Related
Hi Guys, I've been using phatnotes pro 4.7.2 full version, for as long as I remember now even when they were called something else... anyways they have a protect note option, which adds a password to the notes you make.
How STRONG is this password protection? Does it even add encryption or it's just a simple password block and anyone can override and view the notes using a hex editor or text editor???? is it safe to leave a few credit card numbers in there?
Noone knows, the developer uses 'security by obscurity' by refusing to disclose the algorithm used.
The most secure algoritms used (AES Rjindaal, Twofish/Blowfish etc) have been subject to years of public scrutiny. It's the implementation not the algorithm itself that makes the security. There is no security threat form disclosing the algorithm.
I'd recommend staying away from this until the algorithm is disclosed if you want to encrypt your data.
bydandie said:
Noone knows, the developer uses 'security by obscurity' by refusing to disclose the algorithm used.
The most secure algoritms used (AES Rjindaal, Twofish/Blowfish etc) have been subject to years of public scrutiny. It's the implementation not the algorithm itself that makes the security. There is no security threat form disclosing the algorithm.
I'd recommend staying away from this until the algorithm is disclosed if you want to encrypt your data.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So are you saying they DO using some form of encryption within their application when password protecting the notes or you don't know? I don't particularly care for what algorithm or encryption method they are using, my main concern is, are they even using encryption at all.
If my phone ever gets lost or stolen, most people who finds/steals it would just hard reset and wipe everything from the phone, so if there is even a slightest form of encryption, my data should be safe.
Depending on how often you use your 'secret' files. I have 1 particular note (in Notes) that I keep my personal stuff like passport number and others stuff that I may be using them, or not (very often, I don't). Hence I use the ccrryyppttoo (`crypto` with every letter doubled). I use this to encrypt that particular note. There is a certain advantages to it. (a) It still sync over outlook without 3rd party software plugin. (b) others still able to see the note, with non-sense short characters on it (eg, I have passport number a lot of other numbers there, which ended up only in 5 characters). There is also a desktop version available, if you wanted to have it tested (or incases where you have lost your phone and your file encrypted in your PC, you can use it to decrypt it).
hanmin said:
Depending on how often you use your 'secret' files. I have 1 particular note (in Notes) that I keep my personal stuff like passport number and others stuff that I may be using them, or not (very often, I don't). Hence I use the ccrryyppttoo (`crypto` with every letter doubled). I use this to encrypt that particular note. There is a certain advantages to it. (a) It still sync over outlook without 3rd party software plugin. (b) others still able to see the note, with non-sense short characters on it (eg, I have passport number a lot of other numbers there, which ended up only in 5 characters). There is also a desktop version available, if you wanted to have it tested (or incases where you have lost your phone and your file encrypted in your PC, you can use it to decrypt it).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1. I think your link doesn't work.
2. Thanks for the suggestion! But that means adding another program to my long list of programs, I rather just use phatnotes if they are somewhat secure.
3. That still doesn't answer my original question =(
4. Can you send me the program for me to try? I use my 'secret' note file on my pc and phone so phatnotes keeps them both sync, very convinient.
5. THANKS AGAIN!
The link does works at my end. Here is it again.
http://www.hfrmobile.com/app_CCrryyppttoo_T1/index.htm
Oops, forgot your original question. You can test the encryption yourself. I didn't try out Phatnotes myself, but you can try to locate the file of which Phatnote stores your notes (either 1 file for all notes, or 1 file per note). Password protect this file, send it over to your PC, open it with your Notepad. If it doesn't show what each and every word that you've typed for that note, it is 'encrypted'. Most amateur people will just use this method to get your secret stuff I guess, unless they know there are information on banking details with £10,000 in it
Hmmm great suggestion!! I just did what you said and the unprotected notes are readable by notepad and the protected notes are just garbled text of mostly "?" and "G" letters. So I guess they do have some form of encryption for those notes then. So how good is the encryption on crypto?
Well, I did a trip to search for the answer for your question of "how good is the encryption on crypto", and it seems that the author is using his way of encrypting the file, which I say ought to be safe enough for everyday usage, but good enough for business/military usage, I guess.
Anyway, while I was looking for the 'answer', I bang my head into this
http://tombo.sourceforge.jp/En/
As this is using the standard 128 blowfish algorithm, which has been proven to be strong and fast. It has both desktop and ppc version, which are interchangable (eg. desktop can decrypt the ppc encrypted file). And, it is free!
