How to Change Windows XP Start Button

Step 1 - Modify Explorer.exe File

In order to make the changes, the file explorer.exe located at C:\Windows needs to be edited. Since explorer.exe is a binary file it requires a special editor. For purposes of this article I have used Resource Hacker. Resource HackerTM is a freeware utility to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res). It incorporates an internal resource script compiler and decompiler and works on Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems.

get this from h**p://delphi.icm.edu.pl/ftp/tools/ResHack.zip

The first step is to make a backup copy of the file explorer.exe located at C:\Windows\explorer. Place it in a folder somewhere on your hard drive where it will be safe. Start Resource Hacker and open explorer.exe located at C:\Windows\explorer.exe.

The category we are going to be using is "String Table". Expand it by clicking the plus sign then navigate down to and expand string 37 followed by highlighting 1033. If you are using the Classic Layout rather than the XP Layout, use number 38. The right hand pane will display the stringtable. We’re going to modify item 578, currently showing the word “start” just as it displays on the current Start button.

There is no magic here. Just double click on the word “start” so that it’s highlighted, making sure the quotation marks are not part of the highlight. They need to remain in place, surrounding the new text that you’ll type. Go ahead and type your new entry. In my case I used       
                                               end

You’ll notice that after the new text string has been entered the Compile Script button that was grayed out is now active. I won’t get into what’s involved in compiling a script, but suffice it to say it’s going to make this exercise worthwhile. Click Compile Script and then save the altered file using the Save As command on the File Menu. Do not use the Save command – Make sure to use the Save As command and choose a name for the file. Save the newly named file to C:\Windows.


Step 2 – Modify the Registry

!!!make a backup of your registry before making changes!!!

Now that the modified explorer.exe has been created it’s necessary to modify the registry so the file will be recognized when the user logs on to the system. If you don’t know how to access the registry I’m not sure this article is for you, but just in case it’s a temporary memory lapse, go to Start (soon to be something else) Run and type regedit in the Open field. Navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows NT\ CurrentVersion\ Winlogon

In the right panel, double click the "Shell" entry to open the Edit String dialog box. In Value data: line, enter the name that was used to save the modified explorer.exe file. Click OK.

Close Registry Editor and either log off the system and log back in, or reboot the entire system if that’s your preference. If all went as planned you should see your new Start button with the revised text.

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Create Your Own Authenticated Gateway And Command Your Network

Use PF to keep unauthorized users off the network.

Firewalling gateways have traditionally been used to block traffic from specific services or machines. Instead of watching IP addresses and port numbers, an authenticated gateway allows you to regulate traffic to or from machines based on a user's credentials. With an authenticated gateway, a user will have to log in and authenticate himself to the gateway in order to gain access to the protected network. This can be useful in many situations, such as restricting Internet access or restricting a wireless segment to be used only by authorized users.

With the release of OpenBSD 3.1, you can implement this functionality through the use of PF and the authpf shell. Using authpf also provides an audit trail by logging usernames, originating IP addresses, and the time that they authenticated with the gateway, as well as when they logged off the network.

To set up authentication with authpf, you'll first need to create an account on the gateway for each user. Specify /usr/sbin/authpf as the shell, and be sure to add authpf as a valid shell to /etc/shells. When a user logs in through SSH, authpf will obtain the user's name and IP address through the environment. After doing this, a template file containing NAT and filter rules is read in, and the username and IP address are applied to it. The resulting rules are then added to the running configuration. When the user logs out (i.e., types ^C), the rules that were created are unloaded from the current ruleset. For user-specific rule templates, authpf looks in /etc/authpf/users/$USER/authpf.rules. Global rule templates are stored in /etc/authpf/authpf.rules. Similarly, NAT entries are stored in authpf.nat, in either of these two directories. When a user-specific template is present for the user who has just authenticated, the template completely replaces the global rules, instead of just adding to them. When loading the templates, authpf will expand the $user_ip macro to the user's current IP address.

