Thursday, April 8, 2010

NetScanTools Pro 10.96 Published

On April 6, 2010, we put the finishing touches on NetScanTools Pro 10.96. This is a minor release that does add one new feature plus several improvements to existing tools.

That new feature is the ability to save optional MD5 hash signature (checksum) files when you save text results, databases or packet capture files to disk. The MD5 file is a text file with the MD5 signature in it. This feature is particularly useful to those in law enforcement.

Improvements are in several areas, particularly Packet Generation and Capture. In the Packet Generator we have improved the scripting so that you can now do simple looping X number of times or you can do an infinite loop making it easy to send repeating sets of packets to a target. Packet Generator also now tells you if WinPcap fails to send a packet. By altering the display update of the floating packet send info window, we have been able to drastically speed up the sending of packets in continuous packet send mode.

In Packet Viewer (to be renamed Packet Capture in version 11), there were considerable improvements made to the parsing of IGMP packets and also the program now recognizes HP Switch LLC packets and Spanning Tree Protocol packets.

There are other minor things like NetBIOS Basic now reporting Windows 7 machines instead of "Windows 6.1". Clear buttons were added to the Whois and Real Time Blacklist (RBL) check tools next to the DNS IP address entry boxes.

One more interesting issue came from a tech support call I had a couple months ago. The user told me that he had a multihomed (more than one active network interface) machine and he was trying to either capture or send packets - I can't exactly remember. Anyway, it appears that the first option in the dropdown WinPcap Interface selection box was "169.254.7.179" - he said that he got an error message when trying to use that interface. After some discussion, we found there was a second IP in the dropdown box - he selected that one and everything worked.

As you may know, the 169.254.x.x IPs are what Windows assigns when it fails to get a new IP from DHCP - this is Automatic Private IP Addressing. So what was added to NetScanTools Pro was this: as the program starts, we go through the list of available interfaces. If a 169.254.x.x interface is found, the user is asked if they want to include it in the list of available WinPcap capable interfaces. Rather than just excluding those from the list, we ask you because someone may actually have set up a network with IPs in that range.

To get this new release you must have an active maintenance plan. If you do, then click on Help/Check for New Version. Login using the credentials shown in the program and download the installer. You will need your CDKEY/Serial Number to install, it is found on Help/About NetScanTools Pro. Please install over the top of your old installation and registering again should not be required.

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