1. Credit Card Frauds

For example, say a Nigerian fraudster tries to purchase goods online with a stolen credit card for which the billing address is associated with New York. Most credit card merchants use Geo-location to block orders from countries like Nigeria and other high risk countries. So in order to bypass this restriction the credit card fraudster uses a proxy to spoof his IP address so that it appears to have come from New York. The IP address location appears to be legitimate since it is in the same city as the billing address. A proxy check would be needed to flag this order.

2. Bypass Website Country Restrictions

Some website services are restricted to users form only a selected list of countries. For example, a paid survey may be restricted only to countries like United States and Canada. So a user from say China may use a proxy so as to make his IP appear to have come from U.S. so that he can earn from participating in the paid survey.

Proxy Detection Services

So in order to stop such online frauds, Proxy Detection has become a critical component. Today most companies, credit card merchants and websites that deal with e-commerce transactions make use of Proxy Detection Services like MaxMind and FraudLabs to detect the usage of proxy or spoofed IP from users participating online.

Proxy Detection web services allow instant detection of anonymous IP addresses. Even though the use of proxy address by users is not a direct indication of fraudulent behaviour, it can often indicate the intention of the user to hide his or her real IP. In fact, some of the most used ISPs like AOL and MSN are forms of proxies and are used by both good and bad consumers.

How Proxy Detection Works?

Proxy detection services often rely on IP addresses to determine whether or not the IP is a proxy. Merchants can obtain the IP address of the users from the HTTP header on the order that comes into their website. This IP address is sent to the proxy detecting service in real time to confirm it’s authenticity.

The proxy detection services on the other hand compare this IP against a known list of flagged IPs that belong to proxy services. If the IP is not on the list then it is authenticated and the confirmation is sent back to the merchant. Otherwise it is reported to be a suspected proxy. These proxy detection services work continuously to grab a list or range of IPs that are commonly used for proxy services. With this it is possible to tell whether or not a given IP address is a proxy or spoofed IP.

How to Tell Whether a given IP is Real or a Proxy?

There are a few free sites that help you determine whether or not a given IP is a proxy. You can use free services like WhatisMyIPAddress to detect proxy IPs. Just enter the suspected IP in the field and click on “Lookup IP Address” button to check the IP address. If it is a suspected proxy then you will see the results something as follows.

So for all those who think that they can escape by using a spoofed IP, this post is the answer. I hope this information helps. Pass your comments.

Bookmarking the favorite web pages can save a lot of time as it becomes almost impossible to remember a list of favorite websites and their URLs. However it can be really frustrating at times when you lose all those saved bookmarks in case if a computer crashes. Also if you are a person who uses more than one computer then it becomes hard to copy all those saved bookmarks one by one manually. So saving the bookmarks can become handy in such situations. Here is how to to do it.

Saving a Bookmark file in Internet Explorer

1. From the File menu, select the option Import and Export.

2. Select the option Export to a file and click on Next.

3. In the next screen select Favorites and click on Next.

4. In the next screen again click on Favorites and click on Next.

5. Now choose the destination where you want to save your bookmarks and click on Export.

6. In the next screen click on Finish.

Now you have successfully saved all your bookmarks in a .HTM file. You can use this file to later restore the bookmarks to either IE, Firefox or any other browser. To import the saved bookmarks from a file all you need to do is goto File menu, click on Import and Export, select the option Import from a file and proceed with the screen instructions.

Saving a Bookmark file in Firefox

1. From the Bookmarks menu on the top select the option Organize Bookmarks.

2. A window will pop-up. From the window click on Import and Backup at the top and select the option Export HTML.

3. Now choose the destination where you want to save the bookmark file and click on Save.

To restore this saved file, follow the step-1 and in step-2 select the option Import HTML instead of Export HTML and proceed.

Saving a Bookmark file in Google Chrome

1. From the Tools menu, select Bookmark Manager.

2. Click the Organize menu in the manager.

3. Select Export bookmarks.

4. Select the location where you want your exported file to be saved, then click Save. 

To restore the bookmarks, follow step-1, step-2 and in step-3 select Import bookmarks instead of Export bookmarks and proceed.

Saving a Bookmark file in Opera

1. From the File menu, select the option Import and Export.

2. Scroll over to the pull-down menu on the right and choose Export Bookmarks as HTML.

3. On the next screen, choose the destination folder from the Save in menu text box at the top of the screen.

4. Just click the Save button and you’re done.

What are Public IP Addresses?

