how do you stop a program from calling home?

ok,
I got a program, it calls home to verfied the info that was inputted
if it's ok, it's reg, if it's not, it reverse back to eval or demo
I have been tolded in order to stop it from calling home you
set your firewall up and then it can't phone home .
ok, but noone is telling me how to do this. I'm running winnt 4.xx
on a public computer, so the basic questions are:

(1) what program is running to allow the software to call home?
(2) what software do i run in order to stop it from calling home?
the settings,the port,etc..
(3) will these settings work for every program that calls home?

please enlighten me if you can..


sooooo confuseddd

[WhoCares]

You can run a network sniffer(such as NAI Sniffer, CommView, EtherPeek, LanExplorer etc.) to get the server IP/Name/Port/Protocol, then block it.

If you don't want to install a sniffer, the firewall will pop up to ask you whether to block it if the target want to phone home.

Use ZoneAlarm Pro, Sygate Personal Firewall, Tiny Personal Firewall etc.

The programs that, at very end, allow the connection are Remote Access Connection Manager and Remote Access Auto Connection Manager; they are kernel components running as services.

There are many ways that your program can use in order to access the services; the use of the RASAPI functions is the easier way in Windows, but the most detectable too.

From your description it can't be understood if your program checks if the machine is connected, then perform its operation, or if it tries to start a new connection; from NT 4, the RASAutodial function is implemented for this purpose.

Anyway, bear in mind that if you're using a public computer and you (as usual) are not allowed to login as Administrator, you won't be able to:

- install a firewall
- stop any service

The simplest thing you can do is checking by the Task Manager if, when your program tries an outside access, a new process is started; if so, you will have localized the dialer of your program.

Hope it helps

[tom324]

The best way is to have separate box on LAN running Linux and configured as router/firewall which controls (and logs) all incoming and outgoing connections. Then you can controls who and how connects to.

Tom

[Squidge]

Wouldn't it be easier to rip the "calling home" code out of the program? It most likely will not accept any serials you enter until it has made a successful connection to home anyway, so may as well hack up the program to stop it from doing so and do the serial routine whilst your in there.