Configure a Windows computer to route traffic

Open up a privileged (running as administrator) command prompt, and type the following:

reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters /T REG_DWORD /v IPEnableRouter /d 1

Restart computer.

The computer can now be used as a "default gateway" and will forward packets to it's own gateway. Additionally you can set the gateway of your new router by specifying a default route using the windows route command:

route delete 0.0.0.0
route add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 [Internet gateway IP]

Before you change your routes though it's a good idea to make note of your existing routes:

route print

This is scratching the very surface of Windows routing. Windows supports a full set of advanced routing options and routing protocols using the <code>netsh routing</code> command.


Scenario I:
Given access to multiple computers on a LAN one could enable routing on a windows XP/7/8 computer as above, and then use it as a kind of anonymising "proxy" by using it as your default gateway on your own device. I say device, because you could use this with anything -- mobile phone, tablet, laptop, network scanner, IP camera, etc... Everything the device does will appear to come from your "Windows router", and that computer will be the only one that knows that the traffic is actually coming from your device. Additionally, Windows doesn't keep logs of forwarded packets as proxies usually do, so once you've accessed some data on the Internet, there's no logs or information of any kind on the router-computer to implicate you. Pretty neat hey? But I should note that this can be changed -- for example if this scenario is suspected, someone could install logging software or a packet sniffer on the router-computer and then see your device communicating with it.

Scenario II:
This could be used to share an internet connection that one computer has access to, for example a USB-tethered phone. You could enabled routing on the tethered computer and set up other computers on the local network to use that computer as the default gateway.

How to USB-Tether Android phones with Windows XP, using tetherxp.inf

Update (23/09/2013):

As Samson has kindly pointed out in the comments, Microsoft has now released a patch for this issue. To download it and for further information, click here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959765

If you prefer not to use Microsoft's hotfix, please read the comments if you are still experiencing issues because a lot of people have posted helpful tips. Thanks everyone.


Greetings fellow Android users! I just got a Samsung Galaxy S2, and had some trouble tethering via USB using the "tetherxp.inf" file. I kept getting the error message: "Cannot install this hardware". So after a bit of poking around, on the Intarwebz, I devised a workaround, and for those of you experiencing the same problem, here's my solution:

1. Plug in your phone, enable USB tethering on your phone, and cancel any hardware wizards that pop up on your computer.

2. On your computer, open up your device manager (Start->run->devmgmt.msc)

Find your phone in "Other devices", for me it was called "SAMSUNG_Android".

3. Once you've found it, double click it and switch to the details tab.

4a. If you have a Samsung Galaxy S3 or S4 (and possibly S5), please note what Urlaubär mentioned in the comments.

4b. Now this is where some of you will get lost, you need to open up the tetherxp.inf file with your favorite code editor (Start->Run->Wordpad) will work, but Notepad will not. I'll use PSPad. And create a new line below "[AndroidDevices.NT.5.1]" containing your Device Instance Id.

5. Alrighty! Now you are ready to test your handiwork! Save the modified tetherxp.inf somewhere, I'm using "C:\temp\tetherxp.inf" as you can see in step 4, then switch to the "General" tab of the device properties, and click "Reinstall Driver...". Select "Install from a list or specific location (Advanced)", and click next.

6. Click "Search for the best driver in these locations.", and select the folder in which you saved your modified "
"tetherxp.inf" file.

7. Now, if all goes smoothly, you should be greeted with this happy screen! You have successfully hacked the inf configuration to enable tethering in your device. You should see a new Local Area Network connection appear in your network connections, and it'll give you Internet access! That is, assuming your phone has Internet access.

If you have a Samsung Galaxy SII, you can download my modified tetherxp.inf file here: http://pastebin.com/zHtCiAzx

Batch script port scanner

Sometimes you're on a network, on a machine with no tools and you need to scan the network.

If I truely have no access to tools such as nmap, I'll open up the command prompt and type in this little script to scan the network for live machines:

for /L %i in (1,1,254) do @ping -n1 -w1 192.168.0.%i |find "time="

(Where 192 168 and 0 are the first 3 octets of the local /24 IP address.)

