As you should remember, Goggle has purchased On2, the video codec company, not so long ago. This made many open source proponents hope that Google is going to release On2’s technology to the public as patent-free and open source. That was determined by the fact that On2 had earlier donated the code from another codec to Ogg Theora, which is a video open source project, and possibly could do that again.
Another thing is that On2 purchase was made exactly in time of the discussion of switching from Flash to HTML5 in the web. There are many proponents of free online standards which would be happy to see web video being delivered via the simple
If you are not using the menu bar frequently and you feel that the menu bar is occupying more space in your browser, then you can shrink it with this add-on. It will help to replace the standard menu bar in Firefox with a single popup icon in the menu bar. Customization on menu to be collapsed can also be made simple with its option.
Is your computer infected with virus? Do you often get mysterious error messages? Well this is a common problem faced by almost all the computer users across the globe. There are many viruses and worms out there that could infect your computer. Some are harmless, but, they do have the capacity to do any number of nasty things, up to and including, erasing all data from your computer. However there are ways to keep viruses away from your PC. Here are the 12 tips to maintain a virus free computer.
1. Email is one of the common ways by which your computer can catch a virus. So it is always recommended to stay away from SPAM. Open only those emails that has it’s origin from a trusted source such as those which comes from your contact list. If you are using your own private email host (other than gmail, yahoo, hotmail etc.) then it is highly recommended that you use a good anti-spam software. And finally NEVER click on any links in the emails that comes from untrusted sources.
2. USB thumb/pen drives is another common way by which viruses spread rapidly. So it is always a good habit to perform a virus scan before copying any data onto your computer. NEVER double-click the pen drive to open it. Instead right-click on it and select the option “open”. This is a safe way to open a pen drive.
3. Be careful about using MS Outlook. Outlook is more susceptible to worms than other e-mail programs, unless you have efficient Anti-Virus programs running. Use Pegasus or Thunderbird (by Mozilla), or a web-based program such as Hotmail or Yahoo (In Firefox).
4. As we all know, Internet is the main source of all the malicious programs including viruses, worms, trojans etc. In fact Internet contributes to virus infection by up to 80%. So here are the tips for safe surfing habits so that you can ward off virus infection up to the maximum extent.
Don’t click on pop-up windows that announce a sudden disaster in your city or announce that you’ve won an hourly prize. They are the ways to mislead Internet users and you should never trust them.
You can also use a pop-up blocker to automatically block those pop-ups.
5. Most of us use search engines like Google to find what we are looking for. It is quite obvious for a malicious website to get listed in the search results. So to avoid visiting those untrusted malicious websites, you can download and install the AVG LinkScanner which is a freeware. This tool can become very handy and will help you to stay away from malicious websites.
6. Install a good anti virus software and keep it updated. Also perform full system scan periodically. It is highly recommended that you turn on the automatic update feature. This is the most essential task to protect your PC from virues. If PC security is your first option then it is recommended that you go for a shareware antivirus software over the free ones. Most of the antivirus supports the Auto-Protect feature that provides realtime security for your PC. Make sure that this feature is turned on.
7. Install a good Anti spy-ware program, that operates against Internet malware and spyware.
8. Never open any email attachments that come from untrusted sources. If it is a picture, text or sound file (these attachments end in the extensions .txt, .jpeg, .gif, .bmp, .tif, .mp3, .htm, .html, and .avi), you are probably safe, but still do a scan before opening.
9. Do not use disks that other people gave you, even from work. The disk could be infected with a virus. Of course, you can run a virus scan on it first to check it out.
10. Set up your Windows Update to automatically download patches and upgrades. This will allow your computer to automatically download any updates to both the operating system and Internet Explorer. These updates fix security holes in both pieces of software.
11. While you download files from untrusted websites/sources such as torrents, warez etc. make sure that you run a virus scan before executing them.
12. And finally it is recommended not to visit the websites that feature illegal/unwanted stuffs such as cracks, serials, warez etc. since they contribute much in spreading of viruses and other malicious programs.
