reCAPTCHA is a well known service and used by many websites. But a little know feature is their email address protection service. Just enter your mail address, click on “Protect It!” and everyone who wants to see your address has to solve a CAPTCHA before it will be shown. You will get a common link¹⁾ and HTML source code where only a part of your mail address is replaced:²⁾

Examples, created with the address foobar@example.com:

• http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/d?k=01rhhtdpw4VPtj-ejfKMpwEw==&c=VGXKsGQ8aXgpBQISADqLu1SFbEYkjlSIeDbzeRHbKL4=

  Simply copy & paste the URL or use something like “Click to see my address” when you are able to create links with custom text.

• foo<a href="http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/d?k=01rhhtdpw4VPtj-ejfKMpwEw==&amp;c=VGXKsGQ8aXgpBQISADqLu1SFbEYkjlSIeDbzeRHbKL4=" onclick="window.open('http://www.google.com/recaptcha/mailhide/d?k\07501rhhtdpw4VPtj-ejfKMpwEw\75\75\46c\75VGXKsGQ8aXgpBQISADqLu1SFbEYkjlSIeDbzeRHbKL4\075', '', 'toolbar=0,scrollbars=0,location=0,statusbar=0,menubar=0,resizable=0,width=500,height=300'); return false;" title="Reveal this e-mail address">...</a>@example.com

  This will produce something like “foo...@example.com”.

Actually an old hat, but I just saw tons of plain email addresses in a forum. The smarter ones replaced @/. with [a]/[dot]. While this is better then nothing, most bots should be intelligent enough to parse such replacements. reCAPTCHA FTW.

FileBot is an Open Source, cross platform renaming utility, targeting TV shows.

Main features:³⁾

• Rename hundreds of media files in a matter of seconds
• Fetch episode lists from TVRage, AniDB, TV.com, IMDb or TheTVDB
• Series / Anime name auto-detection
• Download subtitles from OpenSubtitles, Subscene, Sublight or SubtitleSource
• Reverse rename files using internal history or the original torrent file

I wrote an article about it, see FileBot for screenshots, installation instructions and usage tips (e.g. how to get localized episode names).

The “Ebfe's Anti-B00TKIT Project” is a simple but effective protection against Bootkits, suitable for daily usage. It makes it possible to know if your bootloader was manipulated before booting from disk. A really interesting tool for high-security environments and paranoid persons.

Bootkits⁴⁾ are used to attack a full disk encryption⁵⁾ (amongst other things). All “common” data is encrypted on such systems except a small, “special” part: the bootloader. Expressed in simplified terms, the bootloader is needed to store a program which prompts the user for the password to decipher the data and start the encrypted operating system. Bootkits are trying to manipulate the bootloader, making it possible to log the password the user enters and store it within the unencrypted part of the disk afterwards. The user does not see this, he simply gets the normal encryption password promt to start the system. This enables the attacker to come back later to read out the plain, unencrypted password the bootkit stored for him.

Ebfe's Anti-B00TKIT provides a CD to boot from before booting from disk. The program on CD reads out the Master Boot Record entries and displays their checksums (this does only need a few seconds). If all checksums are OK, you can going on to boot from disk by pressing a key. If the checksums are not the same as every day, your harddisk's bootloader was manipulated. To make this check more comfortable, you can create a custom CD containing your original MBR checksums. The CD is able to highlight non-matching checksums automatically then.

Visit the project website for screenshots, how-to and download.