Zephyr

What is the relationship between Software Lines of Code and Security Bugs ?

2017-11-21T22:42:00.001+04:00

Our world today is more connected than ever. We have our pacemakers, 3D printers, Insulin pumps and even cars connected to the internet. Moore's law states that the number of transistors on integrated circuits would double every two years. Or in simple terms, the processing speed will double every two years or 18 months or 12 months.

With the drastic growth in processing powers, we saw a steep increase in the internet connected systems and software. The millennials are too dependent on internet and apps for personal data storage, banking, studies and even employment. The source code of Apollo 11 Guidance system that took the US to the moon and back was published on GitHub. It contains 145,000 Lines of Code (LOC). Now compare that with a space shuttle that uses a 400,000 LOC, curiosity (rover) 2.5 Million LOC, Android 12 Million LOC and Google services which is at a whopping 2 Billion LOC.

Many researches state that, on average, there are around 30 to 50 bugs in 1000 LOC. Now if we do the math, that is nearly 1.5 to 2.5 Million Software bugs for 50 Million Lines of Code. As a result, we see a high increase in security vulnerabilities since the codebases are on a rapid increase.

End of Moore's Law

Most industry experts suggest that the Moore's Law has reached its end. Moore's Law has been driving the digital revolution for more than half a century. There are few new technological architecture emerging which will be commercialized within 10 to 15 years. The growth of Quantum computers and neuromorphic computing will threaten the current technologies such as PKI systems which is used for encrypting our internet traffic.

Ever-Increasing Vulnerability on technologies and software products

The graph below shows that the rate of increase in publicly disclosed vulnerabilities (CVE) each year. If you notice, the year 2017 has the maximum number of vulnerabilities disclosed. This is due to multiple factors such as the increase in Internet connected devices and technologies.

Software companies and developers must focus on the real problem of fixing security bugs on their system rather than focusing on the background noise.

Reference:
CVE Details: http://www.cvedetails.com/
Image Source: https://www.itworld.com/article/2725085/big-data/curiosity-about-lines-of-code.html

Difference Between Information Security and Cyber Security

2017-11-19T12:07:00.001+04:00

I have been working the cybersecurity field for many years. I have come across people with different levels of technical knowledge, but very few possess the ability to explain a complex technical concept in simple terms. The funny part is, I have also seen people explaining simple concepts in the most complicated form.

Understanding and correlating is the mother of all knowledge

No technology remains fixed. Technology starts, develops, persists, mutates, stagnates, and declines. With the ever-growing advancement in technology, the amount of time a person spends in understanding the technology is comparatively lower. Gone are the days when children and teenagers would play around with breaking and reassembling toys. Today's children and teenagers spend most of their playtime on gadgets and social media platforms. The ability to break and reassemble things is slowly fading away from the younger generation.

The education pattern in schools and colleges must be upgraded to comply with the technological advancements. More STEM-related (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths ) topics should be incorporated into school curriculum. We are moving towards a future dependent on Machine Learning and AI, Quantum computing, cybersecurity, virtual and augmented reality, and autonomous vehicles. These technological trends have always been developing and evolving into a mature model.

Knowing the basics

I have worked with many CISSPs and CCIEs professionals and I was quite astonished when few of them were not aware of the dark web and the tor network concepts. I totally agree that it is not necessary to know about the dark web to get CISSP or CCIE certified, but it shows the lack of interest these people possess to learn something out of the box. I'm lucky enough to be blessed with a highly technical working culture where I'm able to learn and teach regularly. I often receive speaking opportunities at security conferences and workshops.

Difference Between Information Security and Cyber Security

I have rolled up my sleeves and dug into the many cyber-mess and technical deficiencies in organizations. I'm planning to write article series on topics related to cybersecurity. To start with, let's have a look at the difference between information security and cybersecurity.

Will Quantum Computers Threaten Modern Cryptography?

2017-11-19T08:59:00.002+04:00

Modern cryptography, including elliptic curve cryptography, is being used extensively for securing our internet payments, banking transactions, emails and even phone conversations. The majority of today’s cryptographic algorithms are based on public-key encryption, which is considered to be secure against attacks from modern computers. Quantum computing can simply break this security by reverse computing private keys faster than a conventional computer.

