Utility Software

from Wikipedia   7zip
Open Zip & RAR Files With 7-Zip [Tutorial]



7-Zip is a free and open-source file archiver, a utility used to place groups of files within compressed containers known as "archives". It is developed by Igor Pavlov and was first released in 1999. 7-Zip uses its own 7z archive format, but can read and write several other archive formats. The program can be used from a command-line interface as the command p7zip, or through a graphical user interface that also features shell integration. Most of the 7-Zip source code is under the GNU LGPL license; the unRAR code, however, is under the GNU LGPL with an "unRAR restriction", which states that developers are not permitted to use the code to reverse-engineer the RAR compression algorithm.

from Wikipedia

Antivirus or anti-virus software (often abbreviated as AV), sometimes known as anti-malware software, is computer software used to prevent, detect and remove malicious software.



Antivirus software was originally developed to detect and remove computer viruses, hence the name. However, with the proliferation of other kinds of malware, antivirus software started to provide protection from other computer threats. In particular, modern antivirus software can protect from: malicious browser helper objects (BHOs), browser hijackers, ransomware, keyloggers, backdoors, rootkits, trojan horses, worms, malicious LSPs, dialers, fraudtools, adware and spyware. Some products also include protection from other computer threats, such as infected and malicious URLs, spam, scam and phishing attacks, online identity (privacy), online banking attacks, social engineering techniques, advanced persistent threat (APT) and botnet DDoS attacks.

from Wikipedia

Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages between people using electronics. Email first entered substantial use in the 1960s and by the mid-1970s had taken the form now recognized as email. Email operates across computer networks, which today is primarily the Internet. Some early email systems required the author and the recipient to both be online at the same time, in common with instant messaging. Today's email systems are based on a store-and-forward model. Email servers accept, forward, deliver, and store messages. Neither the users nor their computers are required to be online simultaneously; they need to connect only briefly, typically to a mail server or a webmail interface, for as long as it takes to send or receive messages.



Originally an ASCII text-only communications medium, Internet email was extended by Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) to carry text in other character sets and multimedia content attachments. International email, with internationalized email addresses using UTF-8, has been standardized, but as of 2017 it has not been widely adopted.

The history of modern Internet email services reaches back to the early ARPANET, with standards for encoding email messages published as early as 1973 (RFC 561). An email message sent in the early 1970s looks very similar to a basic email sent today. Email had an important role in creating the Internet, and the conversion from ARPANET to the Internet in the early 1980s produced the core of the current services.

Popular email platforms include Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Outlook, and many others.

Wikipedia Comparison of email clients



Network-based email was initially exchanged on the ARPANET in extensions to the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), but is now carried by the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), first published as Internet standard 10 (RFC 821) in 1982.

In the process of transporting email messages between systems, SMTP communicates delivery parameters using a message envelope separate from the message (header and body) itself.

Servers and client applications

Messages are exchanged between hosts using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol with software programs called mail transfer agents (MTAs); and delivered to a mail store by programs called mail delivery agents (MDAs, also sometimes called local delivery agents, LDAs). Accepting a message obliges an MTA to deliver it, and when a message cannot be delivered, that MTA must send a bounce message back to the sender, indicating the problem.

Users can retrieve their messages from servers using standard protocols such as POP or IMAP, or, as is more likely in a large corporate environment, with a proprietary protocol specific to Novell Groupwise, Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange Servers. Programs used by users for retrieving, reading, and managing email are called mail user agents (MUAs).

Mail can be stored on the client, on the server side, or in both places. Standard formats for mailboxes include Maildir and mbox. Several prominent email clients use their own proprietary format and require conversion software to transfer email between them. Server-side storage is often in a proprietary format but since access is through a standard protocol such as IMAP, moving email from one server to another can be done with any MUA supporting the protocol.

Many current email users do not run MTA, MDA or MUA programs themselves, but use a web-based email platform, such as Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo! Mail, that performs the same tasks. Such webmail interfaces allow users to access their mail with any standard web browser, from any computer, rather than relying on an email client.

from Wikipedia   FileZilla
How to Use FileZilla (FTP Tutorial)

FileZilla is a free software, cross-platform FTP application, consisting of FileZilla Client and FileZilla Server. Client binaries are available for Windows, Linux, and macOS, server binaries are available for Windows only. The client supports FTP, SFTP and FTPS (FTP over SSL/TLS).



FileZilla's source code is hosted on SourceForge and the project was featured as Project of the Month in November 2003. However, there have been criticisms that SourceForge bundles malicious software with the application; and that FileZilla stores users' FTP passwords insecurely.

History

FileZilla was started as a computer science class project in the second week of August 2001 by Tim Kosse and two classmates. Before they started to write the code, they discussed under which license they should release the code. They decided to make FileZilla an open-source project because many FTP clients were already available, and they didn't think that they would sell a single copy if they made FileZilla commercial.

from Wikipedia Gpg4win
gpg4win Encypting and Decrypting
PGP / GPG Encryption by Tony Bemus

Gpg4win is an email and file encryption package for most versions of Microsoft Windows, which uses GnuPG public-key cryptography for data encryption and digital signatures.



