A colleague of mine notified me that there was something wrong with the download system when using Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox (Thank you Marco!).

The code has been revised and will now properly prompt you to save/open the file on all browsers. I've also made sure the original filename get's preserved.

Happy Downloading!

Available downloads:

Fable The Lost Chapters 4 CD to DVD Converter (Article)
Red Alert 3 Manuals Missing Last License Character (Article)

I've recently read an article about a weakness that was discovered in SpeedTouch modems which are manufactured by Thompson. Here in the Netherlands, they are commonly found almost anywhere, which basically gives you free internet everywhere you go :)

Based on the original Proof of Concept code, I created a .NET version, which in turn was used to build a database with all possible SSID's, Serial Numbers and WPA(2) Keys, which I find preferable over the brute force tools that have been created to date.

I am leaving for a two week vacation, so I didn't have much time to put it all togeather. I have put a small tool online here, where you can enter a SpeedTouch SSID (with or without the leading 'SpeedTouch' part of the SSID), which in turn will give you all possible serial numbers and WPA keys.

NKCSS SpeedTouch Crack

Update

I havn't had much time to do much on this project since I quickly cooked up the initial release. I hope to find some spare time soon and start working on some pocket-pc/windows mobile versions aswell as redo the database to allow our English friends with BT Homehub routers to do some lookups.

While checking the traffic statistics (so much fun seeing all the traffic coming in after releasing the Red Alert 3 tool), I've noticed some people starting to link to me. Thanks! I always love more attention :)

A dutch blog: http://sikkepitje.nl/~paul/blog/archives/103
A dutch hacking related link site: http://www.ikwilhet.nu/hacken/24/nu-meer-informatie-over/hacken.html
Croatian forum: http://forum.bug.hr/forum/topic/razni-hardverski-problemi/thomson-speedtouch-780wl-problem/10814.aspx?sort=asc&view=flat
French WiFi hacking forum: http://www.crack-wpa.fr/forum/viewtopic.php?id=246

You might have noticed that there weren’t as much updates to the site as you might have hoped. This is due to the fact that I am trying to get a new design going, a different way to display articles, RSS enable the site, create member area’s, theme sub-sites for products and much, much more.

This all takes so much time when you have to do everything by yourself, so be patient; it will be worth it.

In one of the comments on DIGG about Google’s CHAPTCHA security codes being cracked (got to love OCR), a user posted this great link as an alternative. Go and have fun and prove you’re of flesh and blood.

Art Lebedev is a company that got famous instantly a few years ago by showing off their OLED keyboards.

It’s been a few years and news has reached us from time to time with the small versions becoming available last year, the full blown keyboard is not getting its first reviews. While the firmware of the new keyboard is far from finished, it’s getting there and from what I’ve seen, it looks very promising.

Check out this video review by engadget and start saving up to buy this beauty.

Google’s search has become popular because they got off the path that most search engines took.

Most search engines that were big before Google hit the market were crowded, filled with content that you probably are not interested in, making it look like searching the web was just a small portion of what they do. Google picked up on this and made the start page clean and clear, just the search box, a logo (which gets themed a lot and has inspired a lot of people) and that’s basically it.

Google has kept this basically the same, adding new features to their search in such a manner that you won’t even notice it.

The thing I started this entry for was that I noticed that you can now watch Youtube videos directly from your search.

With a simple click on the plus sign, the video loads and start playing without having to go to youtube.com.

Microsoft issued a press release stating that they would start a new program releasing documentation and API information for current and upcoming Microsoft products including the .NET Framework, Windows Vista, SQL Server 2008, Windows Server 2008, Exchange 2007, SharePoint 2007 and Office 2007.

Here's a Quote from their original Press Release:

"These steps represent an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and technologies,” said Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer. “For the past 33 years, we have shared a lot of information with hundreds of thousands of partners around the world and helped build the industry, but today’s announcement represents a significant expansion toward even greater transparency. Our goal is to promote greater interoperability, opportunity and choice for customers and developers throughout the industry by making our products more open and by sharing even more information about our technologies."

They have already started to add over thirty thousand (30,000) documents to MSDN. The new documentation can be found here.

As you might have been able to tell from the link above, it is publicly available to just about anyone, allowing you to use it in non-commercial products with a guarantee you won’t be sued for using it. For commercial products they promise low licensing fees to the relevant patents. All in all a good day for programmers and I am looking forward to digging thru the new MSDN documents.

You'd also might like to check out their Interoperability site.

Small Video Highlight (1m49s, 320x240 @ 291kbps):

My system was getting a bit slow lately which started to rub me the wrong way. I upgraded my system a few months ago (Asus P5N32-Sli with E6600 Core2Duo, 2x2048MB DDR2 memory and a GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB) so there isn’t a single reason for my system to be sluggish except for the fact that there is just way to much software on it.

Since my Windows XP installation (32-bits) doesn’t support my 4GB ram fully and the fact that I always deploy my software on Windows 2003 machines (IIS6), I decided to just migrate to Windows 2003 for my reinstall.