A public IP address is assigned to every computer that connects to the Internet where each IP is unique. Hence there cannot exist two computers with the same public IP address all over the Internet. This addressing scheme makes it possible for the computers to “find each other” online and exchange information. User has no control over the IP address (public) that is assigned to the computer. The public IP address is assigned to the computer by the Internet Service Provider as soon as the computer is connected to the Internet gateway.

A public IP address can be either static or dynamic. A static public IP address does not change and is used primarily for hosting webpages or services on the Internet. On the other hand a dynamic public IP address is chosen from a pool of available addresses and changes each time one connects to the Internet. Most Internet users will only have a dynamic IP assigned to their computer which goes off when the computer is disconnected from the Internet. Thus when it is re-connected it gets a new IP.

You can check your public IP address by visiting www.whatismyip.com

What are Private IP Addresses?

An IP address is considered private if the IP number falls within one of the IP address ranges reserved for private networks such as a Local Area Network (LAN). The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has reserved the following three blocks of the IP address space for private networks (local networks):

Private IP addresses are used for numbering the computers in a private network including home, school and business LANs in airports and hotels which makes it possible for the computers in the network to communicate with each other. Say for example, if a network X consists of 10 computers each of them can be given an IP starting from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.10. Unlike the public IP, the administrator of the private network is free to assign an IP address of his own choice (provided the IP number falls in the private IP address range as mentioned above).

Devices with private IP addresses cannot connect directly to the Internet. Likewise, computers outside the local network cannot connect directly to a device with a private IP. It is possible to interconnect two private networks with the help of a router or a similar device that supports Network Address Translation.

If the private network is connected to the Internet (through an Internet connection via ISP) then each computer will have a private IP as well as a public IP. Private IP is used for communication within the network where as the public IP is used for communication over the Internet. Most Internet users with a DSL/ADSL connection will have both a private as well as a public IP.

You can know your private IP by typing ipconfig command in the command prompt. The number that you see against “IPV4 Address:” is your private IP which in most cases will be 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.2. Unlike the public IP, private IP addresses are always static in nature.

Unlike what most people assume, a private IP is neither the one which is impossible to trace (just like the private telephone number) nor the one reserved for stealth Internet usage. In reality there is no public IP address that is impossible to trace since the protocol itself is designed for transperancy.

Every router comes with a username and password using which it is possible to gain access to the router settings and configure the device. The vulnerability actually lies in the Default username and password that comes with the factory settings. Usually the routers come preconfigured from the Internet Service provider and hence the users do not bother to change the password later. This makes it possible for the attackers to gain unauthorized access and modify the router settings using a common set of default usernames and passwords. Here is how you can do it.

Before you proceed, you need the following tool in the process

Angry IP Scanner

Here is a detailed information on how to exploit the vulnerability of an ADSL router.

Step-1: Go to www.whatismyipaddress.com. Once the page is loaded you will find your IP address. Note it down.

Step-2: Open Angry IP Scanner, here you will see an option called IP Range: where you need to enter the range of IP address to scan for.

Step-3: Go to Tools->Preferences and select the Ports tab. Under Port selection enter 80 (we need to scan for port 80). Now switch to the Display tab, select the option “Hosts with open ports only” and click on OK.

Step-4: Now click on Start. After a few minutes, the IP scanner will show a list of IPs with Port 80 open as shown in the below image.

Step-5: Now copy any of the IP from the list, paste it in your browser’s address bar and hit enter. A window will popup asking for username and password. Since most users do not change the passwords, it should most likely work with the default username and password. For most routers the default username-password pair will be admin-admin or admin-password.

Just enter the username-password as specified above and hit enter. If you are lucky you should gain access to the router settings page where you can modify any of the router settings. The settings page can vary from router to router. A sample router settings page is shown below.

If you do not succeed to gain access, select another IP from the list and repeat the step-5. Atleast 1 out of 5 IPs will have a default password and hence you will surely be able to gain access.

What can an Attacker do by Gaining Access to the Router Settings?

By gaining access to the router settings, it is possible for an attacker to modify any of the router settings which results in the malfunction of the router. As a result the target user’s computer will be disconnected from the Internet. In the worst case the attacker can copy the ISP login details from the router to steal the Internet connection or play any kind of prank with the router settings. So the victim has to reconfigure the router in order to bring it back to action.