I found this too, limited-freeware though. http://www.freewareppc.com/docs/visnotes.shtml
Hmm.. freeware file encryption (AES algorithm): http://www.freewareppc.com/utilities/filebarricader2006mobile.shtml
[Update on Tombo]
I did a test drive on it. It is quite alright. It creates a txt file for each of the note you created and put them into structure folder that you made. There are option of making virtual folders as well. So, you can have your notes sync by syncing your My Documents folder, of which you set this Tombo to put all the notes. It encrypts files and have an added feature of scrambling the file name such that people are not able to guess what your file contents are.
However, there are two flaws that I've just found in a 1/2 hour testing
(a) its Unicode encoding is not working. Once you (really) close the application, it will give '?' for all the non-alpha-numeric characters. Weird consider the author is a Japanese.
(b) there isn't an option of wrapping texts without 'dissecting' them.
I wonder if a host host list potentially becomes detrimental to your phone's browser performance. I understand that the idea is for the energy/resourced saved from not displaying the Ads (hence faster load time). However, having to check a huge list all the time for every domain name resolution would slow thing down and reduce the benefit?
I tested this on a iPod Touch 3GS, because host file for android is harder to get to.Running a really long host list slowed down the browser to a crawl. But removing most of the entries leaving just the necessary ones does show improvement in browsing experience vs. non-modified host file.
Also not as significant but the host file is loaded at boot into RAM thus uses up some resources, although I think it is a non-issue since hosts file are usually small text files.
So the question becomes, does program like AdFree which pulls down a huge list made for desktop (composed of various precautionary but useless entries) from a remote server actually benefits mobile devices?
I haven't seen that it has any noticible effect on the browser per se. Back when I was using a G1, it seemed like it *might* have been slowing down overall system performance, but everything slowed down the G1, just by turning it on, so it's hard to say.
I know that on the Vibrant it doesn't seem to have any impact I can see. And, certainly, the lack of ads in many apps is quite a benefit. It's very bothersome having to constantly be distracted by the ad bar at the bottom of an app, especially when the GUI of the app is fully themed, and the ad bar doesn't match. That's fine if there's a "pro" version without ads, but in many cases there isn't.
Every time you connect to a website your phone makes a DNS request, it will check the hosts file first and then if the entry is not present will contact the DNS servers in resolv.conf, so I do not see a validity of the statement unless the host file becomes millions of lines.
Indeed, parsing a local text file will always be faster than issuing a dns query, especially in a mobile device with high network latency.
Noticeably less delay than actually downloading the ad, I know that...
I couldn't stomach not having it and I notice no negligible delays in DNS lookups...
Version Alpha 0.6.0 is now available
I'm back! Not dead yet, I promise. This is actually a relatively small update in terms of user-facing features, with only one really big new thing - support for file uploading - but that's a lot bigger than it might sound. It's the first write support I've implemented in the server, and it also required some fairly massive updates to the HttpServer component (support for binary requests, for POST parameters, for MIME multipart parsing). These will be built upon in forthcoming versions to add support for things like registry editing, in-browser file viewing (possibly editing), and so on. There are also a large number of small fixes and improvements that I've made over the last two-weeks-shy-of-a-year, which should make the server faster, more robust, better able to support concurrent connections, and lighter on device resources. Finally, while the app still targets WP8.0 and should run on 8.0, it now is designed for 8.1 compatibility (especially the AllCapabilities version).
Previous update (0.5.6): This version is mostly bug fixes and UI changes. The biggest changes are: clearer display of weird registry data types, the server now consumes fewer threads (it used to spawn them with wild abandon) and does faster string compares, the app version is now shown on the phone, error pages are now better, if you launch the app without a WiFi IP address it'll offer to take you to the WiFi settings page, connections are no longer closed as soon as the app starts sending a response, and the server now defaults to using the Connection: keep-alive header, with a two-minute timeout. The last change, combined with the second-to-last, should hopefully both do away with the tendency to have the app fail to display a page. However, I shouldn't have *needed* to switch it to "keep-alive" - using "close" should have worked - but it still veeeery occasionally would kill the connection early. Agh. Anyhow, this is better in the meantime.
DevDB offers me a support / Q&A thread. Please use that thread to ask questions; don't PM me unless it needs to be kept private for some reason!
