TorJump v4

Version 4 of TorJump is out and can be found here.


This version contains the tor domain hardcoded into it. That way you don't need to trust me to distribute the correct download link via dropbox. If I try, by altering the dynamically changing download link in my dropbox, to make you download something outside the https://www.torproject.org domain, TorJump will refuse to do so. Great, isn't it? :-)

The source code can be found here.

TorJump v3

Continuing with my updates, TorJump has broken since the Tor Browser Bundle started using Aurora instead of Firefox (well Aurora is Firefox alpha actually). Anyway here the latest version of TorJump.

TorJump allows you to create custom launchers for onion sites (hidden sites in Tor's hidden service network). Recently that hidden network has got some attention along with Bitcoin because of SilkRoad, a hidden website selling illegal drugs etc. Generally Onionland (the hidden services network is called by some like that because domains in it end in .onion) is filled by child pornography and other objectionable material but occasionally you will find a few sites that are worthy. The trollery there has also moved to a whole new level but again, some people there are really worth talking to.

[EDIT] The source code is here. You could find it by clicking on the TorJump category below.

AdSense random(?) account terminations

I've got a friend who is the admin of a big unofficial university forum. Until now, the mods and admins were paying for the server expenses themselves but with the Greek crisis and the constantly growing userbase of the forum, that was no longer possible. So they decided to put some ads on the forum. They started with adf.ly but the  money was not that much (using banner ads for outgoing links) so they removed it. I suggested they go for AdSense since I was using on this blog for years with no problems (although I haven't yet reached the money needed for a postal check payment).

AdSense was making some good money for them. They were going to make more than the server costs and they would be able to keep the extra to cover future server expenses. Until one day the AdSense account was disabled for "suspicious clicks" or something like that.

And now I wonder if Google is trying to make money by randomly closing accounts, which I doubt since stopping cooperations like that will eventually make you loose money both for making a bad name for yourself and because closing an account means that you loose precious placements for your ad network. So what is going on? Do their algorithms suck? Are they giving false positives? Because I am 100% sure that my friend wasn't clicking on the links. I had stressed a million times that doing so would get his account banned and I got him scared enough to watch every click he made in the forums not to accidentally click an ad. He also told every moderator not to click on ads without a reason. To our knowledge there was a mod that was clicking on some ads because Google was showing ads that he considered really interesting so those were genuine clicks. Even if Google thought that those weren't genuine clicks, he was a moderator so he should look like a normal forum member as far as Google is concerned. He was not connected to the AdSense account in any way.
I a few words: no one had access to that Adsense account and the admin who had access never clicked on an ad.

After asking for account reopening they answered that the clicks were examined by both a program and a human and that future communications regarding the issue will be IGNORED. How rude! And how can a human give false positives? I can only suppose that someone, a moderator or a simple user, did a lot of clicks but since it wasn't the administrator, and since there was nothing in the forum asking people to click on the ads why are they closing down the account, practically stealing the 40 euros in the balance? If they doubted the legitimacy of some clicks they could simply not pay for those clicks instead, or at least give a warning with advice on the actions the admin should take! They behavior is practically driving people away!

No wonder why people all over the internet are complaining about absurd account terminations in AdSense and not in other ad networks. After reading all those complaints I removed AdSense from my blog and I replaced it with adf.ly. My friend is considering adBrite and infolinks. I still haven't tried either but I am waiting for approval on infolinks to test it out.

Oh and to give them some credibility, adf.ly actually paid my friend, so I think you can trust them.

TorJump v2

Tor Browser Bundle version 1.3.25 was released and TorJump wasn't working with it correctly. I updated it to work with the new version. Previous version will display a notification about not being up to date when you try to set them up or use them for the first time after being set up. Old versions that have already been run at least once will not display a warning and will continue running with the old version of Tor Browser Bundle.

Download the new version from here. The source code is here.

TorJump

Seeing more and more sites disappearing whether because some government took down their DNS records or arrested their owners only made me wonder why don't people use Tor's hidden services for objectionable websites (or even Freenet when possible). And the answer is obvious: they don't use them because most people don't even know about Tor (I'll start capitalizing that correctly from now on. I even started using KiB instead of KB) and very few people are actually willing to install Tor just to visit a website. So how do we make hidden services more accessible to everyone? By making TorJump, a one-click wrapper for Tor of course!

