Hacking into a Gmail account proves to be an easy thing. Robert Graham (Ceo of Errata Security) gave a demo of it at Black Hat 2007 yesterday using an unprotected Wifi hotspot. The tools he used — nothing but 2 coded scripts called Ferret and Hamster.

Basically, he used Ferret to capture the Wifi signal Session IDs and Cookies from the victim’s Web browser session and used Hamster to clone the Session IDs/Cookies. The cloned web identity was then used to gain full read/ write access of the Gmail account. The scary part of it all is that one doesn’t need to be a super programmer to hack into an email system i.e. just knowing how to use the scripts would be enough. The term script kiddies comes to mind.

Just shows how much you should be aware of potential exploits within email. George Ou from Znet, posted a good article on security steps to safeguard yourself when using email. You should know however, that there is never a case where it is 100% hacker proof — to think it is would be foolish.

Invisible Secrets 4 not only encrypts your data and files for safe keeping or for secure transfer across the net, it also hides them in places that on the surface appear totally innocent, such as picture or sound files, or web pages.

The encrypted files are a perfect disguise for sensitive information. Nobody, not even your wife, boss, or a hacker would realize that your important papers or letters are stored in your last holiday pictures, or that you use your personal web page to exchange messages or secret documents. Invisible Secrets 4 can be purchased at $39.95 directly from their site.

Invisible Secrets 4 features:
* file and email encryption using 8 algorithms (AES - Rijndael, Twofish, RC 4, Cast128, GOST, Diamond 2, Sapphire II, Blowfish)

* Steganography
Hides your sensitive data into innocent files, so nobody can find them. Features five innocent carriers for hiding: JPEG, PNG, BMP, HTML and WA

* a password management solution that stores all your passwords securely and helps you create secure passwords

* a virtual keyboard created in order to prevent any key logger software from stealing your passwords

* a shredder that helps you destroy beyond recovery files, folders and internet traces

* a locker that allows you to password protect certain applications

* the ability to create self-decrypting packages and mail them to your friends or business partners, you will be able to safely send the self-decrypting packages as zip files

* a tool that allows you to transfer a password securely over the internet

* a cryptboard to help you use the program from Windows Explorer

Company Information

Neobyte Solutions was founded by Alin Merches and Adrian Gheara with a clear aim to set high standards of service, and to deliver imaginative software solutions for the international business community. Its headquartered in Romania and has subsidiaries in the USA - NeoByte Solutions USA and Sharpe Communications.

Neobyte Solutions Company Site
Invisible Secrets Software Site
Invisible Secrets 4 Trial Download

As you may (or may not) have known, Apple released their iPhone software update 1.01 security patch yesterday.

Here are some useful links around the blogosphere:

iPhone software update 1.0.1 released (updated) by Znet
Installation and update process (visual pictures included) by Znet
Tuaw’s analysis of the iPhone update
Information about the security content of iPhone v1.0.1 Update (Official Apple article)
Apple’s Security Download Page

Imo.im is an online service allowing you to log into your instant messaging accounts at the same time. There are 4 instant messaging accounts that you can link to: AIM, MSN, Yahoo and Google Talk.

Useful features include searching buddies, group chats (within multiple IM accounts) and adding buddies. This tool allows you to access your accounts and chat with multiple groups, users and buddies without having to download any software — so you can virtually access you account anywhere in the world on any computer.

It is a good and powerful concept but it remains to be seen how it will differentiate itself from its more established competitors Meebo and eBuddy. Since it is in the Alpha stage, I may have to reserve my major comments until it gets into the later stages… though I would like to see a mobile version and ICQ functionality in addition to the other four.

You may also like to include more on who you are and where you are located in your “About” page, as users often want to know whether you are credible enough to trust with usernames/ passwords. I do like the initial Ajax style interface and so far, the usage of it didn’t give me any problems — a good start (with lots of potential) and look forward to future implementations.

Tagging is a good way to increase productivity in reading or looking for something online. As you may know, tagging is an important part of blogs and other informational related sites which help simplify the search process.

Taglocity has applied that very concept to reading emails i.e. particularly to Microsoft Outlook.

If you suffer from email overload, Taglocity software simply tags a key word in your emails, contacts and tasks in an organized manner for you to search for it later. It even arranges your tags into a tag cloud where the tags increase by size according to how popular or important it is.

Key features of Taglocity:

- TagFilters
These reduce the need for folders and folder hierarchies because each tag acts as a virtual folder. Tags can then be dynamically filtered by content as needed, or letting the software create tags automatically.

- TagActions
Automate common tasks with user determined actions that run when tags are set.

- AutoTags
Taglocity learns from how you tag and adds tags automatically to your content.

- TravelingTags
Taglocity allows your tags to travel to other people you send and receive messages from.

- TagSearch
Taglocity advances Microsoft’s Windows Desktop Search with a tag-based query feature.

With Taglocity you will ‘find’ instead of ’search’, manage and organize large amounts of Outlook information efficiently, and free up a lot of your precious time for other things.

Taglocity is easily downloadable. It comes in 2 versions - the free personal (limited tag) version and the professional version ($39) which has unlimited tags and email support.

When I installed the demo of the software, I was impressed as it allowed me to find relevant information seamlessly and almost on-demand, saving me valuable time in trying to dig through the multiple folders that I have created. As organized as I try to keep myself i.e. creating folders and filling emails, I always have the problem of not being able to find that very specific email when I want it. Taglocity seems to make my email search and organization of information more productive.

The software is currently at version 1.1 with the highly anticipated version 2 in the works. Version 2, which they call Email 2.0, promises to further revolutionize the email tagging technology in collaborative environments and to “to solve well known email overload and knowledge transfer problems”.

Taglocity is developed by Terazen Technology, Inc. and is headquartered in Vancouver, BC. They are leading providers of Enterprise 2.0 systems and solutions.