ISSUES ON WP8.1:
It *should* work to deploy the app with "Application Deployment", but if you have a problem try deploying with "Windows Phone Application Deployment 8.1" instead.
Problems have been reported in the past when the app is installed to the SD card. It's small, though; putting it on internal storage shouldn't be a problem.
RESOLVED The AllCapabilities version included a few capabilities that were present in 8.0 but removed in 8.1. Those capabilities have been removed; the AllCapabilities version now deploys and runs on capability-unlocked WP8.1 phones.
IN CASE OF OTHER ISSUES: Please provide a *detailed* error report - what phone and OS version you have, what hacks you've installed, what Webserver version you're running, what you do to get the error to occur, and exactly *what* occurs - and I'll fix it as soon as I can! There's a DevDB section for posting bug reports, and you can also use CodePlex if you want.
I finally implemented file upload! I'll work on getting more stuff like that (file delete, possibly file rename/move/copy, various registry edits), hopefully soon! I also hope to add support for different areas, like an "Applications" path, a "Processes" path, a "Services" path... eventually. Many of those are really hard without good privileges. I'm also looking at moving the server to a background process and making the app just a control UI for it, adding support for authentication and/or HTTPS, adding some stylesheets to the web UI, adding caching, and much more. I did finally implement Connection header support.
Once again, the XAP is published twice. One is a fairly standard XAP that any phone can sideload, and the second has many exotic capabilities to enable viewing of (and writing to) slightly more of the file system and registry. The standard XAP has had its list of capabilities expanded to pretty much all of them that can be used without interop-unlock. The high-capability variant requires not just interop-unlock, but the additional capability-unlock hack available in the interop-unlock thread. The AllCapabilities version now works with WP8.1; sorry for the long delay on that!
An item of note: the AllCapabilities version (or either version, on WP8.1) can open other drives in the file system. On phones with an SD card, it is mounted at D: and you can browse it as normal. Credit to @hjc4869 for this discovery!
DESCRIPTION: This is a simple webserver app which can enumerate those files that are in folders readable from the sandbox, can download and upload (access permitting) files, can browse the registry, and can display the contents of registry values of any type. It runs on WP8.x (not yet tested on W10M). It is a spiritual successor to the Functional Webserver / WebServer (Mango) projects from WP7. This version is still missing a lot of functionality as I decided to implement it from scratch, but it is advancing swiftly. Note that there's no access controls implemented; use it on a public network only at your own risk!
Instructions are simple: sideload the XAP, connect to WiFi (required), run the app (called "WebServer Native Access"), point a web browser (on a PC or phone that is also on that local network) to the URL that the app displays. You should get a basic index page. Click on a Filesystem or Registry link to begin browsing the phone. There's a textbox near the top of all filesystem pages, type in a path there (for example, "C:windows" with no quotes) and hit Enter or click Get Files. You'll see a list of the contents of that folder. Click on a file to download it or a directory to open it. There's also a box for uploading files, one at a time, to the current directory. Navigating the registry is similar, except you'll need to specify the registry hive and then the path from that hive (or no path, to access the root of the hive).
As of v0.6.0, uploading files is finally supported! Other modifications (editing files, creating, deleting, or changing registry keys or values) are currently not supported. They will be "soon" although my personal testing suggests that basically the whole registry, and most of the file system, is off-limits for writing unless you use restricted capabilities.
You might see an error code (error 5 is "ACCESS_DENIED", you'll see it a lot; I should replace it with an appropriate 403 or whatever). Or you might see a status 500 message because of an exception in the server. Or the server may just crash (hopefully not so often anymore...). I'm making it more resilient, but there are still bugs. Please report any previously-unreported issues you find, including how to reproduce them, and I'll fix them if possible.
Also feel free to request features or changes; I'll implement them if reasonably possible. The app is a mixture of C++ and C# code; I could probably have done it all in one or the other but wanted to have a C++ component in case I ran into something that wasn't available in C#, and although it probably would have saved some time, I decided that hacking up a web server in C++ was maybe not the best idea.
The source code is on Codeplex, at the following projects: https://wp8webserver.codeplex.com/ for the server and the app (C#) and https://wp8nativeaccess.codeplex.com/ for the native access wrappers (C++). You may have to fix up the reference paths to get the C# component to see the C++ component correctly. The code is reasonably well documented, but let me know if you have any questions. Permission to re-use the code or components is granted under the MS-PL (Microsoft Permissive License) as posted on Codeplex.
