E' disponibile da poco quest'ottimo set di utilities che consente di ottenere le suddette informazioni segrete di un sistema Windows. E' scritto in Python ed è indipendente dal sistema operativo sottostante e quindi runnabile in qualsiasi sistema operativo che disponga di Python. Preleva le info richieste direttamente dai file del registro di windows . Supponiamo di avere accesso ad una partizione di disco che contiene Windows (N.B. Windows non in esecuzione): ci copiamo i file SAM, Security, SYSTEM del registro di sistema, e li diamo in input ai 3 applicativi di CredDump (lsadump.py, cachedump.py, pwdump.py) che ci restituiranno le info richieste. Come già sottolineato , questi 3 applicativi possono essere usati su qualsiasi sistema operativo che disponga di Python. CredDump è liberamente scaricabile all'indirizo http://code.google.com/p/creddump/.

Riporto direttamente il file con le note informative

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

OVERVIEW

creddump is a python tool to extract various credentials and secrets from
Windows registry hives. It currently extracts:
* LM and NT hashes (SYSKEY protected)
* Cached domain passwords
* LSA secrets

It essentially performs all the functions that bkhive/samdump2,
cachedump, and lsadump2 do, but in a platform-independent way.

It is also the first tool that does all of these things in an offline
way (actually, Cain & Abel does, but is not open source and is only
available on Windows).

REQUIREMENTS

alldump has only been tested on python 2.5. It should work on 2.4 as
well, but will likely need modification before it will work on 2.3 or
below.

python-crypto is required for its MD5/DES/RC4 support. To obtain it,
see: http://www.amk.ca/python/code/crypto

For lsadump: system and SECURITY hives
For cachedump: system and SECURITY hives
For pwdump: system and SAM hives

USAGE

Dump cached domain hashes:
  usage: ./cachedump.py <system hive> <security hive>

Dump LSA secrets:
  usage: ./lsadump.py <system hive> <security hive>

Dump local password hashes:
  usage: ./pwdump.py <system hive> <SAM hive>

FEATURES

* Platform independent operation. The only inputs are the hive files
  from the system--we don't rely on any Windows functionality at all.
* Open-source and (hopefully!) readble implementations of Windows
  obfuscation algorithms used to protect LSA secrets, cached domain
  passwords, and
* A reasonably forgiving registry file parser in pure Python. Look
  through framework/types.py and framework/win32/rawreg.py to see how it
  works.
* The first complete open-source implementation of advapi32's
  SystemFunction005. The version in the Wine source code does not
  appear to allow for keys longer than 7 bytes, while the Windows
  version (and this version) does. See decrypt_secret() in
  framework/win32/lsasecrets.py

AUTHOR

creddump is written by Brendan Dolan-Gavitt (bdolangavitt@wesleyan.edu).
For more information on Syskey, LSA secrets, cached domain credentials,
and lots of information on volatile memory forensics and reverse
engineering, check out:

http://moyix.blogspot.com/

CREDITS
* AAron Walters. Much of the data type parsing code is taken from
  Volatility, an excellent memory analysis framework written in Python.
  He's also a really nice guy, and has helped me out a lot in my
  research.
https://www.volatilesystems.com/default/volatility

* Massimiliano Montoro (mao), for reversing the mechanism Windows uses
  to derive the LSA key so that it can be computed directly from the
  hive files, as decribed in this post:
http://oxid.netsons.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=149
http://www.oxid.it/
* Jeremy Allison, for the details of the obfuscation applied to password
  hashes in the SAM, as implemented in the original pwdump.
http://us4.samba.org/samba/ftp/pwdump/

* Nicola Cuomo, for his excellent description of the syskey mechanism
  and how it is used to encrypt the SAM in Windows 2000 and above.

http://www.studenti.unina.it/~ncuomo/syskey/

* Eyas[at]xfocus.org, for x_dialupass2.cpp, which demonstrates how to
  read LSA secrets directly from the registry, given the LSA key.

http://www.xfocus.net/articles/200411/749.html

  [Note: the above is in Chinese, but quite comprehensible if you use
   Google Translate and can read C ;)]

* Nicholas Ruff, for his perl implementation of des_set_odd_parity,
  which he apparently took from SSLEAY:

http://seclists.org/pen-test/2005/Jan/0180.html

* Arnaud Pilon, for the details of how to retrieve cached domain, as
  implemented in cachedump.

http://www.securiteam.com/tools/5JP0I2KFPA.html

* S�bastien Ke, for his cute hexdump recipe:

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/142812

LICENSE

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Raccomando vivamente la lettura del blog dell'autore all'indirizzo http://moyix.blogspot.com/ che contiene ottimi articoli inerenti la teoria che sta dietro agli applicativi che compongono CredDump.

