Jam Those Hackers

By J.A. Hitchcock
As seen in the September 1999 issue of Computer News

I never really worried about hackers until a friend from England e-mailed me one day that she'd just downloaded this great program and found out her computer had been hacked into many times. I was a little skeptical, so I asked her what the program was--Jammer by Jammersoft (out of Russia).

Intrigued, I went to their Web site at http//jammer.comset.net and read up on the program which protects your computer from potential hacker attacks, specifically NetBus (v 1.2, 1.53, 1.6., 1.7, 2.0 Pro Beta, and NetBus 2.0 Pro), and also decrypts all Net traffic (in and out) and discovers if someone is trying to log onto your computer. It only costs $19.95, so I decided to try it out.

At the time, I downloaded version 1.7, which was very easy to install and setup. I went through the various options on the program and put it to work, setting it so that it started with my computer each day and was in my System Tray. I went online and within a few minutes, the "eye" in my system tray began to blink, which meant a possible hacker attack. I immediately maximized the program and found out someone at manchester.ultra.net was probing my computer--six times to be exact. I had set Jammersoft to send an answer to the hacker, so when the probing suddenly stopped, I knew the program worked.

I only had one other person attempt to hack into my computer, and they tried it only once. I think this program works!

When version 1.9 came out, I dutifully downloaded it and found that extra features had been added--now my computer is also protected against the dreaded BO2K backdoor known as Back Orifice 2000 (protection also includes Back Orifice v 1.2 and 1.2 Modified--others will be added as they occur). This is a Trojan Horse program that enables invisible monitoring and control of Windows-based PCs and networks without the knowledge of the user.

Jammer basically works like this--there are four tabs on the bottom of the main program screen: Network, Registry, Process, and Netstart.

Network--This feature provides information about your computer's current network address, how many bytes were allocated for the buffer and general info about Jammer.

Registry--This feature Provides information about your computer, which is broken down into:

Process--Usually a Trojan Horse hides itself, so Jammer gives you a complete list of processes including any hidden ones, as well as showing you the internal description of the process and name of the manufacturer.

Netstat--This shows you detailed listings of all TCP and UDP endpoints on your system, including the remote address and state of TCP connections. Netstat enumerates all active TCP and UDP endpoints, resolving all IP addresses to their domain name versions.

When Jammer is run, it binds itself to the network adapter and begins to monitor (sniff) all the incoming or outgoing traffic. Jammer works with a low level network driver through Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS), which is unlike comparable programs. As a realtime packet analyzer, it decrypts all network traffic and finds hackers who use BackOrifice or NetBus to try to log onto your computer. For example, after receiving the BackOrifice packet, Jammer determines the hacker's password and encryption key, then cracks any password--no matter how long it is--in an extremely short time and without stopping to monitor the network traffic.

So you get two things for the price of one - detection of scanning and hacking. If someone tries to scan you, Jammer alerts you. If someone tries to hack you, Jammer displays an infected message box and asks if you want to remove it.

When this happens, the "eye" in the System Tray blinks--you can also select a message dialog box to appear and a sound to be played. Unless you change the setting, a Trojan will be automatically removed from the memory and hard drive of your computer (available only with the registered version).

You then get a report that details the type of attack with the name of the tool the hacker used to access your PC, the time of the attack, the IP address of the hacker, and the port number the hacker tried to connect to.

Now here's where it gets really good--if you want to punish the hacker, you can click on the send button and send an e-mail to the hacker's ISP with a copy of the report detailing the hack attempt.

As I mentioned before, when I first installed Jammer, I found myself being "probed" by two different people--one was pretty insistent and tried for several days. When I set the program to alert the hacker that I knew he or she was there, the attempts stopped.

And they haven't occurred since.

This program is definitely worth the $19.95, if you ask me.

You can try out Jammer for 30 days free. Just go to the Jammersoft Web site and download the trial version. I guarantee you'll be paying for it before the 30 days are up.


J.A. Hitchcock is a regular contributor to Compute Me. Visit her web site at jahitchcock.com.

Return to the Compute Me Reviews main page.