No web site on the Internet is particularly unique. Below is a list of other "tester" web sites.
- Oracle now has two automated Java tester pages (in the old days Sun had more). Both pages
report the currently installed version of Java and whether it is the latest and greatest (previously some of their tester
pages left this out). However, as befits a large organization and Oracle in
particular, the two pages do not always agree as to whether the latest version of Java is installed.
The pages are:
On March 4, 2013, I tried both pages on a Windows computer running Java 6 update 41, which was the latest version of
Java 6 at the time. The top page reported "Latest Java installed". The bottom page warned that "A newer version of
Java is available" and prompted me to download Java 7 Update 15.
March 5, 2013. After the release of Java 6 Update 43, I tested again.
The top tester page now initially warns that "An old version of Java has been detected on your system."
But, when I clicked on the "test the currently installed version of Java" link, it reported "Latest Java installed".
The bottom tester page now invokes a signed Java applet. Finally. Like yesterday, it warns that
"A newer version of Java is available" but it now prompts to download Java 7 Update 17.
- There are two manual ways to check the latest version of Java from Oracle
- UPnP Testers (see
my blog on this for more)
- The Rapid7 UPnP Check
- Steve Gibson UPnP testing to his ShieldsUP! service
in January 2013. On the first page, click on the gray Proceed button. On the next page, click on the yellow/orange
button for GRC's Instant UPnP Exposure Test.
- Rapid7 also offers an installable program called
ScanNow that scans a LAN for UPnP enabled devices and reports if the devices are running buggy versions of
UPnP software. The program only runs on Windows and requires 32 bit versions of either Java 6 or Jav 7. It is not
fully portable, but neither does it need to be installed. It requires an email address before it runs the first time.
- IPChicken is my favorite website for reporting on your IP address. The
"Name Address" field often makes the ISP name obvious.
- OpenDNS: Are you using OpenDNS? I think you should, these buttons indicate if you are. So too, does
opendns.com/welcome.
BrowserSpy also offers an OpenDNS tester.
The OpenDNS home page indicates it too, but the manner in which this works changes too often for me to
keep track of.
- Your DNS Server: myresolver.info shows the name and IP address of the DNS server your computer now using (along with your current public IP address). The lingo is a bit techie, your DNS server is referred to as "your DNS recursive resolver". If it only returns an IP address, then enter that IP address into ip2location.com to see who owns it.
- The Secunia Online Software Inspector
scans your computer looking for software with know security bugs. It requires Java version 6 or later.
- Test your firewall with ShieldsUp! from
Steve Gibson. Note, if you are behind a router with a firewall (as most of us are) this tests the firewall in the
router, not the firewall on your computer.
- Infected thumb drives: In
Test your defenses against
malicious USB flash drives I provide a sample autorun.inf file that can be used on a thumb drive to test how well
your computer is defended against malware that may live on a USB flash drive. January 2009.
- The Qualys SSL Server Test is for techies.
It tests and reports on the gory details of HTTPS security.
- Test the privacy of your email client at emailprivacytester.com by Mike Cardwell
- Test if a website is reachable from multiple locations at siteuptime.com.
- The Mozilla Plugin Check.
Originally, this only worked with Firefox, but as of May 2010, it was extended to work
with other browsers as well.
- Test if your credit card was stolen
- The Social Network Login Status Detector Demo detects if you are logged in to Facebook, Twitter, Google or Google Plus.
- TESTING WEBSITES FOR MALWARE
- Unmask Parasites tests if a web page contains
hidden illicit content.
- The Virus Total URL Scanner gets opinions from
over 30 different sources.
- Test if a web site is blacklisted by either Google, Firefox, Chrome or Norton Safe Web at
Dasient.com.
- OpenDNS has a
Site Checker.
- Web of Trust is in the website good guy/bad guy business.
They offer web browser plugins for IE and Firefox but on their site you can get their rating of any
website without installing software.
- Zscaler Zulu URL Risk Analyzer
- Norton Safe Web from Symantec
- SiteAdvisor from McAfee
- Wepawet is a service for detecting and
analyzing web-based malware. As of April 2010 it handles Flash, JavaScript and
PDF files. From the Computer Security Group in the Department of Computer Science
at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
- Sucuri Security Scanner from Sucuri
- LinkScanner from AVG
- Google has a safe browsing feature that offers their opinion on the safety of a
web site. There doesn't seem to be direct link to it, but
click here to see
the rating of this site. It should be obvious from the URL how to get the rating for other sites.
- Much like this list, Lenny Zeltser has is own list of Free Online Tools
for Looking Up Potentially Malicious Websites
- FLASH: Java competes with Flash for making interactive web pages. Adobe has a
Flash tester web page (they don't call it that)
that reports the currently installed version of Flash. Windows users running IE and another browser should do
this for all browsers installed on their system as they can be using different versions of the
Flash player. My flashtester.org site has a version history of
Flash and provides a simple name to remember when looking for Adobe's Flash tester page.
- The Adobe Flash Player Settings Manager are web pages that let you configure Flash cookies (a.k.a. local shared objects) as well
control how often Adobe checks for updates to the Flash player. For more from Adobe on this see: Flash
Player Help and How
to manage and disable Local Shared Objects.
- The Global
privacy settings page controls whether Flash based web sites can use your camera or microphone
- Global
Storage Settings control how much disk space websites can use to store information, or you can prohibit
websites from storing any information at all
- Global
Security Settings lets you specify if SWF or FLV content that uses older security rules can access the Internet.
Beats me too what that means.
- Global
Notifications Settings is where you configure how you want to be notified about updates to the Flash Player
- At the Website Privacy
Settings page you get a list of websites you've visited. For each you can specify rules about using your camera
or microphone or storing data on your computer.