CredDump , come già sottolineato nelle note informative, necesssita del Python Cryptography Toolkit (PyCrypto): è disponibile un setup per Windows all'indirizzo

http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/modules.shtml#pycrypto

L'utilizzo di CredDump su Windows può quindi essere sintetizzato nei seguenti 2 semplici passaggi

1) Download ed installa Python 2.5

2) Download ed installa PyCrypto Windows Binaries per Python 2.5

E' disponibile la versione aggiornata al 17 febbraio 2008 di questo eccezionale Windows Live CD (Windows XP Professional avviabile da CD: nel BIOS va settato il CD prima dell'Hard Disk nell'ordine di boot) creato con Bart PE Builder. Pieno zeppo di software, invi inclusi svariati antivirus (questa versione contiene soprattutto gli ultimi aggiornamenti antivirus oltre che naturalmente diversi aggiornamenti di software vario ed all'aggiunta di nuovi applicativi). Utilissimo per scansioni antivirus offline (accesso a partizioni di sistema che non riescono ad avviarsi normalmente causa virus), tanti software per il recupero dati (data recovery), softwares per il data wiping (cancellazione definitiva di dati), software per backup e creazione di immagini di partizioni (Ghost, DriveImage, Acronis TrueImage, ...) e tanto altro a 360°. Lo si può scaricare direttamente all'indirizzo

http://www.minipe.org/

MiniPE.v2k5.09.03-XT__2008_02_17  (password del rar: "thecavern")

Non vorrei sbagliarmi ma mi sembra che quest'indirizzo sia disponibile da poco tempo (ordine di giorni). L'ho downloadato ieri sera e lo scaricamento andava ad alta velocità solo che per esperienza personale gli indirizzi con questi contenuti stanno in piedi per periodi brevi , quindi appena ho tempo faccio un mirroring su alcuni sistemi di filesharing.

Un paio di screenshot 

Mi è sempre piaciuto creare versioni custom dei sistemi operativi di casa Microsoft: integrazione degli aggiornamenti, di configurazioni di sistema, di software, etc... il tutto magari con una bella installazione unattended o con la possibilità di selezionare il software da installare assieme a Windows, magari creare dei DVD con più di un sistema che al boot ti presentano una schermata per selezionare il sistma operativo che si desidera installare. Dal 2004, il vasto e variegato mondo del web è molto attivo al riguardo, abbondano forum in cui si trattano questi argomenti ed abbondano soprattutto anche i risultati concreti con diversi CD e DVD reperibili tramite le reti p2p o sempre più di frequente tramite gli innumerevoli servizi di filesharing con l'aumento di blog e topic di forum con i link relativi. Magari un giorno dedicherò un post intero (o magari un articolo completo sul mio sito) dedicato a tutto ciò che ruota attorno a questo mondo, con siti web contenenti documentazioni molto dettagliate, forum con discussioni approfondite, software per automatizzare i processi di customization del CD di installazione di Windows e per crearne versioni unattended e chi più ne ha più ne metta; ma tutto questo avverrà un giorno, forse ... se ne avrò voglia e soprattutto quando la recensione mi soddisferà in pieno. Per il momento volevo semplicemente segnalare un CD unattended di Windows Server 2003 R2 denominato Tiny2003 proprio perchè ci troviamo di fronte ad un Windows Server 2003 R2 che è stato spogliato di diverse sue features con l'obiettivo di renderlo il più possibile similare a Windows XP Professional: il bello è che ha dei requisiti di memoria RAM veramente ridotti (l'ho installato in emulazione su VirtualBox e dei 96 mega che gli ho riservato ne lascia liberi ben 25) ma al tempo stesso mantiene tutte le features fondamentali di un normale Windows XP Professional. L'installazione richiede la scelta manuale della partizione destinazione ed a quel punto è totalmente unattended; include tra gli altri anche Internet Explorer 7, WinRar e Sygate Personal Firewall. Riporto nel seguito il documento informativo molto dettagliato fornito dall'autore (quella in questione è l'ultima versione di Tiny2003, datata 28 Gennaio 2007)

Info :

eXPerience Presents...