But first of all, what is Tor? Tor is an anonymity network. It allows people to make TCP connections (that's the most common protocol in the Internet, you use it when visiting any page) to any destination IP anonymously, hiding their true IP address from the websites they visit and not allowing their ISP to spy on their connections. So Tor is primarily meant to protect those that access publicly available information, from governments, mostly.

Secondly, what are hidden services? Tor, in an attempt to protect not only those accessing the information but also those that want to provide information, created a protocol to make hidden services (hidden websites in most cases) possible. Anyone, can now host a website (while hiding the server's IP address) that is not visible on the clearnet (the clearnet is the normal World Wide Web) and is only accessible via the Tor network. The hostnames of those sites aren't like what you've got used to. They are composed of 16 random alphanumerical characters (unique for each service/website) and have a .onion suffix. (like this: http://kpvz7ki2v5agwt35.onion which will lead you to the hidden wiki if you access it via Tor). The sum of all those hidden sites is sometimes called the Torland or the Onionland and those that frequent them or run them are sometimes called Torizens.

So, finally, what is TorJump? It's a wrapper for the Tor Browser Bundle. First you set it up to jump to a specific hidden site (like the hidden wiki) and then you share it with anyone you want, to help him/her easily access that hidden site. It will still be a single executable that you can rename and publish on the Internet. When someone runs it, it will start downloading the latest Tor Browser Bundle, extract it to a folder next to the executable and start it up by setting the homepage to the URL you specified when you set TorJump up. Additionally, two more tabs will open every time: the main TorProject page, which explains what is Tor, and a page with the latest news about TorJump.

TorJump can be downloaded from here and the AutoIt3 source code can be found here.

Any feature requests or ideas? Leave a comment. 

IP filter list v2

I've updated my IP filter list. For more info about the list read the original post.

The IP filter list can always be found here.

Quick note: Why I use Firefox

Although Chrome is a very pretty and fast browser I still preffer Firefox for the following reasons: (obviously I will not try to explain why I don't use IE)

1. Loading custom spell-checking dictionaries to Firefox allows me to spell-check both Greek and English at the same time, without even switching dictionaries (someone has already made a combined dictionary for that).
2. There is a master password to protect the passwords in the password manager of Firefox. The Chrome guys for some reason refuse to implement that giving some ridiculous explanation on why they don't want to do it. (I can explain why it's ridiculous if someone disagrees)
   BTW that makes Firefox Portable a great choice in portable browsers.
3. Firefox can change proxies easily while Chrome depends mostly on the system wide proxy settings (like IE) or some, not so practical, tricks.
4. TorButton is only for Firefox.
5. When I am making a webpage, the first browser on which it works as expected is Firefox. I've had some minor problems with Chrome when, for example, I was trying to implement a CSS sticky footer. Chrome would make the page a little bigger than the window thus showing a vertical scrollbar although there was no reason. Maybe it was some mistake I did but I had no problems in Firefox.
   For some reason Firefox, usually, is the one that shows things as I expected them to be rendered, despite Chrome being more standards compliant.
6. Nothing compares to FireBug when you develop stuff... NOTHING.
7. Although I still haven't done some serious tests, by my personal experience I find Firefox more responsive, compared to Chrome, when many tabs are open. But, usually, people don't work with 25+ tabs open at the same time like I do, so Chrome will be more responsive for normal usage.

Why not Opera? They stick to the standards more than anyone. These guys are good programmers, I can't deny that. But I really like having open source software when I'm using it to communicate with banks etc. Also some of the points above apply to Opera too.

Hey this note wasn't that quick after all...

TORChat

[edit] Don't download this version. TorChat is developed again!

TORChat is an anonymous and encrypted Instant Messenger made by Bernd Kreuß. It's open source, written in Python and it uses the hidden services provided by the TOR network (TOR is not spelled with capital letters nowadays but I prefer it that way to remind me that it is The Onion Router).

