Home News Products Download Blog Contact Us
Home / Blog

CyD Software Labs Blog

DNS Module

Some time ago I needed to find all subdomains for a list of domains. I couldn't find ready to use software. All I found was expensive or worked not as I needed. The solution is quite easy if you have ability to send DNS queries. I used ls command in Windows nslookup utility. To make the task easier, I decided to develop my own solution.

Now I'm working on a new module for CyD Network Utilities program. The module will be able to work with any DNS server. I already implement all basic DNS request and even subdomains searching. To search subdomains the programs uses intellectual algorithm, that search DNS server that contain all information you need.

The DNS module is going to be included in the next update. All registered users are going to get the module absolutely free-of-charge.

The cost of network monitoring

Network monitoring is one of the most important tasks every network administrator. They have to respond on every fail as soon as possible. If you have highly loaded and highly important server, every minute could costs your company thousands or even millions dollars. Your sales could be lost for no reason. The cost of monitoring is very low, but you can lose much more if you don’t monitor your network.

CyD Careful Observer - Network Monitor allows you to monitor your network and services constantly, even when you are not at work. The program informs you when any problem occurs in your network. You can configure the program to be notified automatically, so network administrator can fix the problem.

The program costs $39 only. It is easy to use and fast to start. You can lose much more money, if you not respond on network or hardware problem as soon as possible.

New features of CyD Careful Observer - Network Monitor 2010

We published CyD Careful Observer – Network monitor 2010 two days ago. A new version was finished a week ago, but I cannot decide how to name it. I name my products by the name of the release year. Current release is 2009 and the next name must be 2010. It is too early to change name on 2010. I could do not change the version name and add SP prefix, but it is not update or service pack. The new version has a lot of changes. That's why we change the name of the release year.

There is a new monitoring engine in the new version. End users will not see the new engine code, because they don't need to see it :). But they will get advantages from the engine. New monitoring engine advantages:

  • There are new kinds of objects to monitoring:
    • Database. You can configure the program to monitor connection to your database. This feature will be useful to database administrators, system administrators, network administrators or other person who is charged with database availability. The program uses ADO.NET to test connection in specified period of time. You have to set connection string only to configure tester.
    • WEB page. The program can monitor WEB page availability. The tester will alert you when specified page is not available. This feature will be useful to WEB site owners.
  • You may set any number of testers to one host. The older version allowed setting only one tester to each host. To configure two testers on one IP address you had to create two network items in the program. Now you have to create only one network item. After that you create two testers to this item. One tester may test a port. Another tester may test availability (ping). If the ping tester works well but port tester fails – the problem is in service that opens the port. If the port tester fails and ping tester fails too then the problem is in host.
  • Any tester state changes are saved in the local log file. The program has an easy module to work with the local log. We are going to enhance the module in the near future. To work with the local log switch to Log page in the main window.
Working with local log

These features impel me to change the version number. I could name the new version as CyD Careful Observer SP2 or SP3 but it is not service pack. Registration period for our products is two years. All updates in this period are free-of-charge. If you bought the program less than two years ago you will receive the new version absolutely free-of-charge.

Automate WEB site vulnerabilities searching algorithm

WEB site vulnerabilities searching computerization is a very difficult task. We had to write an universal algorithm to search for various kind of WEB vulnerabilities. A computer is not a human and it thinks different. It is very difficult to analyze not structured data. Web pages could consist of various technology with different kind of mistakes. The algorithm has to know about HTML and other technologies.

The most widespread approach to the problem in is a searching for vulnerability signatures on the WEB page. The security testing program must send to the server wrong data and search for signatures in the result page. What if software developer or system administrator turned errors reporting off? The security testing software would failure. Good developer has to hide any errors in WEB scripts. The program could not find any errors on the page if developer turned errors reporting off, but vulnerabilities are exist on the page.

What if the original page would have the error signature "Database connection error is ...." in the page text? In this case the program will find the signature and report about vulnerability. But it is not vulnerability. It is a piece of text only.

We have to have something more powerful to search for vulnerabilities. There is another approach to search for WEB errors. We have to write software that will hack the website itself. The program has to hack website and analyze WEB server responses. The most difficult task is to find vulnerability signs. The program has to have some sort of AI (Artificial Intellect).

The CyD Network Utilities 2009 (network and security tools) program has improved algorithm to find any kind of SQL Injection errors. The program tries to hack website itself and allows you to automatize the website checking for vulnerabilities.

CyD Network Utilities 2009

We are working on the next generation network utilities for software administrators - CyD Network Utilities for software administrators. The program is fully rewritten on .NET platform and the basic system requirement is Microsoft .NET 2.0. Some modules of previous version will be removed but other modules are improved. The removed modules are the registry manager and users manager.

The main update is improved WEB server security test. There will be a new our own testing algorithm that allows searching for hidden SQL injection errors. The automatic security test generates more WEB traffic to make the test more accurate. It could find SQL Injection errors that couldn't founded by previous version of WEB site security test. The security test tries to crack the specified WEB site itself and reports a message when finds the SQL Injection error.

Network Utilities for system administrators

The beta version is going to be available in the near future. I'm going to publish the first beta version tomorrow.

We focus our efforts on CyD Careful Observer and CyD Network Utilities

We closed registrations for products that were not popular. Users are not needed in the Menu creation program to create JavaScript menus any more. They have CSS to create stunning menus without any lane of code. Users are not needed in GIF animation programs any more. They use the PNG file format to create WEB images or Flash files to make animations. I'm thinking about publishing closed products free-of-charge for our users. I'm going to do it if I see that users needed it.

Now we are going to focus on CyD Careful Observer and CyD Network Utilities products to give our users better services and better products. I'm not sure about new products and what it will be, but CyD Careful Observer and CyD Network Utilities will be better in the near future.

The history of the network monitoring program

How do software companies or software developers get inspiration to create a particular software product? It is different for any particular case. I want to tell you, how I got inspiration to create a network monitoring program called CyD Careful Observer.

Once upon a time I worked in a middle size company, developed XXXX things. I developed software for servers, that had to get information from manufacture equipment. My servers were distributed. I lack of piece of software to monitor server availability.

The first release of CyD Careful Observer (Network Monitor) appeared one year latter when I was working in another company as system administrator. I had to monitor servers in entire company to respond to problems in time. In the first time the program were selling as standalone application. In 2006 the program was integrated in CyD Network Utilities.

The first version of CyD Careful Observer was written on Borland (CodeGear) Delphi. In 2008, I decided to rewrite network monitor in Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and C#. The program could be work on Microsoft .NET Framework. CyD Careful Observer is standalone application now... again.

CyD Careful Observer (Network monitor) allows you to monitor remote hosts (computers or servers) in your network or in the Internet.

CyD Careful Observer is based on our own libraries and Heapar Essential Library .NET.

Products