Tools for the Security Conscious

   After listening to a recent episode of TWiT's Security Now, I found some tools I wanted to share with the Goblins out there.  The first tool is RCC, which is used to scan computers for potentially unwanted root certificates.  In the show, Steve Gibson mentions how this could have been found to detect the Superfish vulernability as well as the new Samsung update snafu.  The program itself is small, only taking up 38KB, but it'll see if there are any "interesting" items that aren't part of the RCC1 Standard MCP baseline.  Below is a screenshot of what I get on my desktop (which is a custom build).

   After looking into it, disc-soft[dot]com has a listing of DAEMON TOOLS software.  I didn't spend a lot of time researching, but it seems to be related to DT, but I couldn't find a link with a DNS lookup.  My guess at this point is this certificate was setup when I installed DT some time ago, and it's an alternate site that DT setup to get more traffic.  Since I never dealt with root certificates before, I did some more research and found this site.  I followed the directions and move the certificate (which was under both Third-Party Root Certifications Authorities and Trusted Publishers) to Untrusted Certificates.  If I re-run the tool, it still comes but, but I'm not able to delete the certificate and according to the site I linked above, as long as it's in Untrusted Certificates, I should be good.  If anyone happens to know a better way to clean these up, I'm all ears!  This isn't something I have experience in.

   The second tool to share, actually it's a suite of tools and resources, is privacytools.io.  For those who really want to tighten down the hatches on their computers and ensure no one is spying or tracking you, these site will have a ton of info to get you started.  They offer recommendations on software, such as email clients and messenging apps.  There is info on even how to setup their browser of choice, Firefox, to make it as secure as possible.  If you are more interested in security and don't mike taking a hit on convenience, make sure to check out this site to ensure you're doing everything you can to keep yourself off the radar.  Just keep in mind that you may be tracked by the three letter agencies doing so.

And as always, be safe goblins.

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About Jimmy R. Tassin

Jimmy Tassin is the IT Manager of Midwest Regional Bank and has been involved with the Technology field for over thirteen years. His two hobbies are overseeing the daily operations of OmniKraft, a Minecraft server community, and writing at Goblinbyte.com.