For example:

Code:

pass in quick on wi0 proto { tcp, udp } from $user_ip to any \

  keep state flags S/SA

This particular rule will pass in all traffic on the wireless interface from the newly authenticated user's IP address. This works particularly well with a default deny policy, where only the initial SSH connection to the gateway and DNS have been allowed from the authenticating IP address.

You could be much more restrictive and allow only HTTP-, DNS-, and email-related traffic through the gateway:

Code:

pass in quick on wi0 proto tcp from $user_ip to any \

  port { smtp, www, https, pop3, pop3s, imap, imaps } \

  keep state flags S/SA

pass in quick on wi0 proto udp from $user_ip to any port domain
After the template files have been created, you must then provide an entry point into pf.conf for the rules that authpf will create for evaluation by PF. These entry points are added to your pf.conf with the various anchor keywords:

Code:

nat-anchor authpf

rdr-anchor authpf

binat-anchor authpf

anchor authpf

Note that each anchor point needs to be added to the section it applies to—you cannot just put them all at the end or beginning of your pf.conf. Thus the nat-anchor, rdr-anchor, and binat-anchor entries must go into the address translation section of the pf.conf. Likewise, the anchor entry, which applies only to filtering rules, should be added to the filtering section.

When a user logs into the gateway, he should now be presented with a message like this:

Code:

Hello andrew, You are authenticated from host "192.168.0.61"

The user will also see the contents of /etc/authpf/authpf.message if it exists and is readable.

If you examine /var/log/daemon, you should also see log messages similar to these for when a user logs in and out:

Code:

Dec  3 22:36:31 zul authpf[15058]: allowing 192.168.0.61, \

  user andrew

Dec  3 22:47:21 zul authpf[15058]: removed  192.168.0.61, \

  user andrew- duration 650 seconds

Note that since it is present in /etc/shells, any user that has a local account is capable of changing his shell to authpf. If you want to ensure that the user cannot do this, you can create a file named after his username and put it in the /etc/authpf/banned directory. The contents of this file will be displayed when he logs into the gateway. On the other hand, you can also explicitly allow users by listing their usernames, one per line, in /etc/authpf/authpf.allow. However, any bans that have been specified in /etc/authpf/banned take precedence over entries in authpf.allow.

Since authpf relies on the SSH session to determine when the rules pertaining to a particular user are to be unloaded, care should be taken in configuring your SSH daemon to time out connections. Timeouts should happen fairly quickly, to revoke access as soon as possible once a connection has gone stale. This also helps prevent connections to systems outside the gateway from being held open by those conducting ARP spoof attacks.

You can set up OpenSSH to guard against this by adding these to lines to your sshd_config:

Code:

ClientAliveInterval 15

ClientAliveCountMax 3

This will ensure that the SSH daemon will send a request for a client response 15 seconds after it has received no data from the client. The ClientAliveCountMax option specifies that this can happen three times without a response before the client is disconnected. Thus, after a client has become unresponsive, it will be disconnected after 45 seconds. These keepalive packets are sent automatically by the SSH client software and don't require any intervention on the part of the user.

Authpf is very powerful in its flexibility and integration with PF, OpenBSD's native firewalling system. It is easy to set up and has very little performance overhead, since it relies on SSH and the operating system to do authentication and manage sessions.


And ? your done 

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How Firefox Works Know Your Browser

A Web browser is sort of like the tires on your car. You don't really give them much daily thought, but without them, you're not going anywhere. The second something goes wrong, you definitely notice.

Chances are, you're reading this article on Internet Explorer. It's the browser that comes already installed on Windows operating systems; most people use Windows, and most Windows users don't give a second thought to which browser they're using. In fact, many people aren't aware that they have an option at all.

Options are out there, however -- some people call them "alternative browsers," and one of them has been steadily chipping away at Internet Explorer's dominance. It's called Firefox. From its origins as an offshoot of the once popular Netscape browser, Firefox is building a growing legion of dedicated users who spread their enthusiasm by word of mouth (or blog).

