Links
These are the sites and tools I recommend. I'm a strong believer in getting the best value for your money, so all of these tools are open source or at least free to home users.
Basic Protection
AVG Anti-virus
I highly recommend AVG. It's free for home users and extremely reasonable to purchase. I like the mail
integration and great speed.
Kerio Personal Firewall
The second part of basic protection for your PC. It's also free for home use. I've gotten much better
performance from it than ZoneAlarm.
Firefox
Firefox is the fastest growing browser on the market. And it's Free! It's more secure, but even if you
don't care about security it is still better than Internet Explorer. Tabbed browsing alone is ample reason to
switch now. Try it out and see how efficiently you can work.
Thunderbird
Thunderbird is a great replacement for Outlook. And it's Free! It's more secure, but even if you
don't care about security it is still better than Outlook. Any feature you would like to add has probably
already been written as an extension. Extensions are powerful tools to help you build a mail client that meets
your specific needs.
A few of my favorite tools
Nmap
Nmap is the world's best port scanner. If you are using linux you probably already have it. If you're a Windows junkie,
there's a version for you too. If you're new to network security, simply learning how to use it will teach you
a lot.
Ethereal
Ethereal is a free network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. Usually referred to as a "sniffer", there is no end to the fun you can have with
you can have with this goody. If you're using VOIP, you can even capture audio. You can monitor in real time or capture to disk.
This is really one of my workhorses. A shining star in the Open Source community.
Netcat
A simple Unix utility, designed to be a reliable "back-end" tool. You can use it directly or easily integrate it with
other programs and scripts. Often called the swiss army knife of networking.
Nessus
No list of free tools would be complete without mentioning Nessus. Nessus is one of the best vulnerability assessment tools
on the market. And guess what, it's free! Completely open source. I've used similar commercial software that cost
thousands of dollars and Nessus is just as effective. It's also another of those tools that is a little tough to set up,
but teaches you a lot in the process.
My favorite wireless tools
Kismet
Wireless has been an obsession for me for a few years now. Kismet is one of the best wireless security tools I've used. It's
capable of discretely sniffing wireless traffic. Unlike Netstumbler, Kismet doesn't rely on probe requests. If you're using Windows,
save yourself some pain and stick with Netwstumbler.
Airsnort
Airsnort is my absolute favorite wireless tool. Again, it's passive. It will recover encryption keys. In other words, after you
capture enough packets it will break the encryption used to secure the network. It's another great Linux utility. They say
it will run on Windows. I say, good luck Windows users. I think it would be easier to reload from scratch and load/dual boot
Linux.
Netstumbler
Netstumbler is the application that started my wardriving obsession. In my opinion, it's the only choice for Windows users.
The main shortcoming of Netstumbler is that it is not passive. That said, I really like the simple interface and
sound effects. It's a great tool! It's not open source, but it is still free.
Non Tech Sites
Home With Debbie
I'll add a disclaimer here. If you start watching her page of upcoming houses, you will end up buying one. The
quality of the houses combined with the terms is too much to pass up.
LinkedIn.com
This is a great site to rediscover old connections and find out your dream job is one friend away.