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.