
This driver simply doesn't exactly save any work on the hard disk.

The hole:

As long as deep freeze is a driver we can simply boot without using it and make changes to the files on the partition.

The way:
  1. Get a copy of a linux distribution which supports LiveCD (I use Ubuntu 10.04)
  2. Burn it, put it in the tray and then reboot in Linux without installing it.(In these steps you could use a usb stick instead of a CD-ROM. You can find out more about these on http://www.ubuntu.com/)
  3. Now you will need to mount the local drive the windows frozen OS is.
  4. Next you will need to go to the drivers' folder. Usualy it is: "C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers"
  5. Now find the file called "DeepFrz.sys". As you may have noticed, this is the deep freeze driver's file.
  6. Make a backup of it. (Remember you booted on linux so any changes take effect.)
  7. Delete the file "DeepFrz.sys".
  8. Now find the normal "ntfs.sys" system driver. This is called at boot time in thawed mode.
  9. Copy and paste it. Rename it as "DeepFrz.sys"
  10. Thats the main of it. Now when the computer tries to boot in frozen mode, it will call the file "DeepFrz.sys" at boot which indeed is the "thawed" driver "ntfs.sys". So now reboot without the LiveCD in the CD-ROM tray.
  11. Now run the deep freeze installation file and select "Uninstall". (Edit: Even if you don't uninstall your computer will stay unfrozen.)
  12. It should complete wthout problems.
This is risky!! If you do something wrong the computer may boot with a blue screen or not boot at all.
In this case boot back into linux and replace the DeepFrz.sys file with its backup.

NOTE: The reason I made this tutorial difficult to understand is that I do not want everyone to be able to bypass Deep Freeze, because it was quite hard for me to find out so I believe you should know the basics to be able to bypass it.
 IF YOU ARE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH YOUR OWN COMPUTER WITH DEEP FREEZE CONTACT ME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. I WILL ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS AFTERWARDS AND EXPLAIN BETTER ALL THESE STEPS.
NOTE 2: (Edited) This will work on any deep freeze version up to 7.20.020. I've tested it.


Well thats it, if you need any help I would be grateful to help you unfreeze your computer. Simply comment.
Please subscribe if you liked this.

ComputerWhizKid blog just opened.

I have been trying to make a site for years but even if I created one, I usually was bored of it right away.
I now believe this blog, (yes this is the first time I have tried a blog!!) will have a better future.

If you like it subscribe to be up-dated.

I am certain that what is coming is good.




Now this says about the greek translation of the blog.



ἁν καί τῷ παρελθῷ εἲναι κακό, ἠ σελίδα αὐτή ἐλπίζομεν πώς θά ἒχει μέλλον.
Για αυτό αν και η κύρια σελίδα θα είναι στα αγγλικά θα υπάρχει και η μεταφρασμένη έκδοσή της.