BOTOOL

BOTOOL is a L0pht Heavy Industries plugin that gives you a GUI-based interface for file and Registry management control within Back Orifice 2000 (BO2K). BOTOOL works against the BO2K server's built-in command structure. As a result, you don't have to load the plugin into the server to use it. Instead, you install BOTOOL into the BO2K client and connect the client to the server. Unfortunately, this connectivity is not as smooth as it could be.

As with BOPEEP, I had to manually enter connection information before I could connect the client to the server. Likewise, I had to manually connect the Remote Registry control to the server. One benefit of manually connecting is that you can connect the BO2K client to one server, connect the File Browser to a different server, and connect the Remote Registry control to yet another server. Separating these connections lets you manage different aspects of different servers at the same time from within one BO2K workspace. I think this trade-off is interesting and valuable because it adds some functionality to BO2K.

Configuring BOTOOL is simple. First, you must provide the configuration settings for the client's File Transfer options, which must match the server's File Transfer options. Next, you connect the File Browser to the server. To perform this step, I had to supply the same basic parameters as I did when I connected the BO2K client to the server.

The File Browser is easy to use. Screen A shows the interface, which looks similar to the Windows Explorer navigation window. The GUI lets you double-click a directory to display that directory's contents. You can also right-click an item to display a pop-up menu for quick command access. Commands include the usual Copy, Cut, Paste, New Folder, Delete, Rename, Properties, and Refresh items, and also View, Upload, and Download Selected commands. Using BOTOOL's File Browser, I could easily navigate all disks on the remote system in a manner similar to using Windows Explorer.

As Screen B shows, the Remote Registry control is also easy to use, although I must admit that the beta version has some ugly bugs that cause it to frequently lock up. You can expect L0pht to eradicate these bugs in the release version.

Using the plugin's Remote Registry control made navigation and management of the remote Registry very simple, especially when you compare it with BO2K's standard Registry management commands. The interface is similar to Windows NT's familiar regedit utility, but it doesn't contain any method of adjusting Registry key permissions like the more powerful regedt32 utility does. Nonetheless, I could use the Remote Registry control to view and create new keys and modify the values of existing keys.

BOTOOL worked well in my tests, despite its beta state. The one big drawback at this time is its lack of permission control for files, directories, and Registry trees.