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- ------

"Windows Tiny2003 R2 Vista Edition SP2 Unattended CD"

Full ISO file name:
Windows-Tiny2003-R2-SP2-R C-Unattended-Vista-Editio n-eXPerience.iso

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- ------

Thank you for trying this special unattended eXPerience
Edition of Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise.

Only install this Operating System on a freshly formatted
partition or hard drive.

MOVE OVER XP! Server 2003 outperforms XP, it installs
faster, it boots faster, it runs applications faster,
it manages programs better, it never slows down (even
after days of being left on) and it even gives better
frame rates in games over XP.

Almost every single program and ALL games (bar none) that
I run on XP... I can run on Server 2003 and not only that,
but they run much faster on Server 2003. Some people say
"Server is not suited to games" but this is just not true.
Granted, there are a few programs here and there that won't
work on Server 2003, for example "Partition Magic" but you
can just use the alternative "Paragon Partition Manager
Enterprise". Also "Acronis True Image Home" will not install
on Server 2003, but you can just use the server version of
that software. The same goes for "PerfectDisk Defragmenter".

I have not found one game that does not work on Server 2003.

Someone once reported that "Roller Coaster Tycoon" would not
install, but I have never tried this game myself. I have tried
Grand Theft Auto III, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas, Doom III,
Quake IV, Battlefield 1942, Battlefield 2, Battlefield 2142,
Medal Of Honor Pacific Assault, Call Of Duty (and expansion
pack United Offensive), Need For Speed Underground, Need For
Speed Black Edition, Need For Speed Carbon... all these games
work on Server 2003 (they also run a lot better than on XP too)
and therefore it is safe to assume that 99.99% of games work on
Server 2003. If you have an MSI based installer that tells you
it won't install on Server 2003, you can use the included fix
that is in the Desktop folder "eXPerience". This allows programs
like Kaspersky Antivirus and Kaspersky Internet Suite, and games
like Doom III, to be installed, once installed these run fine,
actually more than fine... they run like lightening compared
to XP.

Remember, this special edition has all the tweaks you need
automatically applied on installation for running this Operating
System as a home user would.

If you have never installed the normal version of Server 2003,
you cannot appreciate how much simpler this special eXPerience
edition makes things! You would have a hard time if you just
installed Server 2003 without the tweaks this special edition
has got, for example, your Hardware Acceleration is turned up,
you won't get that "Shutdown Event Tracker", you have Direct3D
and DirectDraw enabled in the DirectX Diagnostic Tool, you have
programs set so background applications do not have priority,
you have "Data Execution Prevention" disabled, you have "Themes"
and "Windows Audio" services enabled... the list goes on and on,
the full list of registry tweaks (more than 200 tweaks) is listed
in a text file included in the eXPerience folder on the Desktop.

Every single little thing has been taken care of to ensure that
this Operating System runs as close to being like XP as possible,
whilst not actually converting it to a workstation. By the way,
never use the tool "TweakNT 1.21" on this corporate version of
Server 2003, because although this tool does convert Server 2003
into a workstation (meaning programs see it as a workstation and
not a server which is handy sometimes) the TweakNT tool will
cripple this corporate version of this OS and you will not be
able to log on again due to a license error! It is tempting to
use TweakNT, but DO NOT use it on this particular OS.

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- ------

Included Features:

Internet Explorer v7.0.5730.11 (addon by eXPerience)
FoxIt PDF Reader Pro v2.0.0930 (silent installer by eXPerience)
One-Click Auto Key Changer (ACCU v2.0.1 by eXPerience)
Royale Blue and Royale Noir Themes (Royale Blue from XP MCE 2005)
Sygate Personal Firewall Pro v5.6.3408
Windows Media Player v11.0.5721.5145 (addon by Boooggy)
Windows Movie Maker From Windows XP (silent installer by eXPerience)
Windows Vista Aero Glass Theme (by Ironjer / silent install by eXPerience)
Windows Vista Shell Icons (ripped from Vista Visual Styles Pack v6.0)
WinRAR v3.62 (silent installer by eXPerience)

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- ------

Also Includes More Than 200 Registry Tweaks To
Make This Edition Of Windows Behave Like XP.

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- ------

eXPerience Desktop Folder:

[Data Execution Prevention] - This is normally enabled
in Windows, but certain programs, like for example DVD Shrink,
will not work, so by default in this eXPerience Edition, DEP is
disabled. You can re-enable or disable this with the two files
included in this folder.