The Verdict:

If you are using an ADSL router to connect to the Internet, it is highly recommended that you immediately change your password to prevent any such attacks in the future. Who knows, you may be the next victim of such an attack. 

Since the configuration varies from router to router, you need to contact your ISP for details on how to change the password for your model.

Default Start Menu Button

Customized Start Menu Button

Tools That You Need:

1. Resource Hacker

2. Custom Start Menu icons (images). It mush be of the size 54×162 with a .bmp extension. which looks something as follows

They must be in the following order:

1st Image - When the button is not in use
2nd Image - When the mouse pointer is over the button
3rd Image - When the button is clicked

I have created a few customized buttons which are ready to use. You can download them from the following link.

Start Menu Buttons Download

Once you have all those resources ready, you can start the customization process as follows…

1. Take the ownership of the file “explorer.exe“ which is located in the Windows Folder (Most likely in C:\Windows).

2. Open the Resource Hacker Tool.

3. Go to File menu and click on Open. Now load the file “explorer.exe” into the Resource Hacker.

4. Expand Bitmap branch in the left pane.

5. Now expand 6801 option, right-click on 1033 and select Replace Resource option.

6. A new window appears. Click on Open file with new bitmap button.

7. Navigate to the customized (.bmp) image, open it and click on Replace button.

8.  Repeat steps 4 to 7 above for the options 6805 and 6809 as well.

9. Now click on Save option (File->Save). Resource Hacker will automatically create a backup file called explorer_original.exe so that you can restore it in the future if needed.

10. Log Off and Log On to see the changes in effect.

I hope you enjoy this trick. Pass your comments and share your experience.

Just run the portable tool kit and click on the “Install” button. This will add the “Take Ownership” option onto the context menu. To take ownership all you need to do is, just right-click on any of the desired file or folder and click the option “Take Ownership“.

In case if you wish to uninstall this tool at any time, you can just run the tool again and click on the ”Uninstall” button. I hope you like this tool. This works on both Windows 7 and Windows Vista. You can download it from the following link.

Download Take Ownership Shell Extention

Almost every Internet user will have an experience of CAPTCHA in their daily Internet usage, but only a few are aware of what it is and why they are used. So in this post you will find a detailed information on how CAPTCHA works and why they are used.

What Purpose does CAPTCHA Exactly Serve?

CAPTCPA is mainly used to prevent automated software (bots) from performing actions on behalf of actual humans. For example while signing up for a new email account, you will come across a CAPTCHA at the end of the sign-up form so as to ensure that the form is filled out only by a legitimate human and not by any of the automated software or a computer bot. The main goal of CAPTCHA is to put forth a test which is simple and straight forward for any human to answer but for a computer, it is almost impossible to solve.

What is the Need to Create a Test that Can Tell Computers and Humans Apart?

For many the CAPTCHA may seem to be silly and annoying, but in fact it has the ability to protect systems from malicious attacks where people try to game the system. Attackers can make use of automated softwares to generate a huge quantity of requests thereby causing a high load on the target server which would degrade the quality of service of a given system, whether due to abuse or resource expenditure. This can affect millions of legitimate users and their requests. CAPTCHAs can be deployed to protect systems that are vulnerable to email spam, such as the services from Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail.

Who Uses CAPTCHA?

CAPTCHAs are mainly used by websites that offer services like online polls and registration forms. For example, Web-based email services like Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail offer free email accounts for their users. However upon each sign-up process, CAPTCHAs are used to prevent spammers from using a bot to generate hundreds of spam mail accounts.

Designing a CAPTCHA System

CAPTCHAs are designed on the fact that computers lack the ability that human beings have when it comes to processing visual data. It is more easily possible for humans to look at an image and pick out the patterns than a computer. This is because computers lack the real intelligence that humans have by default. CAPTCHAs are implemented by presenting users with an image which contains distorted or randomly stretched characters which only humans should be able to identify. Sometimes characters are striked out or presented with a noisy background to make it even more harder for computers to figure out the patterns.

Most, but not all, CAPTCHAs rely on a visual test. Some Websites implement a totally different CAPTCHA system to tell humans and computers apart. For example, a user is presented with 4 images in which 3 contains picture of animals and one contain a flower. The user is asked to select only those images which contain animals in them. This Turing test can easily be solved by any human, but almost impossible for a computer. 