This is a very simple ping-sweet script which will ping every host in the 192.168.0.0/24 (192.168.0.1-192.168.0.254) range and display replies.

So one day I was a little frustrated how long this script takes to scan 254 hosts, so I decided to create a multithreaded version, also in batch script. Because I'm cool like that.

Hold onto your socks...

@echo off

:: Number of scanning threads
set NUMTH=8

set ipfile=t%random%m%random%p
set scanfx=s%random%c%random%n
set /A thinc=256/%NUMTH% >nul

ping -4 -n 1 -w 1 %computername% |find "statistics" >%ipfile%
for /F "tokens=4,5,6,7 delims=:. " %%i in (%ipfile%) do (
  if not "%%i"=="" (
    echo Local IP address: %%i.%%j.%%k.%%l
    echo Scanning range  : %%i.%%j.%%k.0/24

    echo for /L %%%%a in ^(1,1,32^) do @ping -n 1 -w 1  %%i.%%j.%%k.%%%%a ^|find "time=" ^>^>%%0.log >%scanfx%1.bat
    echo for /L %%%%a in ^(33,1,64^) do @ping -n 1 -w 1  %%i.%%j.%%k.%%%%a ^|find "time=" ^>^>%%0.log >%scanfx%2.bat
    echo for /L %%%%a in ^(65,1,96^) do @ping -n 1 -w 1  %%i.%%j.%%k.%%%%a ^|find "time=" ^>^>%%0.log >%scanfx%3.bat
    echo for /L %%%%a in ^(97,1,128^) do @ping -n 1 -w 1  %%i.%%j.%%k.%%%%a ^|find "time=" ^>^>%%0.log >%scanfx%4.bat
    echo for /L %%%%a in ^(129,1,160^) do @ping -n 1 -w 1  %%i.%%j.%%k.%%%%a ^|find "time=" ^>^>%%0.log >%scanfx%5.bat
    echo for /L %%%%a in ^(161,1,192^) do @ping -n 1 -w 1  %%i.%%j.%%k.%%%%a ^|find "time=" ^>^>%%0.log >%scanfx%6.bat
    echo for /L %%%%a in ^(193,1,224^) do @ping -n 1 -w 1  %%i.%%j.%%k.%%%%a ^|find "time=" ^>^>%%0.log >%scanfx%7.bat
    echo for /L %%%%a in ^(225,1,254^) do @ping -n 1 -w 1  %%i.%%j.%%k.%%%%a ^|find "time=" ^>^>%%0.log >%scanfx%8.bat


  )
)

for /L %%i in (1,1,%NUMTH%) do echo @echo 1 ^>%%0.txt ^&exit >>%scanfx%%%i.bat

for /L %%i in (1,1,%NUMTH%) do start /MIN %scanfx%%%i.bat
echo Scanning...

:: Wait for all threads to finish
:waitthread
ping -n 2 127.0.0.1 >nul
for /L %%i in (1,1,%NUMTH%) do if not exist %scanfx%%%i.bat.txt goto waitthread

:: Copy the scan logs to a single file
copy %scanfx%*.bat.log %scanfx%.scan.log >nul

:: Clean up, delete temp files
del /F /Q %ipfile%
for /L %%i in (1,1,%NUMTH%) do @del /F /Q %scanfx%%%i.bat
for /L %%i in (1,1,%NUMTH%) do @del /F /Q %scanfx%%%i.bat.txt
for /L %%i in (1,1,%NUMTH%) do @del /F /Q %scanfx%%%i.bat.log

start "" %windir%\notepad.exe %scanfx%.scan.log
::type %scanfx%.scan.log |more

:: Wait for notepad to open before killing the file
:waitnotepad
ping -n 2 127.0.0.1 >nul
tasklist /FI "WINDOWTITLE eq %scanfx%.scan.log*" |find "notepad.exe" >nul
if not "%errorlevel%"=="0" goto waitnotepad

del /F /Q %scanfx%.scan.log

Oh shit, he didn't. Oh yes I did.

That right there is a multithreaded BATCH ping scanner. Not only that but it automatically detects the local IP address and uses that to determine the scan range.