[Desktop Icon Layout] - This edition of Windows has 2 options when
you right click the recycle bin - "Save Desktop Icon Layout" and
"Restore Desktop Icon Layout". This is handy in case you change
resolution and doing this moves your icons into the top left corner
of your screen, you can just restore the icons to their original
position, as long as you already saved the layout. If you do not
want these two options on your context menu, you can run the
registry files included in this folder to remove or restore the
right click items.

[Enable And Disable Services] - No vital services are disabled
in this special edition of Windows Server 2003 but this folder
contains batch files that allow you to disable eight services
that you might not need. These services cover: Application
Layer Gateway, Computer Browser, IPSEC Services, Print Spooler,
Secondary Logon, Windows Firewall (ICS), Windows Image
Acquisition and Wireless Zero Configuration.

[Full Hardware Acceleration] - Use this if you want
to instantly set your Hardware Acceleration to full.

[Hard Drive Not Showing] - Quick link to Disk Management,
where you can assign a letter to any external drives you plug
in - Server 2003 does not always recognize USB drives.

[Hardcore Ad-Blocker] - Never see another advertisement
in your browser again regardless of what browser you use!
Adverts are even blocked in MSN Messenger! This trick may
slow down your browsing experience, if so it can easily be
changed back to normal again.

[Keyboard Settings] - This edition of Windows is set to the
U.S. keyboard layout, if you are in the UK this means your
"@" symbol and your double quote symbol will be swapped,
so this provides a quick shortcut to Regional and Language
options where you can add-in an alternate keyboard layout.

[MSI File Install Fixer] - Some MSI installers, namely Kaspersky
Antivirus and the Doom III installer, pop up a message telling
you that you cannot install their program on Server 2003. This
is true, but once these programs and games are installed they
run like a dream! Use this MSI install file fixer to remove those
ridiculous blockers on MSI files that stop the program installing.
Did you know that Kaspersky Antivirus runs absolutely perfectly
on Server 2003 once the MSI installer is fixed and the same goes
for the game Doom III too - in fact you get better framerates in
Server 2003 then you do in XP. The truth is, once you start to
use Server 2003 you won't ever want to go back to XP again!

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- ------

Auto Installed Drivers To Support The Following:

CPU (just the old AMDK6 that is not in Windows)
Chipset (Motherboard Chipset drivers)
LAN (Ethernet Cards)
SATA (Mass Storage)

(All drivers thanks to "Bashrat The Sneaky")

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- ------

Removed Components:

The Following Components Have Been
Removed From This Edition Of Windows

[Applications]
Accessibility Options
Briefcase
Charmap
ClipBook Viewer
NT Backup
Screensavers
Wordpad

[Drivers]
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)
Cameras and Camcorders
Display Adapters
Display Adapters (old)
ISDN
Modems
Portable Audio
Printers
Scanners
Toshiba DVD decoder card

[Languages]
Arabic (Algeria), Arabic (Bahrain), Arabic (Egypt), Arabic (Iraq),
Arabic (Jordan), Arabic (Kuwait), Arabic (Lebanon), Arabic (Libya),
Arabic (Morocco), Arabic (Oman), Arabic (Qatar), Arabic (Saudi Arabia),
Arabic (Syria), Arabic (Tunisia), Arabic (U.A.E.), Arabic (Yemen), Divehi
(Maldives), Pashto, Syriac (Syria), Urdu, Armenian, Estonian, Latvian,
Lithuanian, Azeri (Cyrillic), Belarusian, FYRO Macedonian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz
(Kyrgyzstan), Mongolian (Mongolia), Tatar, Ukrainian, Uzbek (Cyrillic),
Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Gujarati (India), Hindi, Kannada (India), Konkani,
Marathi, Punjabi (India), Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu (India), Japanese, Korean,
Chinese (PRC), Chinese (Singapore), Farsi, Thai, Chinese (Hong Kong S.A.R.),
Chinese (Macau S.A.R.), Chinese (Taiwan), Azeri (Latin), Turkish Uzbek
(Latin) and Vietnamese.

