In the new film “Untraceable,” FBI agents are desperate to track down a maniac who tortures humans to death and broadcasts his crimes live by the Web. To find the villain, the agents use the same Web tools used by real-world cops and protection experts — tools from DNSstuff LLC, a network protection firm in Newburyport, Mass.

“The producers contacted us, sent us the script, and asked whether we could supply any input,” said DNSstuff’s chief executive, Rich Person.

The company went further: It created Vector Trace, a cool-looking computer forensics tool that appears in the movie and will soon be available to DNSstuff’s customers.

The film, starring Diane Lane, earned by $19 million in its first two weeks. It plus provided some welcome publicity for DNSstuff, a five-year old venture that began as a hobby but which raked in about $1.7 million last year, its first year as a money-making business.

Rather than sell network safety measure software,

DNSstuff runs a Web site that gives visitors easy access to a variety of standard Net examining tools.

Anyone with a PC can run a “ping” analysis, which tells whether a specific network computer is online, or use “traceroute,” which gives a rough concept of where a network computer is located.

DNSstuff combines these standard tests and many others into an easy-to-use Web interface. The service makes it easier to identify network shield problems or track down the location of an Net computer that’s spewing spam or trading in child pornography.

“When DNSstuff produced that for us, it was wonderful,” said Michael Moran, an Irish police officer who investigates child exploitation for the worldly police agency Interpol in Paris.

“It speeds things up, and it allows me to keep a record of what I’ve done. And it’s dependable. I might be relying on that info later in court, and I…

Original post by Top Tech News