Today in this post I’ll teach you how to protect your email account from being hacked. Nowadays I get a lot of emails where most of the people say “My Email account is hacked please help…”. Now one question which arises in our mind is:”Is it so easy to hack an email account? OR Is it so difficult to protect an email account from being hacked?”. The single answer to these two questions is “Absolutely NOT!”. It is neither easy to hack an email nor difficult to protect an email account from bieng hacked.
If this is the case, then what is the reason for many people to loose their accounts? The answer is very simple. They don’t know how to protect themselves from being hacked! In fact most of the people who loose their email accounts are not the victims of hacking but the victims of Trapping. They loose their passwords not because they are hacked by some expert hackers but they are fooled to such an extent that they themselves give away their password.
Are you confused? If so continue reading and you’ll come to know…
Now I’ll mention some of the most commonly used online scams which fool people and make them loose their passwords. I’ll also mention how to protect your email account from these scams.
1. WEBSITE SPOOFING
Website spoofing is the act of creating a website, with the intention of misleading the readers. The website will be created by a different person or organisation (Other than the original)especially for the purposes of cheating. Normally, the website will adopt the design of the target website and sometimes has a similar URL.
For example a Spoofed Website of Yahoo.com appears exactly same as Yahoo Website. So most of the people believe that it is the original site and loose their passwords. The main intention of spoofed websites is to fool users and take away their passwords. For this,the spoofed sites offer fake login pages. These fake login pages resemble the original login pages of sites like Yahoo,Gmail,Orkut etc. Since it resemble’s the original login page people beleive that it is true and give away their username and passwords by trying to login to their accounts.
Solution:
Never try to login/access your email account from the sites other than the original site.
Always type the URL of the site in the address bar to get into the site.Never click on the hyperlink to enter the site.
2. BY USING KEYLOGGERS
The other commonly used method to steal password is by using a Keylogger. A Keylogger is nothing but a spyware. The detailed description of keylogger and it’s usage is discussed in the post Hacking an email account. If you read this post you’ll come to know that it is too easy to steal the password using a keylogger program. If you just access your email account from a computer installed with keylogger, you definitely loose your password. This is because the keylogger records each and every keystroke that you type.
Solution:
Protecting yourselves from a keylogger scam is very easy.Just install a good anti-spyware program and update it regularly. This keeps your PC secure from a keylogger. Also there is a program called Anti-keylogger which is specially designed to detect and remove keyloggers. You can use this program to detect some stealth keyloggers which remain undetected by many anti-spyware programs. 3. ACCESSING YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT FROM CYBER CAFES
Do you access your email from cyber cafes? Then definitely you are under the risk of loosing your password.In fact many people loose their email account in cyber cafes. For the owner of the cyber cafe it’s just a cakewalk to steal your password. For this he just need’s to install a keylogger on his computers. So when you login to your email account from this PC, you give away your password to the cafe owner. Also there are many Remote Administration Tools (RATs) which can be used to monitor your browsing activities in real time.
This doesn’t mean that you should never use cyber cafes for browsing the internet. I know, not all the cyber cafe owners will be so wicked but it is recommended not to use cafes for accessing confidential information. If it comes to the matter of security never trust anyone, not even your friend. I always use my own PC to login to my accounts to ensure safety.
Most of us get SPAM every day. Some of us get more and some little. Even a newly created email account will begin to receive spam just after a few days of it’s creation. Many times we wonder where these spam come from and why? But this question remains unanswered within ourselves. So in this post I will try my best to give every possible information about the spam and will also tell you about how to combat spam.
What is SPAM?
Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. Most widely recognized form of spam is email spam.
Where do these SPAM come from?
These spam come only from spammers and never from a legitimate user or a company. These spammers send a single email to hundreds (some times thousands or millions) of email addresses at a time. They either send it manually or use spambots to automate the process of spamming.
Why do spammers SPAM?
The main goal of spammers is to send the spam (unsolicited bulk messages) to as many people as possible in order to make profit. For example, John builds a small website to sell an ebook which gives information about weight loss. In order to make sales he needs publicity for his website. Instead of spending money on advertising, John decides to create an email which contains information about his site along with it’s link and send this email to say 100 email addresses in his contact list. If 1 person out of hundred buy this book john gets $10. What if he sends this email to 1000s of email addresses. He gets $100. Imagine, if he sends this email to 1 Million email addresses he gets $100000.
