Free Dropbox Forensics Tool | ReadWriteWeb

Dropbox Reader is a set of Python scripts for forensic investigators. The scripts provide investigators with information about a particular Dropbox user’s account and activities, such as the registration e-mail, Dropbox identifier and most recently changed files.

Dropbox Reader was created by Cybermarshal, the computer forensics wing of ATC-NY.

Here’s a list and description of the tools from the product website:

read_config script outputs the contents of the Dropbox config.db file in human-readable form. This includes the user’s registered e-mail address and Dropbox identifier, software version information, and a list of the most-recently-changed files.

read_filecache_config script outputs configuration information from the Dropbox filecache.db file. This includes information about shared directories that are attached to the user’s Dropbox account.

read_filejournal script outputs information about Dropbox synchronized files stored in the filecache.db file. This includes local and server-side metadata and a list of block hashes for each Dropbox-synchronized file.

read_sigstore script outputs information from the Dropbox sigstore.db file, which is an additional source of block hashes.

hash_blocks script produces a block hash list for any file. This block hash list can be compared to the block hashes from read_filejournal or read_sigstore.

dropbox_contains_file script hashes one or more files (as per hash_blocks) and compares the resulting block hash list to the files listed in filecache.db (as per read_filejournal) and reports whether the files are partially or exactly the same as any Dropbox-synchronized files.

via Free Dropbox Forensics Tool.

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Google adds download defense to Chrome, patches 15 bugs – Computerworld

Google on Tuesday updated Chrome to version 12, adding a new tool that warns users when they’ve downloaded files from dangerous Web sites.

The company also patched 15 bugs in the browser and paid out nearly $10,000 in bounties to outside researchers who reported vulnerabilities to its security team.

Chrome displays this warning if a downloaded file is served from a known malware distribution site.

New to Chrome 12 is a feature that flags dodgy files pulled from the Web. Chrome now shows an alert when users download some file types from sites that are on the Safe Browsing API (application programming interface) blacklist, which Google maintains.

The messages reads: “This file is malicious. Are you sure you want to continue?”

via Google adds download defense to Chrome, patches 15 bugs – Computerworld.

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United Nations report: Internet access is a human right – latimes.com

Internet access is a human right, according to a United Nations report released on Friday.

“Given that the Internet has become an indispensable tool for realizing a range of human rights, combating inequality, and accelerating development and human progress, ensuring universal access to the Internet should be a priority for all states,” said the report from Frank La Rue, a special rapporteur to the United Nations, who wrote the document “on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.”

La Rue said in his report that access to the Internet is particularly important during times of political unrest, as demonstrated by the recent “Arab Spring” uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, among other countries.

From the report:

The Special Rapporteur believes that the Internet is one of the most powerful instruments of the 21st century for increasing transparency in the conduct of the powerful, access to information, and for facilitating active citizen participation in building democratic societies.

Indeed, the recent wave of demonstrations in countries across the Middle East and North African region has shown the key role that the Internet can play in mobilizing the population to call for justice, equality, accountability and better respect for human rights.

The report notes that while the Internet has been in existence since the 1960s, it is the way people now use the Internet, across the world and across age groups, with “incorporation into virtually every aspect of modern human life,” that makes the Internet an unprecedented force.

via United Nations report: Internet access is a human right – latimes.com.

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Free, Open Source E-Discovery Tool? FreeEED V1.0 Released

Mark Kerzner has created and published an open source  eDiscovery tool called FreeEed. It works on your computer, on a Hadoop cluster, or on Amazon EC2 cloud. FreeEed Version 1.o is available for download at https://github.com/markkerzner/FreeEed

via http://shmsoft.blogspot.com/2011/05/freeeed-v10-released.html

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Mozilla resists request by US gov’t to remove piracy feature – The China Post

Mozilla, the non-profit developer of the Firefox Web browser, is holding off on complying with a government request to remove a software tool meant to circumvent federal efforts at curbing Internet piracy.

 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has been seizing the Internet addresses of sites accused of piracy, so that visitors can’t reach them by typing in those domain names. The sites, however, still exist under other addresses.

The MafiaaFire tool for Firefox, developed by an outside party but available through Mozilla, seeks to automatically match seized names with the alternate addresses, similar to a mail-forwarding service, so that visitors can reach the sites.

Mozilla General Counsel Harvey Anderson said the DHS asked Mozilla to remove MafiaaFire from a site where Firefox users can add functions to the browser.

via Mozilla resists request by US gov’t to remove piracy feature – The China Post.

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Mozilla resists request by US gov’t to remove piracy feature – The China Post

Mozilla, the non-profit developer of the Firefox Web browser, is holding off on complying with a government request to remove a software tool meant to circumvent federal efforts at curbing Internet piracy.

 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has been seizing the Internet addresses of sites accused of piracy, so that visitors can’t reach them by typing in those domain names. The sites, however, still exist under other addresses.

The MafiaaFire tool for Firefox, developed by an outside party but available through Mozilla, seeks to automatically match seized names with the alternate addresses, similar to a mail-forwarding service, so that visitors can reach the sites.

