h4k.com

A simple and functional hex editor for Linux.

Command line install:

sudo apt-get install ghex

HowToForge.com is a website dedicated to providing step by step walk-throughs on many different Linux topics, from beginner to advanced. This includes anti-spam, security, networking, and virtualization just to name a few.

http://howtoforge.com/

XML2CSV by A7Soft is a free command line XML to CSV converter for Windows. This utility can use elements of an XML structure as variables to quickly turn an XML file into a CSV report. The application includes usage documentation and a series of excellent examples.

http://www.a7soft.com/xml2csv.html

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a non-profit organization that works to protect digital rights and civil liberties. Their website contains lots of news and information about past, present, and future digital rights conflicts.

http://www.eff.org/

EFF has an excellent rating as a non-profit organization (see here).

AccessEnum is a free tool for Windows to view all the permissions set on a specific directory in a Windows environment. This tool helps locate variations and improper permissions set throughout a file system.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/AccessEnum.mspx

The Group Policy Management Console is a great free plug-in for the standard Active Directory Management tool. It gives a clear and precise view of all the Group Policy Objects in the domain. It makes for easy modification and creation of GPOs.

Additional information and download link here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/gpmc/gpmcintro.mspx

TrueCrypt is a free and open source encryption software for Linux, OS X, and Windows. There is a simple GUI interface to the application for each of the operating systems to create encrypted containers of data. Once the container has been mounted by supplying the correct password, the data in the container can be used in real-time just like data stored on a regular disk drive. For Windows it offers the option of whole disk encryption which can prevent anything on the drive other than the small boot partition from being accessed unless the boot password is known. This is extremely impressive and powerful software that should be used by anyone who stores any type of sensitive information on their computer.

http://www.truecrypt.org/

KPDF is a powerful PDF reader for Linux that is easy to use. It is just as fast as the default PDF reader that comes installed with Ubuntu, Evince, but it actually offers a friendly interface and has a variety of options to choose from.

http://kpdf.kde.org/

Command line install:

sudo apt-get install kpdf

BackTrack is a free, live Linux operating system with over 300 of the best security penetration testing tools built in. It is neatly organized by category to quickly locate any tool and covers an extremely wide array of applications.

Download available at:

http://www.remote-exploit.org/backtrack.html

If you are using Windows XP it is important to have the Recovery Console installed on your computer in the event that your Windows installation becomes corrupt and you cannot boot into Windows any more. After installation the Recovery Console briefly appears before loading Windows and gives you the option to log in to a basic command prompt to try and repair any issues that are preventing Windows from loading.

Recovery console installation procedure:

1. Insert the Windows XP CD into the CD-ROM drive.
2. Click Start, and then click Run.
3. In the Open box, type “d:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons” where d is the drive letter for the CD-ROM drive.
4. A Windows Setup Dialog Box appears. The Windows Setup Dialog Box describes the Recovery Console option. To confirm the installation, click Yes.
5. Restart the computer. The next time that you start your computer, “Microsoft Windows Recovery Console” appears on the startup menu.

For complete details on the Recovery Console and a list of supported commands see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 307654 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654).