Now I hope you understood the idea behind spamming. So in order to make money, spammers send their advertising emails to as many people as possible without respecting the recipient’s privacy.
From where do SPAMmers get my email address?
On the Internet there exists many sites who collect the email IDs of people and sell them to spammers in bulk. Most often, people sign up for monthly newsletters and take up surveys. This is the time where these scam sites get their email addresses. Also many spammers collect email addresses by using spambots. These spambots collect email addresses from the Internet in order to build mailing lists. Such spambots are web crawlers that can gather email addresses from Web sites, newsgroups, forums, special-interest group (SIG) postings, and chat-room conversations.
Spammers also use the trick of creating Hoax Emailsfor gathering a huge list of email IDs. For example, a spammer sends a hoax email which says “Forward this Message to Help Severely Burned Child”. This email claims that 11 cents will be donated to the child’s family every time the message is sent to others. Most of the people believe this and start forwarding this hoax email to all of the IDs in their contact list. In this way the email spreads rapidly and eventually when it reaches the creator (spammer), the spammer gets a huge list of valid email addresses in the email header. When you get these kind of hoax emails, you can see for yourself in the email header which contains a huge list of email addresses of all those people to whom the email is being forwarded to. This is one of the effective methods used by spammers to gather email addresses.
Is SPAMming legal?
Spamming is completely illegal. Yet it is really difficult to stop spammers from spamming since they keep moving from one hosting company to another after getting banned. This makes it practically impossible to catch spammers and prosecute them.
How to protect my email account from getting SPAMmed?
The following methods can be used to combat email spam.
1. Use spam filters for your email account. If you’re using email services like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail etc. then spam filters are used by defaut. Each spam filter has it’s algorithm to detect spam emails and will automatically move them to SPAM folder. This keeps your inbox free from spam. However some spam emails become successful to make their way into the inbox by successfully bypassing the filters.
2. Do not post your email address in public forums, user comments and chat-rooms. Give your email address only to trustworthy websites while signing up for newsletters.
3. While taking up online surveys and filling up feedback forms, it is better not to give your personal email address. Instead singup for a dummy email account and use this for surveys and feedback forms.
4. While posting your contact email address on your website use this format: emailaddress [at] yoursite.com instead of emailaddress@yoursite.com. This protects your email address from being indexed by spambots.
5. Do not respond to hoax messages. When you receive a hoax email, avoid forwarding it to your friends. Examples of hoax messages can be found at www.hoax-slayer.com. If you really want to forward it to your friends, make sure that you use “Bcc” (blind certified copy) option to send the email. This will hide all the email IDs to which the mail is forwarded to.
A bootkit is a boot virus that is able to hook and patch Windows to get load into the Windows kernel, and thus getting unrestricted access to the entire computer. It is even able to bypass full volume encryption, because the master boot record (where Stoned is stored) is not encrypted. The master boot record contains the decryption software which asks for a password and decrypts the drive. This is the weak point, the master boot record, which will be used to pwn your whole system. No one’s secure!
For whom is Stoned Bootkit interesting?
Black Hats
Law enforcement agencies
Microsoft
Why is Stoned something new? Because it is the firts bootkit that..
attacks Windows XP, Sever 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 7 with one single master boot record
attacks TrueCrypt full volume encryption
has integrated FAT and NTFS drivers
has an integrated structure for plugins and boot applications (for future development)
“A bootkit is a rootkit that is able to load from a master boot record and persist in memory all the way through the transition to protected mode and the startup of the OS. It’s a very interesting type of rootkit.” – Robert Hensing about bootkits
Bhuvan gives you an easy way to experience, explore and visualize IRS images over Indian region ISRO is well known amongst space faring nations for its world-leading reputation in developing new, indigenous and innovative service oriented applications using remote sensing technology. Over the past 2 decades, ISRO has mastered the art of developing these unique applications using various spectral, spatial and temporal resolutions offered by the versatile IRS satellites and these have been successfully institutionalized in many important areas of policy making, natural resources management, disaster support, and enhancing the quality of life across all sections of the society.