Everything happens automatically, you just run it and it'll ping 254 addresses, and show you the results in a notepad window.

Save the code as a .bat file, and run!

Now, to figure out how to probe ports using batch script...

VBS: Download a file from the Internet

Scenario:
* I have only got remote command line access to a Windows computer. Great.
* And now I want to upload a file to that computer. Not so great.

I've been looking some time for a way to download a file to a default Windows installation using only the command line and tools available in the default installation of windows.

This is quite a bit trickier than it may sound, at least in Windows XP, where the only tools I have at my disposal are VB Script and the command prompt (batch scripting).

I pride myself as being a bit of a batch scripting guru, and from what I know, this wouldn't be possible in pure batch scripting. Until I explored my VBS/VBA options a bit more:

This is a VB script to download a file from the internet and save it to disk:

strFileURL = "http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif"
strHDLocation = "C:\GoogleLogo.gif"

Set objXMLHTTP = CreateObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP")

objXMLHTTP.Open "GET", strFileURL, False
objXMLHTTP.send

' 200 is HTTP-talk for 'success'
If objXMLHTTP.Status = 200 Then
    Set objADOStream = CreateObject("ADODB.Stream")
    objADOStream.Open
    objADOStream.Type = 1
    
    objADOStream.Write objXMLHTTP.ResponseBody
    objADOStream.Position = 0
    
    Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
    
    ' If the file exists, delete it
    If objFSO.Fileexists(strHDLocation) Then
        objFSO.DeleteFile strHDLocation
    End If
    
    Set objFSO = Nothing
    
    ' Save the file
    objADOStream.SaveToFile strHDLocation
    
    objADOStream.Close
    Set objADOStream = Nothing
End If

Set objXMLHTTP = Nothing

Unmodified, this code will download the default Google logo to c:\GoogleLogo.gif, assuming the script is executed with write permissions to the C drive.

But this isn't much use with only command line access, so I created a batch script to do the work, and at the same time compressed the code:

@echo off

set fileurl="http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif"
set savepath="C:\GoogleLogo.gif"
set script="%random%s%random%c%random%p%random%.vbs"

echo Set o=CreateObject^("MSXML2.XMLHTTP"^):Set a=CreateObject^("ADODB.Stream"^):Set f=Createobject^("Scripting.FileSystemObject"^):o.open "GET", %fileurl%, 0:o.send^(^):If o.Status=200 Then >%script%
echo a.Open:a.Type=1:a.Write o.ResponseBody:a.Position=0:If f.Fileexists^(%savepath%^) Then f.DeleteFile %savepath% >>%script%
echo a.SaveToFile %savepath% >>%script%
echo End if >>%script%

cscript //B %script%

del /F /Q %script%

That's a batch script which generates the VBS script to download the file and then executes it.


Aaaaand, now on one line:

echo Set o=CreateObject^("MSXML2.XMLHTTP"^):Set a=CreateObject^("ADODB.Stream"^):Set f=Createobject^("Scripting.FileSystemObject"^):o.open "GET", "http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/images/logo.gif", 0:o.send^(^):If o.Status=200 Then >"%temp%\.vbs" &echo a.Open:a.Type=1:a.Write o.ResponseBody:a.Position=0:If f.Fileexists^("%temp%\GoogleLogo.gif"^) Then f.DeleteFile "%temp%\GoogleLogo.gif" >>"%temp%\.vbs" &echo a.SaveToFile "%temp%\GoogleLogo.gif" >>"%temp%\.vbs" &echo End if >>"%temp%\.vbs" &cscript //B "%temp%\.vbs" &del /F /Q "%temp%\.vbs" &start "" "%temp%\GoogleLogo.gif"

Put THAT in your command prompt and execute it.

That one saves the Google logo to the temp directory instead, and opens it as well.


So now I can enter that batch script line by line into the command line and download the Google logo to that remote computer. Sweet.

Why would someone want to do that, you ask? Well, a network administrator may have lost his computer physically, but still know where it is on the network. This will allow him to upload an MP3 and play music loudly so that he can locate the machine.

There's many legitimate reasons. As with all knowledge, what you do with it is up to you.