The original creation of Gpg4win was supported by Germany's Federal Office for Information Security, however Gpg4win and all included tools are free and open source software, and it is typically the non-proprietary option for privacy recommended to Windows users.

GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG) is a free software replacement for Symantec's PGP cryptographic software suite. GnuPG is compliant with RFC 4880, which is the IETF standards track specification of OpenPGP. Modern versions of PGP are interoperable with GnuPG and other OpenPGP-compliant systems.

GnuPG is part of the GNU Project, and has received major funding from the German government.

from Wikipedia   Immunet

Immunet is a free, cloud-based, community-driven antivirus application, using the ClamAV and its own engine. The software is complementary with existing antivirus software. On 5 August 2011 it was announced that Immunet had been acquired by Sourcefire.



The application is free of charge, and claims to be fast and to provide up-to-date protection against threats. Virus signature files are stored in the cloud, not on individual computers, so update downloads are not required. Once a virus is detected and blocked for one user, all other Immunet users receive the same protection almost instantly. The software is noted for its ability to allow individual users to easily author their own signatures.

from Wikipedia   MD5 Checksum

The MD5 algorithm is a widely used hash function producing a 128-bit hash value. Although MD5 was initially designed to be used as a cryptographic hash function, it has been found to suffer from extensive vulnerabilities. It can still be used as a checksum to verify data integrity, but only against unintentional corruption.



Like most hash functions, MD5 is neither encryption nor encoding. It can be cracked by brute-force attack and suffers from extensive vulnerabilities as detailed in the security section below.

MD5 was designed by Ronald Rivest in 1991 to replace an earlier hash function MD4. The source code in RFC 1321 contains a "by attribution" RSA license. The abbreviation "MD" stands for "Message Digest."

The security of the MD5 has been severely compromised, with its weaknesses having been exploited in the field, most infamously by the Flame malware in 2012. The CMU Software Engineering Institute considers MD5 essentially "cryptographically broken and unsuitable for further use". Despite this known vulnerability, MD5 remains in use.

Comparison of cryptographic hash functions
Hash function security summary

from Wikipedia

Network enumeration is a computing activity in which usernames and info on groups, shares, and services of networked computers are retrieved. It should not be confused with network mapping, which only retrieves information about which servers are connected to a specific network and what operating system runs on them.



Network Enumeration is the discovery of hosts/devices on a network. Network Enumeration tends to use overt discovery protocols such as ICMP and SNMP to gather information. It may also scan various ports on remote hosts for looking for well known services in an attempt to further identify the function of a remote host. The next stage of enumeration is to fingerprint the Operating System of the remote host.

from Wikipedia   Nmap (Network Mapper)

Nmap (Network Mapper) is a security scanner, originally written by Gordon Lyon (also known by his pseudonym Fyodor Vaskovich), used to discover hosts and services on a computer network, thus building a "map" of the network. To accomplish its goal, Nmap sends specially crafted packets to the target host(s) and then analyzes the responses.



The software provides a number of features for probing computer networks, including host discovery and service and operating-system detection. These features are extensible by scripts that provide more advanced service detection, vulnerability detection, and other features. Nmap can adapt to network conditions including latency and congestion during a scan. The Nmap user community continues to develop and refine the tool.

Nmap started as a Linux-only utility, but porting to Windows, Solaris, HP-UX, BSD variants (including OS X), AmigaOS, and IRIX have followed. Linux is the most popular platform, followed closely by Windows.

from Wikipedia

In computing, a shell is a user interface for access to an operating system's services. In general, operating system shells use either a command-line interface (CLI) or graphical user interface (GUI), depending on a computer's role and particular operation. It is named a shell because it is a layer around the operating system kernel.



The design of a shell is guided by cognitive ergonomics and the goal is to achieve the best workflow possible for the intended tasks; the design can be constricted by the available computing power (for example, of the CPU) or the available amount of graphics memory. The design of a shell is also dictated by the employed computer periphery, such as computer keyboard, pointing device (a mouse with one button, or one with five buttons, or a 3D mouse) or touchscreen, which is the direct human–machine interface.

CLI shells allow some operations to be performed faster, especially when a proper GUI has not been or cannot be created; however, they require the user to be familiar with commands and their calling syntax, and to understand concepts about the shell-specific scripting language (for example bash script), which may prove difficult for those with little computer experience. CLIs are also easier to be operated via refreshable braille display and provide certain advantages to screen readers.

Graphical shells place a low burden on beginning computer users, and they are characterized as being simple and easy to use. With the widespread adoption of programs with GUIs, the use of graphical shells has gained greater adoption. Since graphical shells come with certain disadvantages, most GUI-enabled operating systems also provide additional CLI shells.

Wikipedia Graphical shells



Graphical shells provide means for manipulating programs based on graphical user interface (GUI), by allowing for operations such as opening, closing, moving and resizing windows, as well as switching focus between windows. Graphical shells may be included with desktop environments or come separately, even as a set of loosely coupled utilities.

Most graphical user interfaces develop the metaphor of an "electronic desktop", where data files are represented as if they were paper documents on a desk, and application programs similarly have graphical representations instead of being invoked by command names.

Wikipedia List of alternative shells for Windows
Wikipedia Comparison of Start menu replacements for Windows 8
Wikipedia Comparison of command shells