Breaking the CAPTCHA

The challenge in breaking the CAPTCHA lies in real hard task of teaching a computer how to process information in a way similar to how humans think. Algorithms with artificial intelligence (AI) will have to be designed in order to make the computer think like humans when it comes to recognizing the patterns in images. However there is no universal algorithm that could pass through and break any CAPTCHA system and hence each CAPTCHA algorithm must have to be tackled individually. It might not work 100 percent of the time, but it can work often enough to be worthwhile to spammers.

1. The image you need to set as the background should be a .jpg file and it’s size should not exceed 245KB.

2. The image resolution can be anything of your choice. However I prefer 1440 x 900 or 1024 x 768. You can use any of the photo editing software such as Photoshop to compress and set the resolution for your image. Once you’re done, save this image as backgroundDefault.jpg.

3. You will need to copy this image to

You will need to create that path if it does not already exist on your computer.

4. Now open the Registry Editor (Start -> Run -> Type regedit) and navigate to the following key

If Background does not exist rightclick LogonUI, select New and then Key, and then name it Background. Now locate OEMBackground (listed on the right side). If it does not exist, right-click Background and select New and then DWORD and name it OEMBackground.

5. Double-click on OEMBackground and set the Value Data to 1.

6. Now log-off to see the new logon screen background. If you would like to revert back to the default background, just set the Value Data back to 0.

I hope you like this trick. Just try out and give your feedback!

It can be a real nightmare if someone hacks and takes control of your email account as it may contain confidential information like bank logins, credit card details and other sensitive data. If you are one such Internet user whose email account has been compromised, then this post will surely help you out. In this post you will find the possible ways and procedures to get back your hacked email account.

For Gmail:

It can be a big disaster if your Gmail account has been compromised as it may be associated with several services like Blogger, Analytics, Adwords, Adsense, Orkut etc. Losing access to your Gmail account means losing access to all the services associated it with too. Here is a list of possible recovery actions that you can try.

Step -1: Try resetting your password since it is the easiest way to get your account back in action. In this process Google may ask you to answer the secret question or may send the password reset details to the secondary email address associated with your compromised account. You can reset you password from the following link

If you cannot find success from the Step-1 then proceed to Step-2.

Step-2: Many times the hacker will change the secret question and secondary email address right after the account is compromised. This is the reason for the Password Reset process to fail. If this is the case then you need to contact the Gmail support team by filling out the account recovery form. This form will ask you to fill out several questions like

1. Email addresses of up to five frequently emailed contacts
2. Names of any 4 Labels that you may have created in your account
3. List of other services associated with your compromised account
4. Your last successful login date
5. Account created date
6. Last password that you remember and many more…

You need to fill out this form as much accurately as possible. It is obvious to forget the dates of last login, account creation and similar terms. However you need to figure out the closest possible date/answers and fill out this form. This is your last chance! The more accurate the information filled out in the recovery form, the more the chances of getting your account back. You may reach the account recovery page form the following link

For Yahoo and Hotmail:

Unfortunately for Yahoo/Hotmail there is no second option like filling out the form or contacting the support team. All you need to do is either answer the secret questions that you have setup or reset the password using the secondary email option. 

To initiate the password reset process just click on the Forgot password link in your login page and proceed as per the screen instructions.

I hope this post will help you recover the lost account. I highly recommend that you also read my post on How to protect your email account from being hacked and Tips to find unauthorized activity on your Gmail account so that you always stay protected!

Ever wondered how to alter the Windows Product ID?

It is possible to alter the Windows Product ID and change it to what ever you like. For example, you can change the Product ID and put your nickname in place of the formal Product ID displayed by the Operating System. This hack is too easy and can be done within minutes. The screenshot showing the altered Product ID is given below

Win 7 PC showing Original PID

Windows 7 PC showing Altered PID

As you can see from the above screenshot it is simple and easy to make your Windows display what ever you want in the place of the real Product ID. Here is a step-by-step procedure to alter your Windows Product ID.

1. Goto Start->Run and type the following in the Run dialog box

2. After you open the Registry Editor, navigate to the following key

3. On the right hand side, you can see an entry by name ProductID listed under the heading Name.

4. Double-Click on ProductID, a dialog box will pop-up showing your Windows PID. Now you can delete the original PID and enter anything of your choice.

5. Once you are done, just click on OK and close the Registry Editor. Now you can see the altered Product ID in the Windows Properties window.

I hope you like this trick. Pass your comments. Cheers!