Go forth and find cool stuff!
Version history (see the git commit logs for more detail:
07 July 2013 - 0.2.0: Initial release, FS only, 920 downloads (source: 652 downloads)
14 July 2013 - 0.3.2: initial registry, HTTP server and web app encapsulation, source on Codeplex, 225 downloads
0.3.3: bugfixes, 454 downloads
0.4.2: basic registry values display, 86 downloads
0.4.3: bugfixes, 326 downloads
0.4.6: multistring registry values, bugfixes, updated libraries, first AllCapabilities version (950 downloads), 453 downloads
25 Oct 2013 - 0.4.8: binary and long registry values, formatting and bugfixes, 451 downloads AllCaps, 201 normal
22 Dec 2013 - 0.4.9: all registry value types, better threading, proper resume, remembers port, 97 downloads AllCaps, 53 normal
24 Dec 2013 - 0.5.0: background operation using Location APIs. Downloads: 1011 AllCaps, 963 Normal
20 Jul 2014 - 0.5.1: More capabilities, better navigation. Downloads: 358 AllCaps, 352 normal
07 Aug 2014 - 0.5.3: .REG export, better traversal, bugfixes. Downloads as of 0.5.5 release: 260 AllCaps, 164 normal
10 Oct 2014 - 0.5.5: Bugfixes and back-end work. Downloads as of 0.6.0 release: 140 AllCaps, 113 normal
25 Oct 2014 - 0.5.6: Bugfixes and UI tweaks. Downloads as of 0.6.0 release: 1720 AllCaps, 1334 normal
12 Oct 2015 - 0.6.0: Binary requests, file uploads, bugfixes.
XDA:DevDB Information
WebServer Native Access, Tool/Utility for the Windows Phone 8 General
Contributors
GoodDayToDie
Source Code: https://wp8webserver.codeplex.com/
Version Information
Status: Alpha
Created 2014-10-17
Last Updated 2015-10-12
I'm going to use this space to mention something that's pretty cool:
J. Arturo of http://www.komodosoft.net is using a modified version of the HTTP server that powers this app in the ShareFolder app (http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=e2b9c82e-eaa1-4a3b-9d4a-8a2933a8bdb4) to support opening video files directly from Windows network shares! This was done to work around a limitation of the WP8 media control: it can only source from an isolated storage file or a HTTP URL. By running a server in the background and streaming the video file through it, and pointing the video player control at the localhost URL, it becomes possible to play the file on the phone without first copying it to the app's isolated storage. A very cool way to solve the problem! Also, reviewing the changes that were made to the network code of the server pointed me toward those threading fixes I made that have hopefully much improved version 0.4.9.
Please note that the updated version of ShareFolder with this feature may not yet be available, although it should be soon. It is a commercial (paid) app, but the author sought and received permission to use my code (although the license does not require such permission be received).
What exactly is the problem with sockets? I am battling myself with sockets atm too, maybe we can share knowledge?
Strictly speaking, the problem was with the phone's limited subset of the Sockets API forcing me to access it through functions I wouldn't normally use (asynchronous everything, SocketAsyncEventArgs and lambdas and AutoResetEvents and so on everywhere...) but I've got a pretty good handle on it now, at least for the System.Net.Sockets.Socket and its friends. The new .NET 4.x ones (using the async keyword and all) are in a different namespace; I didn't mess with them. They are more abstracted from the Bekeley sockets interface that I'm used to from C, but they are also (supposedly) more user-friendly, especially if you don't feel like writing all your own thread management code (and in fairness, I should re-write the webserver's threading to use threadpools; they're better for this type of work).
If you want to ask questions about the topic, I suggest starting a new thread (possibly in the Q&A subforum, although it's also dev related...) and I'll answer if I can.
GoodDayToDie, just an idea: how about sharing your source code via CodePlex or GitHub?
Oh man, this is pretty nice! GoodDayToDie does it again!
So far, I can read \Windows, the current install folder which you access just by typing "." with no quotes and the current application folder by typing ".." I can access the .dlls, .winmd and AppManifest.xml from the current install, but from everywhere else, it goes boom. This is a great step towards something awesome though!
EDIT:
I was wrong. For some reason, when you click on a folder it's trying to "download" it, rather than chdir. I can get pretty far into the Windows directory.
