Comodo HIPS and Firewall Leak Test Suite Review

Security a foreign language?

Note: I hesitate to even review this since Comodo has shown itself to be not a very good company lately.

Leak tests are vulnerability tests that allow you to check your computer for possible security holes and potential problems.  Unfortunately Comodo's program gives no information about what security elements you are vulnerable to.  You are vulnerable to a whole series of security problems that SOUND important or you're not.  There's no information about how to block those, work-arounds for them, or how dangerous they are.  This feels like a beta product or some type of subtle marketing tool to try and get people to use Comodo's firewall that, apart from the company that makes it, I really like.

Finally this program is from 2008 and while I'm going to guess that Windows XP security hasn't changed dramatically in the past two years and most of the information is current, I would probably trust something more up to date.

There's not much more to add as this program doesn't do anything else.





Download:

• Portablefreeware's listing
  

Version: 1.00
Size:  0.3 megs
License: Freeware
Score: 2 out of 10 - Exclusively for security professionals or someone looking to learn more about Windows security.
In Kitchen Sink Collection: No

Hash Review

First, clearing up one confusion: Hash is both the name of the software and what it does: creates hashes.

Hash (the file output) - what are hashes?

Hashes (a.k.a. "digests") behave like a file fingerprint that help identify a file as authentic. This has many uses, such as when trying to determine that a file downloaded online is the one you're looking for and hasn't been corrupted. They are versatile, appearing as groups of numbers and letters that can be posted anywhere ("E55DA1922211").

Different file hashes have different advantages on a scale: security versus speed:

1. CRC32 - fastest
2. MD5 - seems to be the most popular
3. SHA1 - most accurate and longest
   

SHA1 might be thought to be taking ALL a person's fingerprints to verify with absolute certainty that the file is what its supposed to be. This is important if getting the right file is mission-critical. CRC32 meanwhile are usually used by internal programs such as DoubleKiller (also in the Kitchen Sink), to help discover files that are not just similar in name or size, but are identical. Torrents, meanwhile, automatically use the SHA1 protocol to verify downloaded data.

More on hashes from Wikipedia.

Hash (the software) - features

Provides a long list of file data about a given file or files by default -- all three hash types, as well as file version, size, and date. Can un-check boxes to gather less data.

Pros:

• Drag-and-drop friendly.
  
• Does multiple, even 100s of files automatically (if you do "Browse" hold CTRL or SHIFT to select multiple files)
  
• Progress bar to let you know how far along the process is and a "stop" button to cease progress.
• Absolutely tiny! Low footprint, low ram usage.
  

Cons

• No automatic file verification. To do this, I recommend creating a "torrent" using uTorrent or a similar program. Just ignore "tracker" information, since it won't be for sharing.
  

Download:

• Download
• PortableFreeware.com entry
  

Version: 1.04
Size: 28k megs
RAM Usage: 1.6 megs
License: Freeware (takes donations)
Score: 8 out of 10 - The best portable hash program I've yet found, but has no automatic checker. Who wants to read those long strings of text?
In Kitchen Sink Collection: Yes

GPG4USB Review

[Too] simple PGP encryption

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) has been an outstanding system for security. There are many, many applications for this great technology.

Unfortunately, leveraging this amazing tool has been difficult. Using Pretty Good Privacy for email and file protection should at this late stage be an easy: GPG was created to make a free version of the commercial PGP software, its been ported to almost every operating system, and its security over time has been very solid.

I've been begging for a simple, clean program that makes things ultra easy. Simply put, nobody will use anything else -- even my very security-conscious friends. GPG4USB could have been that program but unfortunately, it went so simple that it left out important features.

• Doesn't create or manage keys -- you need an external program for that. I had to use WinPT the author has a few other ideas to handle this but they may be too complex for some users.
  
• Text only - no file encryption.
  
• Only encrypts, doesn't "sign" messages -- sometimes its not necessary for a message to be private but it is necessary to confirm the identity came from who sent it. Signing does just that.
• Not fully stealth -- this issue is covered in the PortableFreeware Forums (1 and 2). This is only at install, however. After that, doesn't write any settings to anywhere but the program folder.

Hopefully the authors will continue work on really the only real effort I've seen in a while to make PGP simple, accessible, and clean. There's definitely a need for it and I don't think anyone else can or will.

Download GPG4USB

Version: 0.1.1
Size: 25.6 megs
RAM Usage: 10.4 megs
License: GPL (he might take donations)
Score: 6 out of 10 - For lack of alternatives, this is the best portable PGP tool. It does one thing and it does it well.
In Kitchen Sink Collection: No -- and because this isn't a good PGP intro tool, I'll probably leave it out.

Update: this program has continued development and has addressed many concerns in this article, especially regarding a basic key manager.

Cyber Shredder Review

Don't just delete it.

You need a file wipe if you have data that you want that data to stay deleted and Cyber Shredder will handle 90% of this quickly and easily. If you don't think you need wipe software, check out Recuva and see how much you've deleted over time that hasn't gone anywhere. Data from months or even years ago may still be on your computer.

Just open and then drag-and-drop a file or folder you want to wipe with CyberShredder. The program uses obvious progress bars and has clear help information.

Users will only need to use "Very Quick Shred" to make files unrecoverable. Its the fastest and easiest and overwrites the file with random data one time. Wipe programs are very fond of pointing out how completely they obliterate data by overwriting it eleventy billion times, but the vast majority of users will only need to wipe it once since the expense to recover even basic data wipes is in the thousands.

If the data you're destroying is worth this much, you probably shouldn't be using Windows, and should at the very least be using a fully encrypted operating system. Unfortunately, some of us work with systems that aren't fully secure but there's still only a few people who will need a normal shred, especially if you work for a company where that is a policy requirement.

Did you already delete something that you meant to wipe? Look into Eraser portable software.

Download CyberShredder or from portablefreeware.

Version: 1.12
Size: 0.5 megs
RAM Usage: 5.2 megs
License: freeware
Score: 8 out of 10 - wish it would integrate a freespace wipe, always prefer open-source security tools.
In Kitchen Sink Collection: Yes

Related: The BBC gives a little more detail on data shredding.