[Multimedia]
ActiveX for streaming video
AOL ART Image Format Support
Images and Backgrounds
Mouse Cursors
Music Samples
Old CDPlayer and Sound Recorder
Speech Support
Windows Sounds

[Network]
Client for Netware Networks
Communication tools
Comtrol Test Terminal Program
Connection Manager
File and Print Services for Macintosh
FrontPage Extensions
Internet Connection Wizard
Internet Information Services (IIS)
IP Conferencing
Netmeeting
NetShell Cmd-Tool
Network Monitor Driver and Tools
NWLink IPX/SPX/NetBIOS Protocol
Synchronization Manager
TAPI Application Support
TCP/IP Version 6

[Operating System Options]
.NET Framework
Administration Tools Pack
Administrative Templates
Administrator VB scripts
Application compatibility patch
Auditing Resource Dlls
Certificate Management
Color Schemes
Command-line tools*
Disk and Profile Quota
Disk Cleanup
Document Templates
DR Watson
Extensible Storage Engine (Esent97)
Extra Fonts
FAT to NTFS converter
Group Policy Management Console
Help and Support
Input Method Editor
Logon Notifications
Manual Install and Upgrade
MS Agent
Private Character Editor
Remote Installation Services (RIS)
Search Assistant
Service Pack Messages
Symbolic Debugger (NTSD)

[Services]
Alerter
Beep Driver
Cluster
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC)
DNS Client
Error Reporting
IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service
Indexing Service
Message Queuing (MSMQ)
Messenger
Network DDE
Performance Logs and Alerts
QoS RSVP
Quality of Service (QoS)
Remote Registry
Removable Storage
Service Advertising Protocol
System Monitor
Telnet
Terminal Server Licensing
Terminal Services
Text Services Framework
UDDI
WebClient
Windows Media Services

[Directories]
DOCS
SUPPORT

------------------------- -----------------------
*Command Line Tools - The following command line
tools are kept in this release: msconfig.exe,
ipconfig.exe, net.exe, netstat.exe, ping.exe,
xcopy.exe.
------------------------- -----------------------

(Thank you to "nuhi" for nLite which allowed
components to be removed from Windows)

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- ------

WINDOWS folder = 575Mb

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- ------

Complete With Service Pack 2 (v2825) And
The Following Hotfixes Up To 28th Jan 2007:

msxml4-KB927978-enu.exe
msxml6-KB927977-enu-x86.exe
Windows-KB890830-V1.24.exe (Malicious Software Removal Tool)

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- ------

ISO File Size = 323 Mb

Compressed 7z File Size = 291.6 Mb

------------------------- ------------------------- ------------------------- ------

7z File Checksum (SHA-512)

To get the "SHA-512" checksum for this 7z
file calculated, use the included program
"HashCalc" and...

1 - Run HashCalc.
2 - Tick the "SHA512" tick box.
3 - Untick all other tickboxes.
4 - Click the browse "..." button (next to the white box)
5 - In the window that pops up, double click the 7z file.
6 - Click "Calculate"
7 - After about one minute you will see a 128 digit number.

Make sure that the number shown in
HashCalc is the same as this one:

93967ccb1218a9df232af3522 743cf96
97ef5fcc34f37b24c00ba3b21 f36b2e1
b229d83c3c7fc8aa942da3597 45cd33e
22416db48e051ee308242c150 8aecc39

If your checksum number is not the same as above, don't use
this release, because it is not a genuine eXPerience release!

This same checksum code can be verified again if you want,
with the one in the post for the release on Demonoid.com.

Remember this checksum is NOT for the ISO file that is inside
the 7z archive, it is the checksum for the 7z archive itself.

To extract the ISO from the downloaded archive, just open the
7z file with WinRAR or 7-Zip.

Enjoy This Fine Release From eXPerience

Release Date: 28th January 2007
 

L'ho installato con successo in emulazione su Innotek VirtualBox : di seguito alcuni screenshot

Tiny2003 è presente nella rete eDonkey all'indirizzo seguente

ed2k://|file|Windows-Tiny2003-Vista-Edition-
eXPerience.7z|291607235|D514F672DA663A34993D3EE556C9FFC4|/

(copia e incolla nel browser tutto in una riga)

Tempo fa, navigando sul web, avevo trovato un topic interessante (almeno per me che non ero al corrente della questione nonostante fosse una questione vecchia di anni) sul forum

http://www.xdownx.org/

Non ho ritrovato il topic (forse starò già dormendo dato che mi pare fosse un topic Pinned ...) però a suo tempo avevo fatto copia e incolla del post di apertura

Here's how tu speed up youre firefox 10x faster

1. Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit enter. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

2. Alter the entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.

try this and you can see the difference ...........

