Hey Everyone,
Sorry for the long delay, work has been really swamped and I just haven't had time to write an entry, but now I do so today's topic is how to cover your tracks from everyone and the truth about "deleting files".
First off I want to tell all the people that may not know a whole lot about computers yet and are ready my blog to educate themselves in the fine art of hacking about deleting files. In microsoft windows, any version, when you send a document to the recycle bin and delete it, the file is still on your hard drive. When you delete a file via the recycle bin what it does is essentially rename it to a blank name that the file system, FAT32 or NTFS, does not recognize because the filename does not exist. The binary code that makes up that file however is shifted to the end of your unused portion of the hard drive. Using a basic program like R-Undelete you can easily see what files were deleted and recover them, with a small investment of 24.95 USD. Not much really if your trying to recover old bank records or financial statements. The same goes with the history of your internet escapades. When you go through Tools -> Internet Options -> and clear your history, it isn't really gone. With a little program called RedCliff Web Historian you can recover every single website ever visited by any and all users on a single machine, and get this, the program is free! The NSA or CIA or Secret Service doesn't even have to have some high tech super expensive program to read your history, just this free download off the internet.
The solution to these problems is actually more simple than you think. To truly delete somthing you have to overwrite it. The best way to ensure your data is really gone is to overwrite it with random binary code multiple times, like 32. Now how would you do this you ask, well it's actually very easy. Go out on the internet and get a program called Eraser. It is free and open source so no problem there. To download go to http://www.tolvanen.com/eraser/ and click download. Inside the program there is an algorithm that finds the location of a certain file and overwrites it 32 times with a randomly generated binary code. There is no pattern so it is very hard to reverse engineer. Not only does it do individual files but it also has the ability to overwrite the unused portion of your hard drive and thus destroying every record of every file you have delete up to this point. The program is very easy to use. When you right click on a file or folder or even a hard drive the little drop down menu will now have a option for erase, and that is all there is to it. When you want to delete somthing just right click on it and the click erase. It will take a little while depending on the file size, but believe me, it is worth it. When you right click on a hard drive it doesn't give you the option to erase but the option to erase unused area so click on that and let it sit for a while, because this will take a long time. I did it to about 20 gig of unused space and it took 8 hours, but you should only have to do it once and after that just delete everything else using Eraser. That takes care of files but now how do you delete that history. Well that is actually pretty simple too. First off you have to create a temporary user, I just called mine temp. Don't password protect it or anything because you are going to delete it after your done anyways. Log off your main user and log into temp. Make sure when you create temp that you give it administrative rights. Browse to c:\documents and settings\user's folder\local settings\ once in there use Eraser to delete the history folder. Another way of doing it if you have multiple users is to use the search assistant and look for index.dat. Make sure to pay attention to where it came from because you will NOT be able to delete all of them. Any of them that are under your temp user will be access denied because you are using them by being logged on as that user, that is why you create this user in the first place. Once you have searched and found all of them you just use Eraser and get rid of them for good. Once you are done log out and log back into your main user and then delete your temp user, simple as that.
To cover your tracks while you are surfing is a bit more difficult, but it is still pretty easy if you have the motivation. Along with making sure there are no files stored on your computer you could also use a disposible operating system like Knoppix, or more specifically Knoppix STD. The STD stands for Security Tool Distribution or somthing like that and has a lot of hacker tools available. It is a live cd which mean pop it in your cd rom and boot up your machine and it runs. I am not going to teach you how to run it because that would take forever, you can read the instructions. You can download the .ISO image at http://www.knoppix-std.org/. It is a pretty hefty file and you will need a cd burner and a program that can burn .ISO images. Nero is a good commercial suite but a program called DeepBurner will do a good job too and it's free. You can download it at http://www.snapfiles.com/get/deepburner.html. I will warn you before you get to excited, it is linux so if you don't know linux you will have to learn. It's not that difficult. If you can run DOS then you have the basic groundwork for linux. Just make sure you read the manual that is available at the website. It is GUI based but all the good tools are command line driven. I call this a disposable operating system because when you are done you can throw it away. The cd uses your RAM to store data so when the power is killed to your computer the information is gone, no tracks. If you are doing work on the internet you need to take a few precautions though. You can change your IP address or use a public computer or hot spot, but there is one thing that sets your computer out from the crowd, the MAC address. A MAC address is a unique address given to every networking device, NIC Card, PCMCIA, USB to LAN, anything that plugs into a network has a mac address and they are all different. You can however trick your NIC into using a different MAC though. With Knoppix STD there is a program in there called MAC Changer. This will change your MAC address until you shut off your computer so if you run this before you get onto that public pc or hot spot you will be alright. The beautiful thing about using this disposible operating system is once you know it you have the exact same computer no matter where you are as long as it has a CD-Rom you are good. If you would like to save files and things like that you can use USB flash drives and just carry that with you, all you have to do is plug it in and mount it(you will learn how to do that if you read the manual).
Well I think that is enough information for today. Let me know what you thing and LEAVE COMMENTS PLEASE!!!!! Till next time, peace out all.
Kn1ghtlord
kn1ghtl0rd@hotmail.com
