Thursday, November 27, 2008

Register today

The registration for Open Source Summit 2008 has started. I have already registered. Have you?
Register now. Click here.

Here's a good flash animation showing the venue and explaining the path you will need to take. Lets all meet there.

You can also tell your friend. Simply click here.

Be there. You are either Open Source or vegetable.
I am a vegetarian, beware.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Internet Governance Forum


The establishment of Internet Governance Forum (IGF) by the United Nation (UN) is seen as an innovative new approach to global policy making. It offers a discussion space for multi-stakeholder and offer unique opportunity for bottom-up policy development related to the Internet by linking togethter Governement, Private Sector, NGO/INGOs, civil society, technical and academic community.

The third meeting of IGF is going to be held in Hyderabad from 3-6 December 2008. There are five main subjects of the IGF - access, openness, diversity, security and critical Internet resources - for the management and development of internet.

I think the internet should be left open and away from politics of the different countries, companies trying to change the world in their profit making ways. But that's just my thought.

Need Volunteers

Guys we need volunteers for promoting The OPEN SOURCE SUMMIT 2008 being held on 13th and 14th December 2008 in Hyderabad. Guys come help us. Come forward, show your passion for open source. Lets spread the news around. Tell it to your friends, anyone who would find it interesting. Make a lot of noise.
Guys stop sending SMS of good night and good morning and friendship and start sending messages about the Open Source Week 2008 for this one week.
Join the twincling-volunteers group.

Any questions?? Fire it up. I am available at my chat badge.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Twincling Vijayawada Launched

Finally, open source enthusiasts in and around Vijayawada get a chance to show their enthusiasm and knowledge. Twincling Foundation has launched Twincling-Vijayawada.

We at the Twincling-Vijayawada have started planning on the movements on how to promote open source and to bring more enthusiasts forward, create new technologies that will place us on the global technical map.

Right now, we focus more on the students in the colleges, soon we will start towards schools and businesses. We want open source to be known by everyone.

Twincling Saturday Meet
Install fests
Troubleshooting
Setting up Linux labs in colleges
Installing games like CS, CZ, Fifa on Linux
Troubleshooting problems with AutoCAD on Linux
are some of our focuses.

Log on to http://vijayawada.twincling.org for more detail.

There are some great projects we are starting, we are looking for new members. If you have any type of questions regarding anything remotely related to open source, mail me: sandip AT twincling DOT org

Proxy Server - II

The talk about proxy server cannot end without talking about the Transparent, Non-Transparent proxies. Sometimes incorrectly referred as intercepting proxy, transparent proxy is one that doesn't modify request/response except changing information in order to authenticating itself to the proxy server. While a non-transparent is one which response/request in order to facilitate user agent.

Intercepting proxy also known as transparent proxy is a fusion of a gateway and a proxy server. It is mainly useful as all connections made to this gateway are redirected through the proxy. It is easy to detect by simply checking the http header. Check if your proxy is working properly. Click here.

I prefer elite proxies but there are so few of them and most of the available are rarely available. Anonymous proxies are good if you are planning to click your own Google Ads. :D

MySql Proxy is a simple program that sits between your client and MySQL server(s) that can monitor, analyze or transform their communication.

Finding IP address from eMail

Finding out someone's IP address can be useful in number of ways. Sometimes I check if my friend has a BSNL net (using his IP) and make them download things for me.
How do you find out IP address?
One of the easiest ways is to check the email header.
If you have received an email, the IP address of the computer is embedded in the email header.

In Yahoo mail, click on the "Full Header" at the bottom of the message. In Yahoo Mail Beta, click on the link as shown in the figure and select "Full Header". Yahoo Mail Beta
Similarly on GMail, beside the reply on the right side of the message, there is an arrow as shown in the picture. Then select "Show Original"
GMail
This will give you an output that will be similar to the following
Header
Now you can either simply copy the header and goto http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/trace-email-source-IP-address and paste the header there to get the IP address. Or you can see closely and see in the above figure in the "Received:" there is an IP address 202.62.89.12, this is the required IP address. Then use this IP address to find more information about it. The main information that you can get are: ISP, location.
You can use http://www.whatismyipaddress.com http://www.whois.net http://www.geoiptool.com to gather more information about that IP.
Sometimes I ask people to mail me, when they do, I tell them "you have .... net na, I know".

Friday, November 21, 2008

Open Source Summit 2008




Here is the first set of updates on Open Source Summit 2008, packaged in a 40 sec presentation.


For the 2-day event, we have got exciting and insightful technical sessions planned on core technologies - BeleniX, KDE 4, LDTP, Git, Hadoop, Gentoo, OpenSuSe. Any guess who the speakers are ? There is a Birds of the same feather (BoF) session titled 'We the Geeks - How can we become No 1 in Open Source Infrastructure software ?"



On the second day we get - Intel Multicore programming workshop that focusses on openMP and TBB (thanks to Preethi and Mukesh). Folks, please start brushing up on C++, templates and pthreads. There is madHACK (mobile application development hackathon) too, in the later part of the day.


