Friday 26 August 2011

How to hide a partition from command Prompt in Windows

This command prompt trick works both in Windows 7 and XP. Let’s start.
Go to Star > Run, type “cmd” and hit enter. This will open the command prompt. Now run the following commands:

1. DISKPART



2. LIST VOLUME




After executing the commands the the partition overview will be shown. Note the volume number of the partition that you want to hide with the corresponding drive letter.


3. Type the command SELECT VOLUME (number) and hit “Enter”. For instance: SELECT VOLUME 3


4. Now type REMOVE LETTER (letter) and hit “Enter”. Example: REMOVE LETTER D.




This command will remove the drive letter from the partition and make the partition hidden in Windows explorer. You must restart your computer to see the effect.

5. To get back the drive again just type the following command:

ASSIGN LETTER (letter).

Note: When assigning the letter, you must have to select the volume again as you’ve done before.
So following the above method you can hide all your confidential data in a drive that is invisible. And when you need to access them just make the partition visible.

How To Fix Major USB Problems

If you use Usb device then you should have faced various type of  problems with your Usb stick or system settings.
Most common cases are that  “Usb Device Not Recognized”, “Windows was unable to complete the format”, “The device can not start[code 10]", "Problem ejecting the USB mass storage device".

The problems can be found for various reason. Here We have discussed about the solution of those problems with the Usb device (Re-enable Task Manager When Disabled by Administrator ).

1.Fix the problem “USB Device Not Recognize”

Sometimes when you plug in USB device in the port of  your PC/Laptop, you will get a serious error message “USB Device Not Recognize”. To fix this problem follow the steps.
  • Press Windows Key + R and type “regedt32.exe”.
  • Navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_Machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Usb.
  • If  the Usb key is not exist then create “usb” key under “Services”.
  • Under “Usb” key create a new DWORD value. Right click on the right pain of the “Rgistry Editor” and select “New > DWORD value”.
  • Rename this newly created DWORD value as “DisableSelectiveSuspend”.
  • Right click on “DisableSelectiveSuspend” and select “Modify”. Put 1 in “Value data” field.
  • Click on “OK”.
  • Reboot your computer.
You can also try a another way. Remove the power supply without Log Off your computer and restart the computer. This process seldom works.

2.Format USB Drive In Command Prompt

Generally we format USB drive by right clicking on the "Removable drive" in "My Computer" Window and selecting “Format”. But sometimes Windows can’t format it and gives a message “Windows was unable to complete the format ”. By the following steps you can format your USB drive in command prompt and solve this problem.
  • Go to “Start > Run” and type “cmd”. Click on “OK”.
  • In the commend window type “format G:/FS:FAT32”. Here “G:” is my USB drive letter (it may be different for you) and “FAT32” is the file system.
  •  
  • Now insert the USB stick to your computer and hit "Enter".
Now the it will format your USB stick in Fat32 file system.

3.Fix the problem “Error code 10

Sometimes whenever you plug in USB drive in Windows XP computer it shows an error message like “This device cannot start (code 10) ”. To fix this error problem follow the steps listed below.


  • Go to “Start > Run” and type “Devmgmt.msc”. Click on “OK”.
  • The “Device Manager” dialog box will appear. Expand the “Universal Serial Bus Controllers”.
  • Right click on “USB Mass Storage Device” and select “Properties”.
  • Under the “General” tab you will see the “Device status” (Make sure your USB device is connected).
  • If the “Device status” says that “Error code 10” or something like that then you have to uninstall all of your USB Controller.


  •  To uninstall the USB Controller right click on each of the USB Controller under “Universal Serial Bus Controllers” and click on “Uninstall”.
  • Restart your computer. The USB Controllers will be automatically re-installed.

4.Safely Remove Your USB Drive Without Any Error

Generally it happens with you so often that when you want to remove your USB by clicking on “Safely Remove Hardware” option in system tray it will give you an error message like “The Device Generic volume cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device later”. If you ignore this error message and remove USB drive, your USB drive may be damaged. To fix this problem you can use a free application “Unlocker”, which helps you to remove your USB drive safely.