The bad thing is that TORChat development stopped before some years and the bundled TOR version works no more. I've packed a version of my own including the latest stable TOR build. Everything is packed with UPX too. You can download my binary version from here. I will try to keep it up to date as new TOR versions come out.

While there is no reason not to trust my version (just decompress my executables with UPX and you'll see they are the same ones with those distributed officially) you might also want to download another nicely packed version from this website.

Oh and my TORChat identity is: 5leg5qw726nluaef

IPic

IPic is a small site I made. More like a simple, free tracking service.
Whenever you visit it, it will provide two unique links. The first one is a link to a 1 transparent pixel PNG which you can include in any HTML or BBcode you want. The second link will show you the IP of whoever viewed that picture in the past 30 days. I had some minor problems and it deleted visits after 4 days from the statistics page (instead of 30) but I think it's be OK now.
As for the legality of the site, I don't think it's illegal, Statcounter provides the same service by using javascript but in any case it's up to use to decide whether and where to use it so do it wisely.
Finally if you don't like the huge advertisement that appears on every page just install Adblock.

Visit IPic.

Steal photos with Emesene

[The script has been updated on 12 Apr 2008] I just adapted the SuperStealmore script to work with Emesene. As with the aMSN version you will have to change the first two lines of the script to fit you system. I also added the #!/user/bin/lua line at the top the two scripts so that they can be run just by clicking on them if you have Lua installed on your Linux system. You can download the script from here.

Emesene

I never liked Pidgin (former Gaim). I was always an aMSN fan. Although aMSN doesn't blend with Ubuntu nicely (probably because it's written in Tcl/Tk) compared to Pidgin, it has more features related to the MSN network. aMSN supports offline messages, camera sessions... almost everything that the official client does! (except shared folders I think)

Still there was some things in aMSN that kept annoying me.

1. Offline messaging was too slow. After pressing enter I had to confirm that I want to send an offline message and then the whole program stopped responding for one-two seconds.
2. The program sometimes crushed after long runtime periods. I have found in many occasions, after returning home, white aMSN windows which do not respond.
3. The program feels a bit heavy. Well, maybe... But some things take too long and the program stops responding (login etc).
4. There are many other minor bugs like false "file send failed" messages etc.
5. Connection problems. Some times (quite often) I had to close and reopen a chat window in order to be able to send again a message to a contact. Else I would get "could not deliver message" errors (or something like this).

Now I am using Emesene (wikipedia). I found out about it from a guy in my University's forums. It misses some features compared to aMSN like camera and voice support) but I really don't care. After all I use Skype for these. On the other hand it's much lighter (written in Python), it responds really fast, no crazy crashes, and lots of neat plugins!

Initially all plugins are disabled. You have to enable them through Options->Plugins. Some notable plugins are:

• Youtube which shows thumbnails next to youtube links that your contacts send to you.
• Tinyurl integration.
• CurrentSong which changes you personal message to show the currently playing song and even supports Listen! (my favourite music player for Ubuntu)

Emesene doesn't need any installation. Just download the source code, unzip it in your home directory and run a file called emesene inside its directory. You can also drag it to your panels to create a convenient launcher!

Try it! It's by far the best MSN client I have tried!

PS: There is a Windows version too but I haven't tried it. A friend told me that it doesn't work for him.

Using aMSN to steal/archive contact photos

aMSN is a nice, alternative MSN client for Windows and Linux. I use it on my computer and it works quite nice. It has most of the features of the official client and additionally it supports plugins (list), skins (list), etc. One nice feature of aMSN is that it archives your contacts' photos for viewing. To view the archived photos of a contact right click on it, select properties and go to the User display pictures tab (it might take some time to load). These photos are stored (on Linux) in the directory: /home/USERNAME/.amsn/msnname_hotmail_com/displaypic/cache/ where USERNAME is your username in Linux and msnname_hotmail_com is your msn login after converting "@" and "." to underscores (_). I made a small Lua script (it will work only on Linux) to copy all the archived photos, organized in folders named after the contact's email, to any folder, effectively creating a nice photo collection. :-) You can download the script from here but you will have to edit it (just the first two lines) to fit to your system. Replace the path in the first line with an existing path where the photos are to be organized. Then replace the path in the second line with the aMSN cache directory (in the form that I previously described). If you want to steal photos from all MSN accounts that you've used with aMSN you might simply enter /home/USERNAME/.amsn/ and hopefully it will traverse through all accounts searching for pictures. It's not that hard but leave a comment if you need help. After editing the script you may use the included Lua interpreter (or install one from your repositories) to run it. Whenever you run it the script, it will add the new photos to the existing archive. Linux Tip: You can turn any Lua script into an executable by appending the following line to its beginning (assuming that you have a Lua interpreter installed): #!/usr/bin/lua