Your participation is important. Mark your calendar today !


Thursday, November 13, 2008

Proxy Server

We all have heard about proxy. At least in case of attendances.
Proxy server is defined by Wikipedia as a server that services the requests of its clients by forwarding requests to other servers.

Type of proxies

1. Caching proxy
2. Web proxy
3. Content Filtering proxy
4. Anonymizing proxy
5. Hostile proxy
6. Intercepting proxy
7. Forced proxy
8. Transparent and non-transparent
9. Open proxy
10. Reverse proxy

But most of us are really interested in anonymizing, transparent and non-transparent proxy.

Why Proxy?

Well most of the times we need proxy so that we can view the sites blocked by our institutions.
Another use of proxy server is to share net. Those around Vijayawada should know that the net sharing using NAT doesn't work with DVS Broadband. So how do you share net (its not authorized, but who cares), we install a proxy server and use that to share the net. Proximodo is not a bad proxy server but use Squid instead.
Anyone who has more than one system and wants to illegally share their net but has no clue how to do it. Contact me. I'll be more than happy to help.
I share net on 4 computers using a switch and squid.
But most people use proxy for anonymity. The TOR network is a great example of proxy based anonymizer.

Things you should try:

1. Squid proxy
2. Proxymizer
3. Foxyproxy (Addon for firefox)
4. Proximodo (Easy to configure)

I tried TOR but find it slow, but it is not bad to use.

So where do you get addresses for proxy servers? Just click here. And goto any site listed there.
Proxy server addresses have two parts.
1. Name/address of the server
2. Port number
It works this way:
You type www.google.com. This request is sent to the proxy server at the appointed port number. The proxy server retrieves the site and sends that reply to you.
Be careful while typing passwords when you use proxy, you never know who is listening.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Regrets

I deeply regret for not being available on my chat badge recently. I have been really busy recently. I try my best to be available in the future.

Friday, November 7, 2008

Open Source Summit 2008

Mark your calendar for December 13th and 14th busy. Lets all meet at the Keane Building, IIT Hyderabad for Open Source Summit 2008, organized by Twincling Society (a non-profit society put forward for promoting Open Source)

Open Source Summit 2008 is the annual full-day event for Open source community in Hyderabad, scheduled to be held on 13 and 14 December, 2008.

The theme is "Contributing to Open Source" !

Some of the indicative focus areas are:
. Web 2.0 Frameworks
. Plugins Development
. Operating Systems
. Virtualization and File systems
. Networking
. Multi-core software development with Intel TBB

We have multiple workshops on different fields. Hope to see you all there. Get yourself registered and don't forget to mark your calendar busy.

For more information either call me, chat me on the badge or click here.

Thanks to sponsors, You can win yourself Software CDs, T-shirts and other exciting prizes like Headphones, DVD Player !

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Stealing password

Well, truly speaking( :) ), I have no idea on how to crack a Yahoo password but still we keep hearing "Someone hacked my account". Well log on to http://www.pwcrack.com/howtohackaol.shtml and read the stuff, its great.

But if you still want to crack someone's account then the best thing would be
1. Just look when s/he types the password. (Try this with me and I'll poke your eye)
2. Try some regular passwords like 123456, asdfghjkl, chiranjivi, jenelia (Yeah people even at B.Tech CSE are stupid enough to use these). I found one who uses his own college id.
3. Try social networking (tell him, "I am your best friend, but I don't think you take me as a true friend. If you think, I am a true friend tell me your password") Hahaha!
4. Brute Force, with a lot lot lot lot lot of luck you may get it. Try Brutus. It's one of the best brute force software.
5. Listen to the traffic on the network. People on same network can listen to what others are doing. I used this at the hostel (the wifi is not secure, anyone can tell who is chatting with whom and what). If you are lucky enough, that guy will enter his password on some site that sends the password to the server in plain text. (Yeah there are a lot of site that do this.) You can try this password for his account. People never listen when they are told to put different passwords for different sites.
6. Just go to the "Lost your password" and try it. Most of the times, you can answer the secret question. And the Pin code, some people are so stupid that they put 0091 (00977 in Nepal) that is the ISD code not the pincode. Try it anyway.
7. Try some password recovery programs that recover password from Internet Explorer or Firefox saved passwords (of course this will work if you can use their computer and if they have saved the passwords)
8. Coming to BIOS password, if you are administrator of your Windows XP, you can get the BIOS password using this open source software.
9. Cracking windows has another aspect. Go to that machine, search for the .sam file. Copy that file and bring it to your computer. And start the OphCrack. It works they say, I have never tried it personally. You can try this tutorial as well.
10. Try the hint in the log in window. Some people put their password as hint.
11. Most people on windows never reset their administrator password. When you see the login window, press alt+ctrl+del twice and you will see the classic login window. Type username as administrator and password is blank.

Let me know, if anyone of these work.

Leave comments on things I missed or I am wrong with.


Added on 07/11/08

I forgot to point out that many people also put their phone numbers as their passwords. We can only feel sorry and use their accounts.