System And Network Admin Tools

As a system/network administrator, you have the task cut out for yourself. It is your job to avoid any attacks on your system, protect it against attacks that do happen and maintain the system in general. To do this, you would be using some tools and the work is done best when you use the best possible tools. Here's a handy list!

System and Network Analysis: As an administrator, it is your job to monitor the system and network that you are presiding over. Analysis is an important part of being in the know of what's happening and when a particular action is required. That is where system and network analysis tools come in handy.

1. NTFS Permissions Explorer

2. Xirrus Wi-Fi Inspector

3. Whois

4. ShareEnum

5. PipeList

6. TcpView

7. The Dude

8. Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer

9. WireShark

10. Look@LAN

11. RogueScanner

12. Capsa Free Network Analyzer

13. SuperScan

14. Blast

15. UDPFlood

16. IPplan

17. NetStumbler

18. PingPlotter

19. SolarWinds Free Permissions Analyzer for AD

20. Angry IP Scanner

21. FreePortMonitor

22. WirelessNetView

23. BluetoothView

24. Vision

25. Attacker

26. Total Network Monitor

27. IIS Logfile Analyser

28. ntop

System testing and troubleshooting: What's the next logical step after analysis your network? Of course, testing whether your analysis was right or wrong. To put it more clearly, as a system or network admin, it is one of your jobs to perform tests on your domain. These are the tools that let you do that.

29. Pinkie

30. VMWare Player

31. Oracle VirtualBox

32. ADInsight

33. Process Monitor

34. SpiceWorks Network Troubleshooting

35. RAMMap

36. Autoruns

37. LogFusion

38. Microsoft Log Parser

39. AppCrashView

40. RootKitRevealer

System and network management: These are tools that allow you to manage the network or system. In a way, they comprise of various tools that help an IT professional to manage a bunch of tasks or certain specific tasks.

41. Bitcricket IP Subnet Calculator

42. EMCO Remote Installer Starter

43. ManagePC

44. Pandora FMS

45. SNARE Audit and EventLog Management

46. OCS Inventory

47. Zenoss Core – Enterprise IT Monitoring

48. Unipress Free Help Desk

49. SysAidIT Free Help Desk

50. Cyberx Password Generator Pro

Hacker Geohot Releases New Hack Tool For Android Devices

Glen Rock native, George Hotz, alias Geohot, a world renowned hacker has now released a new hacking tool for smartphones running Android 4.4.2 KitKat and earlier versions thanks to which users will be able to run more apps, customise their phones to a greater extent, and also possibly speed up the device like never before. The new tool called Towelroot is based on a Linux kernel vulnerability and can root most Android smartphones running an unpatched version of the Linux kernel.

According to the Geek, "The Towelroot tool developed by Geohot (George Hotz) differs from all the standard root methods in that it uses an exploit to root phones. Simply install the APK from Geohot's site and run it." The tool basically bypasses the Android-powered device's system protection to gain root access. The new tool can unlock devices such as the unrooted Galaxy S5 on AT&T and Verizon, the Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy S4, and Galaxy S4 Active all running on the same carriers, claims Geohot.

Recently, Geohot had walked away with a $150,000 bounty prize after he successfully hacked into Google Chrome. According to the International Business Times, Hotz was rewarded by global search engine giant Google for exploiting Chrome at the recently concluded Pwnium 4 security competition. Geohot identified several bugs, including some in default Chrome apps and in the event of Chrome combining with Flash. “We're delighted at the success of Pwnium and the ability to study full exploits. We anticipate landing additional changes and hardening measures for these vulnerabilities in the near future.” Google posted on its Chrome blog. 

Free Security Tools For Sys Admins

 Sys admins have a crucial work at hand, that of maintaining the security of the systems they have been entrusted with. As such they need to be extra careful while selecting the tools for managing the security scenario of their systems.

1.PuTTY

Free and open-source terminal emulator, serial console and network file transfer application. It supports several network protocols, including SCP, SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw socket connection.

2.Nmap

Security scanner used to discover hosts and services on a computer network, thus creating a "map" of the network. To accomplish its goal, Nmap sends specially crafted packets to the target host and then analyzes the responses.