Altri link sempre su questo tipo di modifiche (e anche con altro) sono i seguenti

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.http.pipelining
http://macosxcocktail.blogs.com/cocktail/2005/01/improve_firefox.html
http://www.tweakfactor.com/articles/tweaks/firefoxtweak/4.html
http://forevergeek.com/open_source/make_firefox_faster.php
http://lifehacker.com/software/firefox-2/geek-to-live-top-firefox-2-config-tweaks-209941.php
http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/10/16/speed-up-your-firefox-by-adjusting-your-http-pipelining/

Sul concetto di HTTP Pipelining c'è poi tra le altre la seguente pagina di Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_pipelining

Il 5 Febbraio 2008 è uscita la versione 5 di TrueCrypt : Free Open Source On-the-Fly Encryption. Questo programma non finisce di entusiasmarmi e fornisce con questa nuova release (tra l'altro seguita in data 12 Febbraio 2008 con l'aggiornamento 5a) tante novità (del resto l'ultima versione , la 4.3a, era datata 3 maggio 2007): solo per citarne alcune abbiamo un'interfaccia GUI per la versione destinata a Linux, una versione per Mac OSX (scusate se è poco) e come feature aggiuntiva la possibilità di criptare la partizione di sistema (ovvero la partizione in cui si trova il sistema operativo in cui eseguiamo TrueCrypt) ed anche l'intero drive di sistema (ovvero l'intero Hard Disk in cui si trova il sistema operativo in cui eseguiamo TrueCrypt e quindi la partizione del sistema operativo ed anche le eventuali altre partizioni e lo spazio non partizionato). Una volta criptata la partizione di sistema (o l'intero drive di sistema), prima del boot del sistema operativo ci si presenterà una semplice finestra testuale in cui inserire la password precedentemente definita in fase di criptazione: inserendo correttamente la password, partirà a questo punto il boot del sistema operativo; questa è la cosidetta autenticazione pre-boot che viene gestita dal TrueCrypt BootLoader: il TrueCrypt Boot Loader è situato nel primo cilindro del Boot Drive e nel TrueCrypt Rescue Disk (immagine CD che TrueCrypt ci crea nel corso della procedura guidata di criptazione e che serve appunto in caso di problemi con il TrueCrypt Boot Loader situato su disco). Riporto l'elenco completo delle nuove features direttamente dal sito ufficiale:

New features:

• Ability to encrypt a system partition/drive (i.e. a partition/drive where Windows is installed) with pre-boot authentication (anyone who wants to gain access and use the system, read and write files, etc., needs to enter the correct password each time before the system starts). For more information, see the chapter System Encryption in the documentation.   (Windows Vista/XP/2003)

• Pipelined operations increasing read/write speed by up to 100%   (Windows)

• Mac OS X version

• Graphical user interface for the Linux version of TrueCrypt

• The TrueCrypt Volume Creation Wizard now allows creation of hidden volumes within NTFS volumes.  (Windows)

• XTS mode of operation, which was designed by Phillip Rogaway in 2003 and which was recently approved as the IEEE 1619 standard for cryptographic protection of data on block-oriented storage devices. XTS is faster and more secure than LRW mode (for more information on XTS mode, see the section Modes of Operation in the documentation).
  Note: New volumes created by this version of TrueCrypt can be encrypted only in XTS mode. However, volumes created by previous versions of TrueCrypt can still be mounted using this version of TrueCrypt.

• SHA-512 hash algorithm (replacing SHA-1, which is no longer available when creating new volumes).
  Note: To re-encrypt the header of an existing volume with a header key derived using HMAC-SHA-512 (PRF), select 'Volumes' > 'Set Header Key Derivation Algorithm'.

Rimando per approfondimenti all'utilizzo diretto del programma soprattutto con l'ausilio della chiarissima documentazione.

Questo programma è un autentico capolavoro sotto tutti i sensi.