Useful Firefox Add-Ons

[Last edit: 9 March 2008]

It's really bad when a powerful company wants to put standards on everyone else. It usually has negative effects on everybody else, especially if those standards are worst that the standards that the others has agreed upon collectively. Why would someone then use Internet Explorer? A browser that while it doesn't follow standards, creates many security risks when used by an average user. Still not convinced? Try reading some of these pages.
On the other hand Firefox is faster, safer and extremely customizable.

Inside Firefox's Tools menu you can find the Add-Ons panel. Open it and the click where it says: "Get Extensions". It will send you to a webpage listing hundreds of Add-Ons. Try browsing the categories and I am sure that you will find many of them useful. Also, Opera users will find Add-Ons that add functions like Speed-Dial etc to Firefox.

Here is a list of the Add-Ons that I have installed. Don't forget that if you want to make full use of them you have to explore their preferences and customize them.

• Adblock Plus: A MUST-HAVE Add-On. Install it and after subscribing (completely free) to some lists and you can say goodbye to almost all advertisements! I have subscribed to:
  
  • EasyList (Subscribe)
    
  • EasyElement (Subscribe)
  
  
• Cache View: Add some options to the right click menu that make easy viewing for cached version of any website by Google, Web Archive etc... This means that you can view older versions of a temporarily or permanently down website.
• CustomizeGoogle: Allows you to customize many aspects of Google and it's services. One feature I really liked is that it switches to a secure connection (https) when possible (https is supported by Gmail, Google Documents and other services too). Also view the introduction movie which is available at their website.
  
• del.icio.us Bookmarks: Makes bookmarking with del.icio.us very easy. I hope you know what delicious is... ;-)
• Download Statusbar: An extra statusbar that replaces the downloads window.
• external IP: Shows your current IP and alerts you when it changes.
  
• Fast Video Download: Allows you to easily download videos (in flv format) from Youtube and other sites.
• FasterFox: It's supposed to make firefox faster. I just use it because it adds a page load timer on the statusbar. Sometimes I like playing with its settings too. But I haven't noticed a change in Firefox's speed.
• Google ToolBar for Firefox: Search using Google easily. It also has many other functions as well.
  
• Greasemonkey: Add more functionality to some webpages by installing some user scripts.
  
• HackBar: "This toolbar will help you in testing SQL injections, XSS holes and site security."
• Informational Tab: Add a progressbar (which I'm still unable to see because of my dark theme) and a tiny preview to the tab buttons.
  
• ReloadEvery: Reloads webpages periodically. Very useful if you hate been logged out of forums after been inactive for some time.
• Smart Middle Click: "By default, middle clicking on javascript links in Firefox opens a blank tab instead of following the link. This extension fixes that problem and lets middle clicks open simple javascript links in new tabs."
• Snap Links: Allows you to multiple links at once by drawing a rectangle around them.
• Tab Scope: Allows you to preview open tabs in a mini window when by putting your mouse over the tab button.
  
• Table2Clipboard: Allows you to copy to the clipboard the selected columns/rows of a table.
• Tabs Open Relative: Very useful Add-On! It makes any new tab appear next to the current tab instead of the far right of the tab bar. It really helps if you usually work with many tabs of different sites at the same time (like me :-P).
• User Agent Switcher: Makes Firefox send fake User-Agent information in HTTP requests.

Finally, don't forget to check some themes for Firefox!

PS: If you know any other useful Add-On then you may leave a comment suggesting it!