THAT's what you meant by "Click on a file (note: there's no current way to tell the difference between files and folders) to download it.
You might see an error code (error 5 is "ACCESS_DENIED", you'll see it a lot). Or you might see a status 500 message because of an exception in the server. It's getting a lot more resilient but there are surely still some bugs. ".
If you see a folder, just type the full path to it instead of clicking on it and you will be able to read the contents.
ANOTHER EDIT:
I just found a file inside of the \Windows\System32 directory named [guid].devicemetadata-ms (It's easier to just search for "devicemetadata-ms"). It's a cab file with some metadata about WP8 with a sign.cat and packagesign.cat file in the archive. I don't know what these files could potentially be useful for.
New version in a day or two (busy tonight). Features I plan to implement (not necessarily in the next version or at any particular time):
File upload (IsoStore and, of all crazy things, install directory are writable. I think I'll put a flag on each FS page that says whether the current dir is writable...).
File deletion (where possible, of course).
File and Directory distinction in the listing (clicking a dir should open it, not error out).
Filesystem index page with links to folders that can be accessed successfully (since the root isn't readable).
Some more file info (size, probably attributes, possibly permissions).
Possibly an option to preview a file (as plain text) without downloading it.
Some kind of background mode (the server uses minimal resources when not actively servicing a request, so I'll see if I can get it to work in the background, perhaps by abusing the music transfer agent...)
Some kind of offline mode (at least basic file browsing within the app, as an alternative to using the web interface, though I might just make a second app for that).
Source code changes: separate the server code from the webapp / phone app code (move it into its own project).
Source code changes: move to a hosted version control service, probably CodePlex (good suggestion sensboston).
Maybe add an icon and such...
Any other suggestions?
I also want to try experimenting with various non-standard capabilities and see if I can get access to more of the system . I've already added the ability to access removable storage, but I've also found a bunch of really weird and frequently undocumented capabilities in the OS's policy configuration files, and I need to look into those... The interesting (and possibly the uninteresting) ones are probably blocked for unsigned sideloaded apps, but it's worth checking on anyhow.
Yeah sorry, I should have been more explicit about clicking on dirs. not working in 0.2.0. Also, it's "unofficial" but if you check the URL bar you'll see a URL parameter called something like "pattern" (by default, it's *) and if you change that, you can filter the results. For example, "foo*.exe" (note: no quotes!) will search for EXE files whose names start with "foo". Among other uses, this makes it a lot faster to load large dirs like System32. This will be added to the UI at some point. Also note that URL decoding is applied correctly to querystring parameters (Probably already noticed with the path sometimes written using %5C for \) so you can add special characters that way if needed, though currently any of them but \ will probably just cause an exception.
...
Actually, does this filesystem support Alternate Data Streams? If so, you should be able to download them by appending a : and the ADS name to the filename in the download URL...
OK, so that was a new version in five days. Sorry, stuff takes time.
The source code is now on Codeplex. The native access portion is at https://wp8nativeaccess.codeplex.com/, and the web server portion is at https://wp8webserver.codeplex.com/. Both are licensed MS-PL and use Git for version control. The full XAP is also available for download from the Webserver project on Codeplex.
GoodDayToDie said:
OK, so that was a new version in five days. Sorry, stuff takes time.
The source code is now on Codeplex. The native access portion is at https://wp8nativeaccess.codeplex.com/, and the web server portion is at https://wp8webserver.codeplex.com/. Both are licensed MS-PL and use Git for version control. The full XAP is also available for download from the Webserver project on Codeplex.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You are a god. I'll be sure to post my findings .
Hmm. When I first load up WebServer File Access then access from my laptop, I get the main page then the program crashes on my phone. It seems to hold a lock on to the socket as i can no longer access port 9999 from any other device when re-opening the app. I can access it again when I reboot, but the same thing happens.
EDIT: I think it may be due to the WiFi at work... it's junky. I'll try again when I get home. I was just able to browse some directories.
Wow, that's completely unexpected... I can beef up the error chacking and handling around the listener port though. That part of the code is really straightforward, so I actually haven't hardened it very much. I can also put in a Finally block to close the socket and/or mark the socket as re-usable so that other apps (or the same one again) can listen on it in the future.
I also plan to add support for setting your own port, but that doesn't solve the underlying problem. I'll put in more error reporting as well, to enable better debugging. Thanks for the report! Always good to have users report problems so I know where to prioritize fixes.