3.Retina Network Community

For up to 256 IPs free, Retina Community identifies network vulnerabilities (including zero-day), configuration issues, and missing patches across operating systems, applications, devices, and virtual environments.

4.OpenStego

Tool implemented in Java for generic steganography, with support for password-based encryption of the data. It supports plugins for various steganographic algorithms.

5.Freeraser

Destroy files and eliminate any possibility of their restoration with Portable Freeraser. This free files shredder destroys the data you choose before the deletion by filling the actual content of the file according to the predefined method.

6.OpenVAS

OpenVAS is a framework of several services and tools offering a comprehensive and powerful vulnerability scanning and vulnerability management solution.

7.Security Onion

Security Onion is a Linux distro for intrusion detection, network security monitoring, and log management. It's based on Ubuntu and contains Snort, Suricata, Bro, OSSEC, Sguil, Squert, Snorby, ELSA, Xplico, NetworkMiner, and many other security tools.

8.Eraser

Eraser is an advanced security tool for Windows which allows you to completely remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it several times with carefully selected patterns.

Penetration & Hacking Focused Distros

On first thought, it would seem that ethical hackers have everything figured out, their lives are too easy. Why, you ask? Well, they have so many tools out there to make their lives easy. Ok, we are kidding, they have a tough going and lead frustrating lives. It's not easy being a hacker. However, it's true that they do have so many resources at hand to help them out every now and then.

1.Bugtraq

Bugtraq system offers the most comprehensive distribution, optimal, and stable with automated services manager in real time. This distribution based on the 3.2 and 3.4 kernel Generic available in 32 Bits & 64 Bits has a huge range of penetration, forensic and laboratory tools. The systems are available in 11 different languages.

2.Blackbuntu

Blackbuntu is distribution for penetration testing which was specially designed for security training students and practitioners of information security. Blackbuntu is penetration testing distribution with GNOME Desktop Environment.

3.DEFT

DEFT Linux is a GNU/Linux live for free software based on Ubuntu , designed for purposes related to computer forensics and computer security.

4.Samurai Web Testing Framework

The Samurai Web Testing Framework is a live linux environment that has been pre-configured to function as a web pen-testing environment. The CD contains the best of the open source and free tools that focus on testing and attacking websites.

5.Back Box Linux

BackBox is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution penetration test and security assessment oriented providing a network and informatic systems analysis toolkit. BackBox desktop environment includes a minimal yet complete set of tools required for ethical hacking and security testing.

6.Gnacktrack

GnackTrack is a Live (and installable) Linux distibution designed for Penetration Testing and is based on Ubuntu. It's based on GNOME. 

Author : Shivam Kotwalia, CodeKill

TCP/IP Utilities For Networking Engineeres

TCP/IP essentially provides end-to-end connectivity specifying how data should be formatted, addressed, transmitted, routed and received at the destination. The following tools will help networking pros to check the status of their network and troubleshoot and test connectivity to remote hosts.

1.Ping

Utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol (IP) network and to measure the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer. operates by sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request packets to the target host and waiting for an ICMP response. In the process it measures the time from transmission to reception (round-trip time)[1] and records any packet loss.

2.traceroute

Computer network diagnostic tool for displaying the route (path) and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol (IP) network. The history of the route is recorded as the round-trip times of the packets received from each successive host (remote node) in the route (path); the sum of the mean times in each hop indicates the total time spent to establish the connection.

3.ARP

Telecommunication protocol used for resolution of network layer addresses into link layer addresses. ARP is used to convert an IP address to a physical address such as an Ethernet address (also known as a MAC address).

4.Netstat

Command-line tool that displays network connections (both incoming and outgoing), routing tables, and a number of network interface and network protocol statistics.

5.Nbtstat

Diagnostic tool for NetBIOS over TCP/IP. It is included in several versions of Microsoft Windows. Its primary design is to help troubleshoot NetBIOS name resolution problems.

6.NSLookup

Network administration command-line tool available for many computer operating systems for querying the Domain Name System (DNS) to obtain domain name or IP address mapping or for any other specific DNS record.