- This what Adobe says about the Website
Storage Settings panel: "Use this panel to specify storage settings for any or all of the websites that have requested
permission to use your camera or microphone or to store information on your computer."
- Test HTML5 local storage
Enter your name, then reload the page.
- Eric Gerds Plugin Detection detects
Java, QuickTime, Flash, Shockwave,
Windows Media Player, DevalVR, Silverlight and the VLC Player.
- Eric Gerd (above) does not report the latest version of QuickTime, but you can see it at Apple's QuickTime download page.
- Firefox 3.5 Location-Aware Browsing: Click the Give it a try link and Firefox and Google
team up to locate you based on both your IP address and nearby Wi-Fi networks.
I'm glad to report that on a computer without Wi-Fi it was off by roughly two thousand miles.
- The PC Pitstop Quick Program Scan is an ActiveX based test that
tells you what's running on your computer, including background processes. For each process, it reports who made it and
what it is. Most importantly, perhaps, processes are color coded based on threat level: unknown, safe, optional,
spyware/adware, virus. Only works with Internet Explorer and will not run if IE is run in restricted mode with DropMyRights.
- The Conficker Eye Chart is a simple
web page that reports whether your computer is infected with the Conficker worm. Joe Stewart came up with the idea
and he has a copy of the same page at his personal website.
The H security also has an online Conficker tester.
- My favorite Internet speed test is from SpeakEasy.
It's Flash based and shows both download and upload speeds. DSLreports.com offers many speed tests including one in Flash, one in
Java, a Simple Mobile Speed Test for "dumb" phones and an iPhone Speed and Latency test. SpeedTest.net is a fancy Flash based test. Uploads speeds are
slower and I prefer SpeakEasy for presenting upload speeds in KB - SpeedTest.net always uses MB.
- Pingdom Tools offer different types of speed tests. The full page test reports
on the load time of individual pieces of a web page. They also offer ping speed tests.
- The JavaScript tester page on this site verifies if JavaScript is working
(at least working on this site, it may not
work on other sites if you use the Firefox NoScript extension), reports the version of JavaScript your web
browser supports and displays your browsers "user agent", a string of characters that websites can use to
identify which web browser you are using.
- Adobe has a page which tests for Shockwave
(alternate link).
This page used to test for both Flash and Shockwave, no more.
- Adobe does not have an page that tests AIR, as far as I know. But they do have
instructions for manually
checking file properities on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. On Windows, you can check in the Control Panel just
as with all other software.
- Test your brain at the Prevention Magazine Brainpower
Assessment Quiz. They say to allow 15 minutes for the test.
- LCD MONITORS
- The Intel Driver Update Utilities will (in theory)
auto-detect if you have Intel hardware for video, audio, Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Each is a separate utility and
they only support Windows.
If one of the utilities finds Intel hardware, then it reports whether you have the latest driver or not.
Each utility works with either IE using ActiveX or Firefox using Java. Be warned though,
I tested them and found they failed to
correctly detect Intel hardware most of the time.
- ClickJacking demos put together by Steve Gibson in October 2008.
As of May 2009 the demos seem to have gone stale, not sure.
- Test if your ISP is manipulating BitTorrent
traffic from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems
- Windows Update: Conficker and other malware blocks access to Windows Update.
A quick and easy way to verify that Windows Update is working correctly is to manually run Microsoft's
Malicious Software Removal Tool. In Windowx XP, do Start -> Run -> "mrt.exe". In Vista, click the Start
button and type "mrt" into the search box to locate the mrt.exe file. For more see my February 5, 2009
blog posting
What
you don't know about the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool.
- Testing VRML plugins: cic.nist.gov/vrml/vbdetect.html
- Cyscape also has a very
complete web browser report in their BrowserHawk
demo page. It shows the Java version and vendor and, for Microsoft JVMs, it
shows the build number. In addition, it reports the installed version of Flash, Director, QuickTime,
Acrobat, Real Player, Windows Media Player and much more.
- Mickey Segal has a Configuration
Test for Java that is very similar to the Version page here
- Another Java tester is available at gemal.dk
as part of their BrowserSpy. Read more about BrowserSpy.
- A low end Java tester is available from
upshot.com
- Click and Learn has a browser tester in German that tests
Java, Flash, Acrobat, Windows Media player and more.
- What is My IP / IP / Proxy / System Information reports on
information about your browser, computer and network environment.
- ScanIt has a web browser
security tester (a bit off this subject, but good to know)
- www.mailtester.com validates an
email address and reports on the email server
- www.dnsstuff.com offers domain name
tests, IP tests and hostname tests
- PC Pitstop has an ActiveX
tester, very similar in concept to the Version page on this site. Martin
Heller has one too.
- Testvirus.org allows you to send a harmless test virus to any email address. If
your mail server or email hosting provider is running anti-virus software, these emails should get blocked.
- This isn't a tester, just a useful page. Microsoft's free
Office Online File Converters and
Viewers
- Who made that Ethernet network adapter? See the
Mac address lookup at the H security
- Secure web pages are a sham. The page Test Secure Form
is a perfect example, the URL is HTTPS yet data entered
into the form is not secure. Yes, everything you have been told about website security is wrong.
Here is another example page: https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2.
It too is secure (HTTPS) coming into your computer, but when you click on the Proceed button it
submits unsecure data to the webserver. Firefox warns about this.
- CentralOps.net has a number of online techie networking tools. I like their
NsLookup and
Domain Dossier.
- The ICSI Netalyzr tests your Internet connection for
signs of trouble. Very techie stuff. Requires Java. From their website: The International Computer Science
Institute (ICSI) is a leading center for research in computer science and one of the few independent,
non-profit research institutes in the United States.
- Test your popup blocker at