GoodDayToDie said:
Wow, that's completely unexpected... I can beef up the error chacking and handling around the listener port though. That part of the code is really straightforward, so I actually haven't hardened it very much. I can also put in a Finally block to close the socket and/or mark the socket as re-usable so that other apps (or the same one again) can listen on it in the future.
I also plan to add support for setting your own port, but that doesn't solve the underlying problem. I'll put in more error reporting as well, to enable better debugging. Thanks for the report! Always good to have users report problems so I know where to prioritize fixes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried the app at home and it DOES crash on the first hit of the home page, but I'm able to open it up again and it works fine.
The new version 0.3.3 should be more rebust; try it and let me know if you still have issues. If you do, let me know what the exception message is (and any other info you can provide) and I'll try to track it down.
Downloading really big files should also work now. The app will read and push files in smaller chunks (the code to do this existed in the NativeAccess library before, but wasn't used).
a simple SDK?
Dear Sir
Will it be possible for you to make some sort of SDK from this so other developers can integrate this into their apps and enable browsing isolatedstorage?
Sorry if it is a stupid question.
Bruce_X_Lee said:
Dear Sir
Will it be possible for you to make some sort of SDK from this so other developers can integrate this into their apps and enable browsing isolatedstorage?
Sorry if it is a stupid question.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With the restrictions in permissions, this app only allows browsing of the app's isolatedstorage locally. You are able to use the IsolatedStorage API within your app to browse files and directories already.
snickler said:
With the restrictions in permissions, this app only allows browsing of the app's isolatedstorage locally. You are able to use the IsolatedStorage API within your app to browse files and directories already.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's right. What I want is to allow the end user to be able to browse the isolatedstorage. Imagine I have a video download app, I want the user to be able to transfer those downloaded videos from the app's isolated storage to, say, a PC.
One can do this by integrating the webserver code into the said app.
Bruce_X_Lee said:
That's right. What I want is to allow the end user to be able to browse the isolatedstorage. Imagine I have a video download app, I want the user to be able to transfer those downloaded videos from the app's isolated storage to, say, a PC.
One can do this by integrating the webserver code into the said app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ahh I see what you mean now. That sounds like a pretty nice idea. I think more research needs to be done to see whether it would even be allowed in the marketplace.
The webserver portion is stand-alone (builds to its own .NET DLL with no dependencies on the other parts) and has a pretty clean interface. You'd need to implement the web application portion of it yourself - the thing that generates the response pages for a given request - but the HttpResponse class in the server does a lot of the work of that for you; you basically just specify the content you want to send (as a String or byte array) and it sends it.
Is it possible to create an application that would hook all api calls to windows and be able to accept or deny the call? How trivial would this be?
All calls, for all apps? Very damn hard. You'd basically need to shim the entire standard libraries. The shims could probably be programmatically generated, but you'd need to write the program to create them. Then you'd need Admin access to install them, and then...
Why don't you explain what you're trying to do? This is a very complicated thing to attempt, and it might not be the right approach at all,
GoodDayToDie said:
All calls, for all apps? Very damn hard. You'd basically need to shim the entire standard libraries. The shims could probably be programmatically generated, but you'd need to write the program to create them. Then you'd need Admin access to install them, and then...
Why don't you explain what you're trying to do? This is a very complicated thing to attempt, and it might not be the right approach at all,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Due to recent program vulnerabilities *cough cough* IE exploit, I want to create a program to minimize and effectively stop the exploits, by blocking reading api calls from programs that have the vulnerability and determining if the call should be made or not.
There's already tools like EMET, which blocked that (and may other) exploits.
Have you ever looked at the output generated by procmon on a typical Windows application? Even for just the subset of system calls that it monitors, the log scrolls too fast to read, much less to make a decision about each call. Something as simple as opening a single static HTML page in IE would require an incredible number of clicks. Your typical modern page, which has dozens of separately-requested elements, generates considerable traffic to log files and cookies and so forth, and may contain rich content requiring a bunch of additional functions... Yeah, not practical at all.
GoodDayToDie said:
There's already tools like EMET, which blocked that (and may other) exploits.