Niente di meglio che cominciare la giornata con un bel Blog dedicato alle Google Maps

http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/

Si capisce dal titolo che questo topic ha poco a che fare con il tema portante di questo Blog ma ogni tanto si può disobbedire alle regole ed uscire dal seminato tenuto poi conto che proprio fuori tema non siamo (quanto odio gli [O.T.] nei forum, la gente viene nella tua comunità per determinati interessi e si trova con una sbroda di argomentazioni che non hanno nulla a che vedere con ciò di cui si vorrebbe discutere); diciamo che pur parlando di cartoni animati siamo sempre in tema informatico in quanto siamo in tema internet e più precisamente in tema di VideoSharing (si ... YouTube e compagnia bella). Su YouTube è possibile trovare i video musicali di qualsiasi gruppo incluse naturalmente performance Live (cosa impensabile fino a 10 anni fà) ed anche episodi di cartoni animati. Così per caso ho riscoperto uno dei miei cartoni animati preferiti di fine anni '80 (l'avevo rimosso dalla mente): M.A.S.K.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.A.S.K.
http://mask.running-gag.de/
http://www.matt-trakker.com/
http://www.tv.com/m.a.s.k./show/12284/summary.html?q=mask
http://theflashsite.net/mask/

SIGLA INZIALE

Su YouTube sono disponibili (nella versione originale in Inglese) i primi 5 episodi

EP #1 The Death Stone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1_76ZAq9d0  (pt1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlvc_L6SKCU  (pt2)

EP#2 The Star Charriot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2BUAqhb62w  (pt1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATdv7w6Uemg  (pt2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK21IHHKg18  (pt3)

EP#3 the Book of Power
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUf7vGm-Tu8  (pt1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhMQPoiBxBs (pt2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuCYVe9jATQ  (pt3)

EP#4 Highway to Terror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtFiJqtEI8Y  (pt1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0jXV-Za7d8  (pt2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZPsw_yt8QQ  (pt3)

EP#5 Venom
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNe4LMFGykI (pt1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWZov_e7rTg  (pt2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcvILfcZEWk  (pt3)

Aggiorno il post precedente con un elenco più sostanzioso di links a siti web dedicati al mondo del Freeware

http://www.thefreecountry.com/
http://freewarewiki.pbwiki.com
http://www.freedecentdownloads.com/
http://thefreewareforum.com/
http://www.freeware-guide.com/
http://www.freewaregenius.com/
http://www.freebyte.com/
http://www.freewarepark.com/
http://www.freewarepub.org
http://www.nonags.com/
http://all4you.dk/FreewareWorld/links.php
http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/
http://www.freewarefiles.com/
http://www.compufiles.com/
http://www.freewarebox.com/
http://freedeals.highstuff.com/
http://www.top20free.com/
http://www.fwnetwork.com/
http://www.freewarearena.com/   
http://www.2-software.net/
http://www.freegamebox.com/
http://www.gamehippo.com/
http://www.aplusfreeware.com/
http://www.xtort.net/
http://www.webgrid.co.uk/
http://wantdbest.com/
http://freeware.quantumillusions.com/
http://www.topfreeware.net/
http://www.freeware-links.com/
http://freeware.carolsvault.com/
http://www.freeware4u.com/
http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/
http://selectfreeware.com/
http://www.freewarebeast.com/
http://nedwolf.com/
http://selectfreeware.com/
http://www.onlyfreewares.com/
http://www.freeware-download.com/
http://www.freezoneload.net/
http://www.itsfree4u.com/
http://www.freeware-list.net/
http://www.1001free.net/
http://www.topqualityfreeware.com/

Ne approfitto per buttar su un altro elenco di Blog che contengono qualcosa di interessante

http://ph33r.org/
http://www.remkoweijnen.nl/blog/
http://citrite.org/blogs/dmitryv/
http://www.dumpanalysis.org/blog/
http://www.hackaday.com/
http://www.leetupload.com/
http://fourdollars.blogspot.com/
http://www.theopensourcerer.com/
http://www.fondoo.net/blog/
http://linux.wordpress.com/
http://liquidat.wordpress.com/
http://jaysonrowe.wordpress.com/
http://codershangout.com/blogs/cbmeeks/
http://blog.thedebianuser.org/    
http://1ijack.blogspot.com/
http://www.simplehelp.net/
http://gr33ndata.blogspot.com/
http://cedsfiles.blogspot.com/
http://anoccasionalinterruption.wordpress.com/
http://geekharry.wordpress.com/
http://stuffontheinternet.blogspot.com/
http://tweak-everything.blogspot.com/
http://rlaksana.blogspot.com/
http://www.flyninja.net/book/
http://www.downloadsquad.com/
http://www.ghacks.net/
http://www.carolsvault.com/
http://www.lockergnome.com/
http://www.redferret.net/
http://blogs.technet.com/pgmalusardi/

Alcuni non sono aggiornati da tempo però i post contenuti hanno qualcosa di rilevante.