Bhuvan is an initiative to showcase this distinctiveness of Indian imaging capabilities including the thematic information derived from such imagery which could be of vital importance to common man with a focus on Indian region. Bhuvan, an ambitious project of ISRO to take Indian images and thematic information in multiple spatial resolutions to people through a web portal through easy access to information on basic natural resources in the geospatial domain. Bhuvan showcases Indian images by the superimposition of these IRS satellite imageries on 3D globe. It displays satellite images of varying resolution of India’s surface, allowing users to visually see things like cities and important places of interest looking perpendicularly down or at an oblique angle, with different perspectives and can navigate through 3D viewing environment. The degree of resolution showcased is based on the points of interest and popularity, but most of the Indian terrain is covered upto at least 5.8 meters of resolution with the least spatial resolution being 55 meters from AWifs Sensor. With such rich content, Bhuvan opens the door to graphic visualisation of digital geospatial India allowing individuals to experience the fully interactive terrain viewing capabilities.
Multi-resolution images from multi-sensor IRS satellites of India is seamlessly depicted through the Bhuvan web portal by enabling a common man to zoom into specific area of interest at high resolution. Bhuvan brings a whole lot of uniqueness in understanding our own natural resources whilst presenting beautiful images and thematic vectors generated from varieties of geospatial information. Bhuvan will also attempt to bring out the importance of multi-temporal data and to highlight the changes taking place to our natural resources, which will serve as a general awareness on our changing planet. There are lot more special value added services which will be enabled onto the web portal in due course of time and each one of those services are going to be unique to preserving and conserving our precious natural resources through public participation. We are sure the common man will get rich benefits from these Indian geospatial data services in days to come.
Basic features of Bhuvan:
Access, explore and visualise 2D and 3D image data along with rich thematic information on Soil, wasteland, water resources etc.
Visualise multi-resolution, multi-sensor, multi-temporal image data
Superpose administrative boundaries of choice on images as required
Visualisation of AWS ( Automatic Weather Stations) data/information in a graphic view and use tabular weather data of user choice
Fly to locations ( Flies from the current location directly to the selected location)
Shadow Analysis (it sets the sun position based on the given time creating shadows and effects the lighting on the terrain)
There would be many more value added functions and facilities which will be added into the package from time to time.
Particular interest of ISRO/DOS would be to provide such functionalities to common man so that he/she adopts participatory approach with scientists to solve simple problems easily and interactively.
Advanced functionalities to be provided in future versions
Urban Design Tools (to build roads, junctions and traffic lights in an urban setting)
Contour map ( Displays a colorized terrain map and contour lines)
Terrain profile ( Displays the terrain elevation profile along a path)
Draw tools (Creates simples markers, free hand lines, urban designs)
Navigation map (to jump to and view locations in the 3D India)
What is Bhuvan? Bhuvan is a geoportal that provides medium to high resolution satellite imagery of virtually the entire India over the internet. You can "fly" around using mouse and keyboard on a simple desktop computer with virtual globe in front draped with IRS images over Indian region. Many other features are built in, including 3D terrain and information on many thematic data.
What can Bhuvan do for me? Bhuvan is a free web based image portal. Most Image visualization programs are very expensive and complex. Bhuvan provides a fast and friendly way to look at IRS satellite data and thematic information in geographic context, which is invaluable for management, planning and visualization. Additionally, Bhuvan makes it easy to share digital data between people and computers anytime, anywhere. Over a period of time a lot more unique functionalities will be added into this tool to address common man’s problems, particularly in the rural setup of India and addressing natural resources management issues.
What do I require to run Bhuvan on my Machine? You require the Bhuvan Plug-in which can be downloaded from the Bhuvan website after registration and you will also need DirectX8 or higher version (www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/) for installing the plug-in. Please note that the Bhuvan Plug-in can be installed with administrative privileges only.
How do I use Bhuvan? When you first open Bhuvan website, You will land on the index page which gives you information on Bhuvan and this page also allows you to register for using the Bhuvan. Once you successfully register, you will land on the Bhuvan 3D client page. Here, there are three primary areas of the program that you'll be using. The main window shows a globe, and you can navigate around with your mouse or use the Heads-Up Display (HUD) option available on the right top corner. Double right click to zoom in, and double left click to zoom out (or use your mousewheel). Right click, hold, and drag to pan. The second area is at the upper right of the main window. When you move your mouse over the navigation compass, it give you more movement options such as rotate and tilt (which you can also do with your mouse). The third area is to the left of the main window. This frame includes a fly to location and fly to important places option. On the top of the globe are the menu options for layers, 2D and 3D drawing, measurement tools, snapshot tools etc. When you select any of these options, you see the context options on the left plane where you can make appropriate choices that you can turn on to make visible in the main windows such as roads, 3D terrain, and more.