Have you ever looked at the output generated by procmon on a typical Windows application? Even for just the subset of system calls that it monitors, the log scrolls too fast to read, much less to make a decision about each call. Something as simple as opening a single static HTML page in IE would require an incredible number of clicks. Your typical modern page, which has dozens of separately-requested elements, generates considerable traffic to log files and cookies and so forth, and may contain rich content requiring a bunch of additional functions... Yeah, not practical at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For educational purposes and further knowledge could you show me what I would have to do to hook one api call from a process? it does not have to be a global hook.
There's a handful of possible approaches.
If you *wanted* to do it globally, and didn't mind doing so only at the kernel syscall layer (meaning any purely user-space code wouldn't get caught, but since anything that can go between processes in any practical way involves the kernel anyhow...) you could create a driver that filters the relevant system calls. Filtering the entire system call interrupt at one place is possible if you can mess with the relevant interrupt service routine, but I believe that's protected by PatchGuard. There may be some all-in-one place anyhow, but it would be tricky. Anyhow, this is how tools such as Process Monitor (which only handles a relative handful of system calls) work.
If you want to modify the behavior of a bunch of programs, you could create modified versions of the system libraries, and put them where the programs would load them (usually the application directory would work, but sometimes you would need to replace the system copy). This approach is a lot of work, though not completely impractical; you simply need to shim all the exported functions (or at least, the ones you care about) with a version that filters the call before passing it through to the "real" version, but you would need to cover all the exported functions without breaking their ABI. Doable, but a lot of work.
If you only want to get one function, the easiest way would be to re-write all calls to that function in the process memory such that they go to your filter instead. This is how the Detours library (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/detours/) works; you can find code samples of using it online. I believe that is also how Microsoft's application compatibility shims work. There are registry keys which will cause a given program to be loaded in a debugger (which can be mostly non-interactive, and just make this change for you) or I *think* there's a way to specify an arbitrary DLL that a given program must load (and run its DllMain function) when it starts up too, which would also do the trick.
Bear in mind that the second and third methods can be bypassed by an attacker who knows what you're doing; the attacker just (re-)overwrites the function tables to point at the real versions of the APIs, or alternatively makes the relevant system calls directly (Win32 programs basically never do this, instead letting the Win32 subsystem translate their Win32 function calls in NT system calls and invoking the wrapped syscall, but there's nothing *stopping* them). The first approach can't be bypassed by an attacker with less than Admin privileges (assuming you did it right; I can think of a couple of potential gotchas you'd need to avoid) but you would need Admin yourself in order to install that driver in the first place, and if you want to *interactively* filter the API calls you would need the entire interaction path including the UI to protected against tampering by less-privileged processes.
With all that said, a real Mandatory Access Control that gives finer-grained control than Windows' Mandatory Integrity Control would be a really cool thing (something more like SELinux or AppArmor). It would probably be more effort on NT than on Linux though, due to NT not (so far as I know) having any equivalent of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Security_Modules (a good place to start reading about the topic).
GoodDayToDie said:
There's a handful of possible approaches.
If you *wanted* to do it globally, and didn't mind doing so only at the kernel syscall layer (meaning any purely user-space code wouldn't get caught, but since anything that can go between processes in any practical way involves the kernel anyhow...) you could create a driver that filters the relevant system calls. Filtering the entire system call interrupt at one place is possible if you can mess with the relevant interrupt service routine, but I believe that's protected by PatchGuard. There may be some all-in-one place anyhow, but it would be tricky. Anyhow, this is how tools such as Process Monitor (which only handles a relative handful of system calls) work.
If you want to modify the behavior of a bunch of programs, you could create modified versions of the system libraries, and put them where the programs would load them (usually the application directory would work, but sometimes you would need to replace the system copy). This approach is a lot of work, though not completely impractical; you simply need to shim all the exported functions (or at least, the ones you care about) with a version that filters the call before passing it through to the "real" version, but you would need to cover all the exported functions without breaking their ABI. Doable, but a lot of work.
If you only want to get one function, the easiest way would be to re-write all calls to that function in the process memory such that they go to your filter instead. This is how the Detours library (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/detours/) works; you can find code samples of using it online. I believe that is also how Microsoft's application compatibility shims work. There are registry keys which will cause a given program to be loaded in a debugger (which can be mostly non-interactive, and just make this change for you) or I *think* there's a way to specify an arbitrary DLL that a given program must load (and run its DllMain function) when it starts up too, which would also do the trick.