  • Download Unlocker 1.8.7 and install it.
  • Right click on USB drive and select “Unlocker”.
  • An “Unlocker” window will appear. Click on “Unlock All” to stop all running program in USB drive.



Now safely remove USB drive by click on “Safely Remove Hardware” option from the system tray.

Remove Virus Manually From Your Computer

First click the “Start” button and go to “Run“. You can also press “Windows+R“. Type “cmd” there.




Type the following commands in the Command Prompt
  • Type “<Drive_name>:” in the command prompt and hit “Enter“. (“Drive_name” is where the problem occurs, it may be any USB drive)
  • Type “attrib” and hit “Enter“. (This shows the files that are present in the currently working directory. You can also use the command “dir/w/o/a/p“)
  • If there are any file named autorun.inf then go for next steps else the drive is not affected with any autorun.inf file.
  • Type “attrib -h -r -s -a *.* ” then hit “Enter“.  (This command removes the Hidden, Read Only, System and Archive attributes over any file)
  • After unhiding and removing attributes you can see the files.  So you can delete the file now.
  • Type “del <filename>” in the Command Prompt and hit “Enter“. (As for example del autorun.inf)


Now your computer is virus free. Enjoy! Feel free to share your experience with us.

Saturday 20 August 2011

BSNL router hacking and possibility of running custom code over it

Hi all,
BSNL router on closer inspection is manufactured by SEMIndia and distributed by ITI. It follows the tracks of using firmware of different routers (Broadcom to be specific, BCM96338 stands for Broadcom router firmware version 96338, deployed in US robotics ones and some other popular routers). mine is DNA-A211-1 , one of most popular ones in India.
and then its just configured accordingly wrt ISP. This time, I left the network part, as i do it all the time in my office with Cisco, focused more on the router and firmware itself.
Warning :
I am not responsible for getting your router trashed, getting wings and trying to kill you. try on your own risk, I am not responsible for your stupidity.
I didn't had a PC (trashed due to burnt ram), so I have to do everything on my android, so pardon for small screen area, understand my plight. T-netted into Router
(PS : screencaps of android may be a bit distorted as shootme app was not working properly over nightly #120)

the first step was to know what was into it, so typed the usual help.
lots of commands :) ran swversion to get the version and see what was this upto.
With some hunting , i came to know that "sh" command runs over my router , ran it and voila, familiar interface of busybox snaps in.
great..now thats worth something. My android has it too :)) seeing the version made me tick , it was running an older version of busybox. For those who don't know hat busybox is, its a multicall binary. Tried ls, but it didnt worked, hence tried echo *, listed everything :)
bingo..tried cat /etc/passwd and there we go again.
after that, i thought why not to check what other directories have. got into CVS and got information regarding CVS and pserver, noteworthy one is the credentials of pserver
pserver:sunila@192.168.128.19:/home/cvsroot
not much of an interest as they are of a private LAN, googled to find it was configured by Sunil A, employee at SIEMIndia. Again,opened Repository
SemIndia/Engineering/Products/ADSL2Plus/Integ_Source/targets/fs.src
maybe a private repo at SIEM. neverthless..
moved on to /etc
lots of directories here..as a rule of thumb I opened default.cfg
Generic stuff, but what caught my eye was this
&amp;amp;lt;ppp_conId1 userName="multiplay" password="bXVsdGlwbGF5"
This might come in handy (use your creativity :)) ) . But then I thought that why not to access the router from web interface. I did it.
Went to management and downloaded the backupsettings.conf file,
opened it and there we go,
I was not able to find the above credentials in it, hence I came to a conclusion that they must be somewhat of higher privilege level.
Moving on..I thought why not to try to create an arbitrary file . Tried
echo ‘rishrockz’ &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; rdx
on every directory (I was not able to determine the file permissions as the version of busybox doesn’t has ls/stat ) Finally came to know that /var is writable. Tried creating a file there
echo ‘rishrockz’ &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; rdx
file was created : )))))
and then
cat /var/rdx
: ))))
Congrats, you have run/done it :) )
Now I thought why not to upgrade busybox/upgrade firmware/upload scripts over the router, tried tftp
didn’t worked. Then I checked if the tftp daemon was running as a service, it was. yet somehow I was not able to run it. :(
Strange. I thought forget it (small screen keyboard and android research limitation -&amp;amp;gt; frustration) . Well.. next time I will be thinking of going to compile programs (http://people.debian.org/~debacle/cross/) and copying over them using echo (once I get a PC) , I have got some nice ideas and will be deploying them .
In the mean time, for those who are wondering what this machine has, here is the bootup log.
  1. Observation 1 # - code can be run over the router , but files must be copied using echo (-ne with append option) or tftp. Since busybox is there, we can easily insert a kernel module to be run.
  2. Observation 2# - the webs directory has a lot of html files, maybe manipulated for xss attacks (i didnt covered it as its not my domain, some better guys can do it)
  3. Observation 3# - private CVS credentials of Siemindia pserver. insider attack ? :D kidding. pserver is already much insecure, but since i have seen a lot of organisations using stock/easily guessable passwords for their outer router/firewalls/vpn servers, its not a tough nut to crack.
  4. Observation 4# (most important) - BSNL SUCKS !

