This morning, while having a little fun with VMWare Server, I stumbled on VMWare’s list of free virtualized environments. If you have any VMWare product installed on your box, you’ll definitely want to check this list out. Anyhow, like I already said, I stumbled on this list and quickly browsed the available products. That’s when I ended up on a very interesting security package named JanusVM. JanusVM is a virtualized security environment that allows you to surf the internet absolutely securely and privately. It was designed to run on VMware Player (or Server) and brings together openVPN, Tor, Squid, Privoxy and dns-proxy-tor to give you a transparent layer of security that is compatible with most TCP based applications.

JanusVM Features:

• WiFi Support.
• Supports multiple users in a LAN.
• Protects you from most man-in-the-middle attacks.
• Protects you from Javascript, Java, and Flash based side-channel privacy attacks.
• Protects your identity and your true location by masking your IP Address.
• Encrypts and re-routes your DNS request and ALL TCP traffic to ensure strong privacy.
• Strips out most privacy sensitive information your web browser may leak.
• Blocks popups, annoying ads, banners, and other obnoxious Internet junk.
• Very simple setup and operation.
• Works transparently for applications using TCP.

Setup is very easy. Just download and install VMWare player, download JanusVM and follow these simple instructions.

After setting up the environment, if you decide to keep JanusVM running on your box, please consider giving a small donation to the developer. Your donations will surely encourage him to keep on working on this fantastic project.

A Moscow-based password-recovery vendor Thursday accused Intuit Inc. of hiding a backdoor in its popular Quicken personal finance program that gives it -- and perhaps government agencies -- access to users’ data files.

Intuit called the charges baseless, and said that although there is a way to unlock Quicken’s encrypted data, it’s only used by the company’s support team to help customers who have forgotten their passwords.

In a statement, Elcomsoft Co. Ltd., a Russian maker of password-recovery tools, said Quicken versions since 2003 have used strong encryption designed to foil hackers. But those editions also have a backdoor that unlocks the encryption with the 512-bit RSA key that Intuit controls.

"It is very unlikely that a casual hacker could have broken into Quicken’s password protection regimen," Vladimir Katalov, Elcomsoft’s CEO, said in the statement. "[We] needed to use advanced decryption technology to uncover Intuit’s undocumented and well-hidden backdoor, and to successfully perform a factorization of their 512-bit RSA key."