Bear in mind that the second and third methods can be bypassed by an attacker who knows what you're doing; the attacker just (re-)overwrites the function tables to point at the real versions of the APIs, or alternatively makes the relevant system calls directly (Win32 programs basically never do this, instead letting the Win32 subsystem translate their Win32 function calls in NT system calls and invoking the wrapped syscall, but there's nothing *stopping* them). The first approach can't be bypassed by an attacker with less than Admin privileges (assuming you did it right; I can think of a couple of potential gotchas you'd need to avoid) but you would need Admin yourself in order to install that driver in the first place, and if you want to *interactively* filter the API calls you would need the entire interaction path including the UI to protected against tampering by less-privileged processes.
With all that said, a real Mandatory Access Control that gives finer-grained control than Windows' Mandatory Integrity Control would be a really cool thing (something more like SELinux or AppArmor). It would probably be more effort on NT than on Linux though, due to NT not (so far as I know) having any equivalent of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Security_Modules (a good place to start reading about the topic).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I want to write open sourced code that will be like super user and permissions for windows so you can have the open feeling of windows but a secure feeling as well with little to no anti-virus's. This would not be like windows rt's locks, you can run any program you like.
You're not the first person to have this idea, but I don't think you understand the magnitude of what you're asking for. Even if such a system were created, it would be a lot of work to create all the rule sets for every program you want to protect. Besides, you'd still be vulnerable to malicious code that runs as Admin (i.e. most installers, etc.) since they could unload or modify your driver.
We seek developers from any part of the world for an innovative mobile app project.
This project is dedicated solely on Football in a country in Africa.
For the eventual developer of this app, all the payment will be done through this medium. Although we are willing to pay between $1500-$1800 or maximally pays $2000 on this job
PROJECTS’ MAJOR COMPONENTS
News feeds, Videos/highlight shows, live score, Interactive communities, Feedback/suggestions
OVERVIEW
To design, built, operate and later transfer a football (soccer) mobile app.
OBJECTIVES
To pull news and other specified contents from web-portals, blog sites to the app. All this must be done without slowing down the app. invariably; we are talking about a sorting algorithm that is robust, fast and easily assessable to the app. IT MUST NOT SLOW DOWN THE APP.
Alternatively, creating a pool at which the app can interact with. All the news, videos et al will be aggregated in that pool and the app can eventually interact with it.
SPECIFICATIONS
The major components will make use of strong sorting algorithm because for instance, all the news components will be sourced from different web sources.
For LIVE-SCORE components, we are looking at an sms-based auto-app-update-lives-core. For instance match updates can be sent via sms to a dedicated phone number which must have been programmed to automatically update on the app. However, we will always appreciate if there are better, and cost effective options to achieve this feat.
OUR REQUESTS
The design must be simple but captivating,
The navigation must be easy
Must be on different version of Androids, iOS, Window Phone and Blackberry
Please when applying, endeavor to email me for further briefing.
The match fixtures, result and league table components must be easily navigable and more importantly, easily updatable.
The featured football/soccer clubs must have their logos attached to them. (We will supply those logos)
The app logo and naming must be unique. We will welcome inputs from you on this.
We are proposing a back-end kind of connection to match-day videos/highlights on a website. This app must have proper referencing of the source website, same goes for the news too.
The feedback component of the app must be able to send feedbacks/suggestions to the app admin.
We are yet to decide if the app will have an authentication pane with it, where one can sign-up, have a profile and log-in and out. But if it will, then it must be very simple- Username, phone number, email address, supported football club. The user log in page must be able to allow each user to log in automatically.
The app must have an interactive community, where app user can intearact based on the football/soccer clubs they support.
CONCLUSION
Please note that we are more interested in anyone/group that can achieve our BOT (Build, Operate and Transfer) option for us. We will strictly follow your own proposed remuneration afterwards.
There will be an MOU to be jointly signed by both party before the start of the project . This MOU must state your specified time frame for setting up the project, and also operating it.
Please note that all financial consideration will be paid to you ONLY when you are about to transfer the project to us.
More importantly, the App must be able to have specified sizes of Advertisement pane (This is a very important component).
For the eventual developer of this app, all the payment will be done through this medium. Although we are willing to pay between $1500-$1800 or maximally pays $2000 on this job
Signed
Fapohunda Olufemi John
Solution Provider,
JMS Technologies
[email protected]
Twitter: @iamfOJ
Whatsapp/Phone: +2348066920770