When diagnosing a computer, you need as much information as possible, because the technical details supplied by its owner are often insufficient. Some symptoms are crystal clear and require no deeper investigation, but if you want to start by running a general security audit on the machine, you might want to consider Last Audit.
The classic tech-support conversation
The exercise usually goes something like this: someone brings in the computer and says “there’s a problem.” You try to ask “what happened?” and the exchange ends with “I have no idea.” That’s how most conversations go between computer owners who want the machine fixed “for yesterday,” and technicians who must decipher systems as deteriorated as the Greek Parthenon. In most cases, the malware festival hiding in the system won’t do anything to conceal itself, and when you try to dig a little deeper, you get answers like “it installed itself,” “I wasn’t there,” “it was my son,” “it suddenly turned off” (classic), and a long, long etcetera. But there are times when we need to know even more, and a tool that can generate a quick, automatic audit never hurts. That said, let’s look at Last Audit.
What Last Audit can tell you
The official page of Last Audit presents the tool as a good option for “pentesters,” users focused on discovering vulnerabilities and entry points that could lead to a massive malware infection. The tool is still relatively young, but it can already report configuration errors in modules like the firewall and User Account Control, whether the main profile is using Administrator privileges, permission problems, saved passwords, and browser histories with their corresponding cookies. It also adds a port scan on LAN networks, open and registered WiFi hotspots, and elements linked to Active Directory.
Hands-on test
The results are saved in an HTML report that can be viewed in any browser. If the system is in good shape, Last Audit will likely show only basic alerts for informational purposes, but if something serious is found, it will be marked in red or orange in the report. I should also mention that over the weekend I was experimenting a bit with my router, and in one of those oversights that “nobody” should have, telnet was left wide open, and Last Audit was able to detect it. Some may have doubts about how basic its official page is and the lack of information, but the executable comes out completely clean from VirusTotal. Portable, and free.
