MaximumPC 2007 07

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NET NANNY

Will she stand firm against the

ruthless attacks of an unruly brood?

Net Nanny ( $40/yr, http://www.netnanny.com )

blocks all the obvious unwholesome

website content by default: pornography,

gambling, violence, drugs, etc.

First up against the app was the

Crusader, who was so sure of Net Nanny’s

ineffectiveness that he predicted a two-

minute turnaround time. By the 15-min-

ute mark he had succeeded in fi lling the

administrator’s inbox with alerts of his

attempts to enter My-sexylingerie.com,

Moviepoopshoot.com, and other sites

unspeakable. Undaunted by the ridicule of

the administrator and his peers, he turned

to Torpark. By downloading the browser,

he was able to completely bypass the soft-

ware’s blocks. For many a kid, this would be

enough, but should Torpark’s slow surfi ng

speed prove unsatisfactory, there’s recourse:

The Crusader stayed on just long enough to

search for tips on disabling the software. As

instructed, he killed the cwsvc.exe service

and disabled cwtray.exe from running at

startup; he then used an app he found on

Google (LSPFix) to disable the cwalsp.dll

embedded in Winsock. A quick reboot had

him in the porn, with nary a mention of the

violation in the app’s web report.

The Upstart thought like a 14-year-

old and channeled his destructive inner

child. He opened the Net Nanny folder in

Program Files, then fi red up the Windows

Registry Editor and expunged all men-

tion of Net Nanny’s executables from the

registry. Following that, he deleted the Net

Nanny folder itself and restarted the com-

puter. The downside is that Windows failed

to load, so he may have been too trigger-

happy, since he nuked the entire OS in the

process. Parents, take this as a warning to

back up your data!

The Old-Timer was at the machine for

no more than six minutes before he handed

it back to the administrator with several

naughty screen captures and an innocent-

looking web report. His trick was a cunning

one that would pay off big in the remaining

tests: The Old-Timer explained, “As an avid

reader of the many books written about

Kevin Mitnick, I’ve learned that the social

hack is far, far more powerful than any

technical hack. Since our rules of engage-

ment didn’t specify that we couldn’t use a

USB key, I simply went to another machine

(any 14-year-old on the planet has access

to the Internet outside his or her domicile),

visited several restricted sites, and saved

my proof fi les to the key as well as a copy

of Ardamax Keylogger Lite—a free keylog-

ger available on the Internet.... Once the

administrator checked the web report,

which was, of course, clean, I waited for

her to step away from the test machine,

pulled up the keylogger, and jotted

down her password. From there

I had free rein to do what I

wanted. It was that simple.”

PC TATTLETALE

Can our editors stick a sock in the

mouth of this software snitch?

PC Tattletale ( $50/yr for two PCs, http://www.

pctattletale.com ) takes an entirely different

approach to online monitoring. It dispens-

es with keywords and fi lters and simply

records every single thing a user does

on the computer—every website visited,

every email sent, every keystroke entered.

In other words, it’s a keylogger.

Determined to redeem himself, the

Upstart went fi rst and took just 20 minutes

to acquire proof of his untoward online

activities yet left no evidence whatsoever

in the software’s log. True, the complete

absence of any logged online activity

was itself suspicious but certainly not

proof of anything illicit. His method? The

Upstart explains: “I used Internet Explorer

to see where the administrator had been

prior to giving me the laptop, which was

PC Tattletale’s website [the source of

the download], and which happened to

include info about what the program does,

and even the Ctrl + Alt + F5 key combina-

tion one needs to access the administra-

tive options.

“The executables were hidden in

the Windows Directory in a folder called

‘Explorer32.’ Crafty. Since PC Tattletale

keeps detailed logs of all the sites you visit

and keys you press—including screen-

shots taken every few seconds—a simple

Windows search for fi les created that day

revealed the litany of logs. And from there,

the location of the program itself was

revealed!

“Having learned my lesson with Net

Nanny, I let PC Tattletale do its thing.

I surfed for all the porn I could get my

hands on, then disabled the PC Tattletale

process (to stop those damn screen-

shots), deleted said screenshots, nuked all

the logs, and prepared to tell ‘mom’ I had

30 MAXIMUMPC JULY 2007

The first hour or so with Net Nanny

taught one editor everything he could

possibly want to know about a certain

Pacific seabird.

It’s one thing to create a phony log to mask naughty net surfing, but c’mon!

MP

UNLOCKED!

MAXIMUMPC

CHALLENGE

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