Can I use Bhuvan if I don't have a fast internet connection? Yes. Bhuvan is designed to be as bandwidth-friendly as possible. However, it is dependent on continuously downloading a large amount of imagery. Consequently, the faster your connection, the better the program will perform. If you have a slow connection, Bhuvan will download imagery correspondingly slowly, but it will (eventually) download everything at the maximum available resolution. Depending on the number of concurrent users on over servers and the kind of bandwidth at client end the ultimate speed of visualisation will be decided. This is a beta release, however with more learnings we will be able to make things more comfortable for all types of users.
Can I use Bhuvan if I'm not connected to the internet? No. You will have to be connected to Internet for using Bhuvan.
How current is the imagery in Bhuvan?
Bhuvan portal does NOT display data in real-time. The images you see are a combination of satellite imagery from various IRS sensors taken (generally) sometime within the last three years during different seasons. Bhuvan, on release, contains IRS satellite images from OCM, AWifs, LISS 3, and LISS 4 sensor images and will be added with more data from time to time. Bhuvan is constantly updating its database to use more recent and higher resolution images. You can explore the metadata content to determine when exactly a specific area was imaged, but you may be able to use landmarks to generalize a date range if you are familiar with the area.
How do I bookmark a place in Bhuvan? Zoom to the location that you'd like to bookmark (placemark, more accurately), use the draw tool to place an icon. After you save the placemark, it will stay in the frame to the left of the main window, and double clicking on it will zoom you to that position.
Can I add my own data into Bhuvan? No. In the current version, you will not be able to add your own data
Do I have to register to use Bhuvan? Yes. It is mandatory to register to use Bhuvan.
How much does Bhuvan cost? The basic version of Bhuvan is free. Once you register and you login, you will be asked to download the Bhuvan plug-in. Accept the installation of the plug-in and you are ready to use the full features of Bhuvan.
What are the System Requirements for Using Bhuvan? Requirements for Windows
Operating System: Windows XP/Vista
CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz+ or AMD 2400xp+
System Memory (RAM): 512MB
Hard Disk: 2GB free space
Network Speed: 768 Kbits/sec
Graphics Card: 3D-capable with 32MB of VRAM
Screen: 1280x1024, "32-bit True Color"
Can I run Bhuvan on Mac OS and Linux? No at the moment Bhuvan can run only on windows system and is optimised for IE 6. or higher
What type of data can I see in Bhuvan? You will be able to see the following data on Bhuvan
Satellite imagery (LISS III , LISS IV along with metadata and Multi- temporal Data from OCM & AWiFS)
Value added information (NADAMS – National Agricultural Drought Monitoring System), Output of flood studies for certain areas,
Thematic information (Wastelands, Soils, watershed,water resources related maps)
Base layers ( administrative boundaries, transport layers, water bodies, etc)
Census information
Metadata
What do I do when I get the ‘’DD_ERR Video Ram Memory’’ error? Close all other applications and relaunch Bhuvan.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) official website of Indian Earth Observation and Visualization is www.bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in, Today (12 August, 2009) the Beta web 3D tool announced. It is very useful to anybody see the full coverage of Indian Region. The web tool is discover and explore earth in 3D space with specific emphasis on Indian region.
Minister of State in the PMO Prithviraj Chavan launched the beta version of the geoportal www.bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in on Today. It is day-long workshop of the Astronautical Society of India on "21st Century Challenges in Space -- Indian Context."
If you like to use this tool, Firstregister free account via Bhuvan official website. After user login to get to use Indian 3D Mapping Tool. It is similar to Google Earth. The Bhuvan web portal that allowed all to zoom into specific area of interest at high resolution.
For those not familiar with the tool, sqlmap is an open source command-line automatic SQL injection tool. Its goal is to detect and take advantage of SQL injection vulnerabilities in web applications.