How To Improve USB Pen Drive Data Transfer Speed In Windows

Nowadays, USB drive has definitely become one of the major medium through which data is transferred to and from the computers. But, you might have notice that sometimes you feel like data transfer speed should be more. Although, it depends upon the type of USB drive that is being used and its performance, but still there are many ways by which one can surely improve the performance of the USB drive. One of such solutions has been recently introduced by Microsoft which has been specially designed and developed for the Windows 7 operating system.
USB Logo

Recently, Microsoft has released a hotfix for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 which as said, has been specially designed to scale up the performance and speed of the USB storage devices which may be in the form of Flash drives and USB hard disks. The hotfix which has been introduced by Microsoft is basically known as hotfix KB2581464 and it introduces a new feature in the above mentioned operating systems and it enables the user to increase the maximum transfer size of USB storage devices which is normally 64 kilobytes (KB) to a huge size in terms of transfer size, like 2 megabytes (MB). But, according to Microsoft, this can improve the performance and speed for some USB storage devices only and not for every kind of drive.
But, the one thing which must be noted here is that this new update will not be served by Microsoft through its normal Windows automatic update service, and it is only available for download from Microsoft Support website. After downloading and installing it, one may feel the difference in the speed and performance of the USB drives. If you want to download it, then you may do so from the available download link at the end of this article. Once you install this update in your computers, you will observe that it increases the maximum transfer size of USB storage devices, and for that simply follow some steps like:
  1. First of all, you have to click Start icon and then simply type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press Enter. We all know that it will give you the complete list for all the registry entries in your system.
  2. Among the large number of registry entries available in the list you have to locate and then click the following registry subkey:
    HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\usbstor\VVVVPPPP
Here, don’t get confuse with VVVV, as it simply represents device descriptor idVendor in hexadecimal.
Similarly, PPPP represents device descriptor idProduct in hexadecimal.
image







  1. After this, simply click on the Edit option, and from this simply point to New, and then click DWORDValue.
  2. After clicking on it, it will ask you to type MaximumTransferLength, and after giving it simply press Enter.
  3. Then again click Edit, and then click Modify.
  4. You will see a Value data box, in which you have to type a value to specify the maximum transfer size between 64KB and 2MB. For example, you select Decimal and type a value between 65535 (64K) and 2097120 (2M).
  5. After this complete procedure, simply exit the Registry Editor.
image
So, if you are feeling any issue with the performance of the USB storage drives, then only you are advised to apply this hotfix otherwise there is no need for it as it requires changes in registry entries which can be a little complex for a common user.
Download Hotfix
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