Mozilla General Counsel Harvey Anderson said the DHS asked Mozilla to remove MafiaaFire from a site where Firefox users can add functions to the browser.

via Mozilla resists request by US gov’t to remove piracy feature – The China Post.

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Apple Adds Do-Not-Track Tool to New Browser – WSJ.com

Apple Inc. has added a do-not-track privacy tool to a test version of its latest Web browser for keeping customers’ online activities from being monitored by marketers.

 

Apple has added a do-not-track privacy tool to a test version of its latest Web browser for keeping customers’ online activities from being monitored – leaving Google as the only major company with a web browser that hasn’t taken this step.

The tool is included within the latest test release of Lion, a version of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system that is currently available only to developers. The final version of the operating system is scheduled to be released to the public this summer. Mentions of the do-not-track feature in Apple’s Safari browser began to appear recently in online discussion forums and on Twitter

The move by the Cupertino, Calif., company leaves Google Inc. as the only major browser provider that hasn’t yet committed to supporting a do-no-track capability in its browser, called Chrome. Microsoft Corp. and Mozilla Corp. both offer do-not-track features in their latest browsers.

via Apple Adds Do-Not-Track Tool to New Browser – WSJ.com.

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The Semantics of Content Management: What We Mean and How We Say It

Before you get to far into it this article is not about the Semantic Web! Rather this article is going to pull together a number of discussions and thoughts about the way we use words, the way we define things and how we talk about content management and related subjects. Do people in your organization ever get into misunderstandings based on their use of language — particular words, phrases and acronyms?

It’s All About Semantics!

Language is of course hugely important, it is one of the key differentiators between ourselves and other tool using great apes. One of the wondrous and complex facets of language is the way we can ascribe different meanings to the same term or word even if we are speaking the same base language.

Often within our organizations we find ourselves in roles where we need to speak multiple specialist dialects of our natural language (in my case English). For example when I worked in the IT division of Canadian Tire Corporation my dialect was ‘IT-speak’ but I was working on many projects with people who spoke ‘Project Management-speak’ or ‘Retail-speak’. Due to this phenomena one of the project’s I worked on was adding an enterprise wide glossary to the intranet, so that definitions for terms could be posted, worked on and agreed upon. This is a simple way of engineering an ‘interface’ between business people (retail specialists) and IT people (technology specialists).

 

The Wikipedia definition of ‘Semantics’ states: “Linguistic semantics is the study of meaning that is used by humans to express themselves through language” — so avoiding some of the interface problems and misunderstandings at work is about semantics because it is all about the meanings ascribed to the words we use to communicate our ideas.

via The Semantics of Content Management: What We Mean and How We Say It.

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The $100 USB Stick Your Boss Can Use To Find Your Porn – Marc Weber Tobias – The Travelgeek – Forbes

If you are among the growing legion of porn addicts that spend your employer’s time or resources viewing and downloading graphic images, be very afraid. There is a new tool your boss (or spouse) can use to catch you. It’s a $100 USB stick that plugs into your PC and unmasks abuses and exposes your addictions without leaving a trace it was there.

Traditionally, expensive software was required to scan massive amounts of data to detect suspect images within an individual computer or on a network. Guidance Software’s EnCase, X-Ways forensic tools, or AccessData FTK3 are  popular pro-level forensic programs for policing porn in the workplace. Such programs are expensive and can require some sophisticated hardware to run them properly.

A new device, literally called the Porn Stick, from Paraben Corp., makes the task of identifying abusers much simpler.  It will search for, identify, display, tag and even wipe images from a computer for a fraction of the cost and required expertise of the more sophisticated professional forensic programs. The software will even retrieve deleted images and Internet cache files. With the Porn Stick there is no software installed on the target machine, so there is no evidence of an intrusion and nothing is altered.

via The $100 USB Stick Your Boss Can Use To Find Your Porn – Marc Weber Tobias – The Travelgeek – Forbes.

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The $100 USB Stick Your Boss Can Use To Find Your Porn – Marc Weber Tobias – The Travelgeek – Forbes

If you are among the growing legion of porn addicts that spend your employer’s time or resources viewing and downloading graphic images, be very afraid. There is a new tool your boss (or spouse) can use to catch you. It’s a $100 USB stick that plugs into your PC and unmasks abuses and exposes your addictions without leaving a trace it was there.

Traditionally, expensive software was required to scan massive amounts of data to detect suspect images within an individual computer or on a network. Guidance Software’s EnCase, X-Ways forensic tools, or AccessData FTK3 are  popular pro-level forensic programs for policing porn in the workplace. Such programs are expensive and can require some sophisticated hardware to run them properly.

A new device, literally called the Porn Stick, from Paraben Corp., makes the task of identifying abusers much simpler.  It will search for, identify, display, tag and even wipe images from a computer for a fraction of the cost and required expertise of the more sophisticated professional forensic programs. The software will even retrieve deleted images and Internet cache files. With the Porn Stick there is no software installed on the target machine, so there is no evidence of an intrusion and nothing is altered.

via The $100 USB Stick Your Boss Can Use To Find Your Porn – Marc Weber Tobias – The Travelgeek – Forbes.

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