Hackosis

A recent comment requested how to disable downloading of files through Internet Explorer.

For security reasons one might want to disable or block downloading through Internet Explorer. There could be several other reasons for this including building a secure Internet kiosk, protecting your PC from malicious files, etc.

So far as I know, this should work with IE 6 or 7. I tested it on IE 7 running Windows Vista Ultimate (please don’t flame me ;)).

Copy and paste the following into notepad and save it as disabledownloadsie.reg:

Run the disabledownloadsie.reg to enable blocking of downloads in Internet Explorer.

The settings are:
3 = disabled
0 = enabled

After applying this setting trying to download anything will present you with this message:

If you wish to change the setting back repeat the process above with this value:

There you are. I hope this comes in handy while trying to secure an Internet kiosk or other sensitive equipment.

I wrote earlier today about how to circumvent the blocking of Internet Explorer by using Microsoft HTML Help. Lets turn in the opposite direction and look at ways we can block Internet Explorer.

Not only does this work in Internet Explorer, it works with any program.

The following method has been tested on Windows 2000/XP/2003. If you have Vista, and are willing to test this method, please let me know if it works..

One way would be to use a Software Restriction Policy through Group Policy, either locally or through the domain level. However, this does not work on XP Home Edition.

All Group Policies are essentially registry entries. So, what I did was apply the Software Restriction Policy and copy out the registry entry.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Safer\CodeIdentifiers\0\Paths\{fc768d98-109c-4ac5-8e23-76e7576365bc}]
"LastModified"=hex(b):d2,2e,d8,5d,f9,3c,c8,01
"Description"=""
"SaferFlags"=dword:00000000
"ItemData"="C:\\Program Files\\Internet Explorer\\iexplore.exe"

NOTE: The third line above runs outside of the div. If you are having trouble copying and pasting you need to download the zip file.

Copy and paste the text above into a file named ie.reg, save it, and double click the file to apply the setting manually. Reboot, try to run Internet Explorer and you will notice a nice message:

This doesn’t prevent the Microsoft HTML Help hack, but a proxy setting for Internet Explorer will.

You might ask, “Why would I want to do this?” — because running Internet Explorer is dangerous to your system, that’s why. Also, like stated above, this method can be used to block any program, just modify the path to the executable.

I went through the liberty of collecting what I thought were the most useful XP registry hacks. I know Vista is the lastest and “greatest” but to be honest I don’t know it and it might be a while before I do.

Copy and paste the following into a .reg file, run it and reboot. Look through it and comment anything out that you may not want to happen. Have fun.
Read the rest of this entry …

Make a backup and copy the following right-click hacks into a .reg file to add these to your right-click menu in Windows 2000/XP/Vista. These may require a reboot:

Copy To:

Move To:

Read the rest of this entry …