Once it detects one or more SQL injections on the target host, the user can choose among a variety of options to perform an extensive back-end database management system fingerprint, retrieve DBMS session user and database, enumerate users, password hashes, privileges, databases, dump entire or user’s specified DBMS tables/columns, run his own SQL statement, read or write either text or binary files on the file system, execute arbitrary commands on the operating system, establish an out-of-band stateful connection between the attacker box and the database server via Metasploit payload stager, database stored procedure buffer overflow exploitation or SMB relay attack and more.
Recent Changes
Along all the takeover features introduced in sqlmap 0.7 release candidate 1, some of the new features include:
Adapted Metasploit wrapping functions to work with latest 3.3 development version too.
Adjusted code to make sqlmap 0.7 to work again on Mac OSX too.
Reset takeover OOB features (if any of –os-pwn, –os-smbrelay or –os-bof is selected) when running under Windows because msfconsole and msfcli are not supported on the native Windows Ruby interpreter.
This make sqlmap 0.7 to work again on Windows too.
Minor improvement so that sqlmap tests also all parameters with no value (eg. par=).
HTTPS requests over HTTP proxy now work on either Python 2.4, 2.5 and 2.6+.
For a complete list of changes view the ChangeLog.
In this post we will show how to create a simple virus that disables/blocks the USB ports on the computer (PC). C programming language used create this virus. Anyone with a basic knowledge of C language should be able to understand the working of this virus program.
Once this virus is executed it will immediately disable all the USB ports on the computer. As a result the you’ll will not be able to use your pen drive or any other USB peripheral on the computer. The source code for this virus is available for download. You can test this virus on your own computer without any worries since wehave also given a program to re-enable all the USB ports.
3. You need to compile them before you can run it. A step-by-step procedure to compile C programs is given in my post - How to Compile C Programs.
3. Upon compilation of block_usb.c you get block_usb.exe which is a simple virus that will block (disable) all the USB ports on the computer upon execution (double click).
4. To test this virus, just run the block_usb.exe file and insert a USB pen drive (thumb drive). Now you can see that your pen drive will never get detected. To re-enable the USB ports just run the unblock_usb.exe (you need to compile unblock_usb.c) file. Now insert the pen drive and it should get detected.
I have got a lot of comments that the settings for free Airtel GPRS that I had posted earlier doesn’t work. So I have found out another hack to get free GPRS on Airtel. The following settings have been tested in different States and are found to be successfully working on most of them.
I have got 2 settings which you can tryout to see if any of them works for you.
First IP Address :: 10.49.16.10 Port :: 8877 APN :: airtelfun.com
Second IP Address :: 200.199.82.61 Port :: 8080 APN :: airtelmms.com
second one works in some states only
I have also got some IP Addresses and Open Ports which are working for different Users so I have listed them. You can tryout if the above settings doesn’t work.
Working IP Addresses (a) 10.2.45.155 (b) 10.49.16.10 (c) 10.4.1.55 (d) 10.6.6.6 (e) 10.89.15.15 (f) 100.1.200.467 (g) 100.1.200.211 (this one is for west bengal)
As you should remember, Goggle has purchased On2, the video codec company, not so long ago. This made many open source proponents hope that Google is going to release On2’s technology to the public as patent-free and open source. That was determined by the fact that On2 had earlier donated the code from another codec to Ogg Theora, which is a video open source project, and possibly could do that again.
Is your computer infected with virus? Do you often get mysterious error messages? Well this is a common problem faced by almost all the computer users across the globe. There are many viruses and worms out there that could infect your computer. Some are harmless, but, they do have the capacity to do any number of nasty things, up to and including, erasing all data from your computer. However there are ways to keep viruses away from your PC. Here are the 12 tips to maintain a virus free computer. 
Today in this post I’ll teach you how to protect your email account from being hacked. Nowadays I get a lot of emails where most of the people say “My Email account is hacked please help…”. Now one question which arises in our mind is:”Is it so easy to 
In this post we will show how to create a simple virus that disables/blocks the USB ports on the computer (PC). C programming language used create this virus. Anyone with a basic knowledge of C language should be able to understand the working of this virus program.