In this article, we'll find out what makes Firefox different, what it can do and what effect an open-source browser might have on the Internet landscape.

Streamlined
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Firefox is a relatively simple application without a lot of extra features and plugins included that many users won't need. This keeps the file size small, and it means that Firefox will run well even on older computers without using up a lot of system resources. Firefox proponents claim it's also more resistant to crashing.

The easiest way to learn about Firefox is to go ahead and download it (it's free). You can find it at the official site:http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/. If you're hesitant to install and learn to use a new program, rest assured that Firefox looks and acts very similar to Internet Explorer and most other Web browsers. There's even a feature for IE users that lists the expressions you're familiar with and tells you the corresponding Firefox names for those functions.

At the top of the screen, you'll find a bar for typing in Web addresses, a small search panel and a row of buttons -- the typical tools for common Web-surfing activities. Forward, back, home, reload and stop can all be found in this basic setup. These buttons, like just about everything else in Firefox, are fully customizable. You can rearrange them, get rid of some of them or add new ones.

firefox toolbar

Now, if Firefox is so similar to Internet Explorer, why bother switching? There are quite a few reasons, but the most important for many users is security.

There is much debate over the security of Web browsers, stemming mainly from Internet Explorer's vulnerability as a common target for hackers and virus writers. Microsoft regularly releases patches and updates to fix security holes in Internet Explorer that might allow someone to install malicious software or steal information from a computer. Firefox has not been the focus of hackers so far, but that doesn't mean it's inherently safer. For now, Firefox is enjoying a reprieve from viruses and hackers primarily because, compared to the widespread use of Internet Explorer, it is relatively small-time. Hackers haven't bothered exploiting Firefox yet, because the low yield means it wouldn't be worth their efforts. If Firefox ever achieves dominance among Web browsers, that can be expected to change. See the Firefox Security section to learn more.

Firefox Features and Extensions
Firefox comes with a few useful features that set it apart from Internet Explorer 6 -- so useful, in fact, that Microsoft included a lot of them in Internet Explorer 7 (released in October 2006). One of the most noticeable is tabbed browsing. If you are browsing in Internet Explorer 6, and you want to visit a new Web site while keeping your current one open, you have to open a completely new browser window. Intensive Web surfing can result in browser windows cluttering up your taskbar and dragging on system resources. Firefox solves that by allowing sites to open in separate tabs within the same browser window. Instead of switching between browser windows, a user can change between two or more different sites by clicking on the tabs that appear just below the toolbar in Firefox.

Firefox also has a built-in pop-up blocker. This prevents annoying ads from popping up in front of the browser window. You can configure it to let you know when pop-ups are blocked and to allow certain pop-ups from certain sites. This lets you enable pop-ups that are useful windows as opposed to unwanted ads.

One feature of Firefox that is vital to some users is that it is a cross-platform application. That means that Firefox works under several different operating systems, not just Windows. For now, all versions of Windows from 98 and up are supported (as well as Windows 95, though it's a bit more difficult), along with Mac OS X and Linux.

There's another notable Firefox feature that might be the coolest. It's like when someone asks you what you'd wish for if you could only have one wish, and you say, "I'd wish for unlimited wishes." Firefox extensions mean the browser has an almost unlimited number of features, with new ones being created every day. Still, the program remains fairly small, because users only add the extensions they want to use.

extensions manager
All of the extensions that have been added to Firefox show up in the Extensions Manager, which allows them to be configured or uninstalled easily.

Junior high school students probably don't need stock market tickers, while people doing serious research don't necessarily need an MP3 player built into their browser. If there's a feature from another browser that you really like, chances are someone has made an extension so that it can be included in Firefox.

Where do all these extensions come from? They're a product of Firefox's open source nature (see What does "open source" mean?). Not only is the code to Firefox available for examination and use, but Firefox provides developer tools for free to anyone who wants to create an extension.

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