So, after installing Windows 2003, I moved to my software checklist for my must have tools.

• Daemon-Tools
  • Let’s me mount my MSDN images to install most of my software. Just make sure you pay attention during install so you don't install an annoying toolbar.
• EditPlus2
  • My favorite text-editor
• WinRAR
  • My favorite archive tool
• VLC
  • No messing around with codes, this video player has it all. I always have video playing on my HDTV while working, and this is my weapon of choice when playing video files. I only use Windows Media Player for .wmv files, which performs just a bit better in Windows Media Player.
• Windows Live Messenger
  • My way of staying in touch with friends and colleagues
• Office 2003
  • My favorite installment of the MS Office series. I probably won’t upgrade to 2007 the next few years if it were up to me.
• Visual Studio 2005
  • I still do most of the work in my Visual Studio 2005, even though I want to move on to Visual Studio 2008 for my 2.0 (web)applications, on my last install I kept having crashes in Visual Studio 2008 so I decided to keep old ’05 just in case.
• Visual Studio 2008
  • I love TLINQ (LINQ to SQL) and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), even though I don’t create my enterprise applications on 3.5 yet, playing around gets me ready for the future.
• Visual Studio 2005 SP1
  • An essential for creating large solutions with Visual Studio 2005. Had a lot of problems before this SP. It still isn’t perfect performance and stability wise, but it’s the best out there, so I’ll have to make due.
• SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
  • Essential for local creation and testing before moving to production

While installing the above list (which I have done lots and lots of times before on Windows XP), I ran into some weird problems that I did not expect or have experienced before on Windows XP.

When I tried to install Windows Live Messenger (http://get.live.com/messenger/overview), the setup told me Windows Live Messenger was not supported on the Windows Server platforms! This would be a big problem since I really can’t go without it nowadays to keep up with my contacts.

I have found that Windows Live Messenger 8.0 does support Windows Server 2003, so I just went on and got that version here. This worked without a hitch so if you experience similar problems, this might help you.

The second problem was with the Visual Studio 2005 SP1 update. It’s a monster, not only in size, but it takes at least 30 minutes on even the toughest machines. It’s also infamous for its somewhat crappy pre-install checks (disk space requirements are off, which can cause you to have to reinstall Visual Studio 2005 or even your entire OS). The error was along the lines of “Error 1718. File was rejected by digital signature policy”. After following the link that was given, I downloaded and installed KB925336, which seems to have something to do with the MSI package taking up more virtual memory then is allowed. This kind off makes sense since it is almost 500MB in size. Be sure to reboot after a failed install, the install won’t work if you don’t reboot.

Now that those problems are taken care of, I’m ready to set up the rest like my mail, etc.

Once everything is up and running the way I want it, I’ll continue with redesigning nickkusters.com since a lot of people have complained that the site is not useable for people with lower resolution monitors (I love my 22” Samsung 225bw with 1680x1050 resolution), the fact that people cannot respond to articles directly and that the feedback form doesn’t have allow multi-line responses.

Update:

It turns out nVidia doesn't offer a driver for their GeForce 8 series on Windows Server 2003 32-bits version, just for the x64 version. I tried a different driver, but this caused Windows to freeze up.

I'm a bit unsure of what to do, I made a system backup before reinstalling, so I might go back for a few days and maybe give the x64 version a shot. The video card I bought is just to expencive not to use (can't even get decent video playback with the Microsoft driver).

Update 2:

Due to some problems with my wireless card (Linksys WUSB54G) that just won't work properly on Vista (even with the Linksys Vista drivers), I decided to create a Windows Server 2003 Machine. After installing and running Windows Update, I tried to install MSN messenger again. Then I remembered this article (after my install failing) and decided to download 8.0 and update from there to circumvent the no-msn-on-server policy, only to learn microsoft took down the old download :( But there is good news, I found a different version on technet. Enjoy :)

I have just finished up making the changes towards supporting multiple products. When I was making the site ready for the first program (NSPR), most of the website was prepared to handle more then one product. Some things still needed a bit of work. Today, those changes were finished and a new product has been launched: MSN Password Recovery (MSNPR).

MSNPR will allow you to recovery your stored MSN Messenger accounts instantly, username and password.

Dedicated websites will be set up in the near future, dedicated to these products alone. These theme sites will be found on http://nspr.nickkusters.com/ and http://msnpr.nickkusters.com/.

In the future, it's likely to split the current content further along different sites. Security related tools will be hosted under the NeverLose.NET brand (http://www.neverlose.net). All tools will be listed on the NKCSS (Nick Kusters Custom Software Solutions) website (http://www.nkcss.com). Articles, news and blog-like content will remain on my personal domain (http://www.nickkusters.com). This is a lot of work and experiences from the past few months and user feedback about the current site will probably lead to some changes in the design, allowing people with lower resolution monitors to benefit more.