RISK OF QUANTUM COMPUTING

Although quantum computers are still in their infancy and non-operational, with publicly known experimental quantum computers too small to attack conventional cryptographic algorithms, many national governments and organizations have begun to understand the risk involved when this technology becomes a practical reality.

Military agencies and leading technology companies have already increased fundings and accelerated processes in developing quantum computers because of the fact that it can process massive amounts of data in a relatively short amount of time. With the amount of practical and theoretical research being carried out, the birth date of a practical quantum computer is not far away.

Conventional cryptographic systems offer computational security but does not ensure absolute or unbreakable security. The strength of the current cryptographic algorithms rely on complex mathematical problems, such as integer factorization and elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem.

These problems can be solved using large-scale quantum computers and therefore can easily crack conventional algorithms. As a result, security experts have begun designing new encryption algorithms that are considered quantum-resistant that can’t be cracked as quickly as conventional algorithms.

THREAT TO CRYPTOGRAPHY

Recently, The National Security Agency (NSA) acknowledged the quantum computing threat by publicly announcing their plans for transitioning to quantum resistant algorithms. Public recognition of the quantum computing threat has raised concerns over Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) that is used extensively in securing the world wide web.

Quantum computers will be a threat to both symmetric key algorithms (Block ciphers), and asymmetric public key algorithms (RSA, DSA and ECC). These computers can break every single popular public key algorithm in a trivial amounts of time. Quantum algorithms, such as Shor’s algorithm, could be used to recover an RSA key in polynomial time, but quantum computers with sufficient strength currently do not exist.

Post-quantum cryptography is being used for designing cryptographic algorithms that are considered to be secure against attack by quantum computers. It is estimated that 2048-bit RSA keys could be broken on a quantum computer comprising 4000 qubits and 100 million gates. Although there are few public-key algorithms that are considered unbreakable, they are not well-studied or used in the present day.

Quantum cryptography is based on hard and complex mathematical problems to provide security that is stronger than traditional cryptography. If quantum computing becomes a reality, it will result in re-engineering and enhancements in current cryptographic systems.

It will definitely take a while before the large-scale quantum computers become a reality. Experts are trying to figure out cryptographic mechanisms to transition to new schemes that resist quantum attacks. This transition should take place well before our systems become vulnerable to attacks. One should also note that this transition or migration would be a tough problem to solve.

Originally posted on TripWire at https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/featured/will-quantum-computers-threaten-modern-cryptography/

Image source: https://iotpractitioner.com/quantum-computing-series-part-9-cryptography/

Security Nightmare of Driverless Cars

2015-10-26T10:52:00.001+04:00

Security Nightmare of Driverless Cars

The fear of malicious actors taking control of glaring flaws in smart cars is on the rise. This threat is therefore considered to be one of the major technical challenges confronting the automotive industry today.

CAR MANUFACTURERS

Initially, car manufacturers were not very familiar with the cyber security community. From a hacker’s perspective, as more and more cars are connecting to the internet, the attack surface area increases drastically.

Remote access to vehicles could be gained through vulnerabilities in the connected ecosystem. With the series of controlled hacking demonstrations on autonomous vehicles leading to discovery of fundamental flaws, companies are starting to notice the potential security threats.

“Such incidents could demolish public confidence in autonomous vehicles overnight and undo years of costly research and development,” says Jan Mohr, who co-authored a research report on driverless cars.

For complete article visit: TripWire

Digital Footprints and Privacy Concerns

2015-10-16T20:48:00.004+04:00

“It is too difficult to give exact statistics on the amount of data people leave, but confirmed every time we perform an online action, we are contributing to our digital footprint. Out digital footprint are more public than we would ever imagine.”

– Rob Livingstone, IT Consultant

Digital footprints (aka cyber shadow or digital shadow) are the trail and traces on the Internet that we leave behind us as a result of our Web activities. Web sites collect information as you use them, with or without the knowledge of the user. Anytime a user visits and enters data into a Web site they should be aware that the data they enter could be stored, shared or used by the Web site. The data can be anything from surfing Webpages, phone calls, online shopping, updates and uploads on Facebook, Twitter, emails, to word searches on search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. In the cyber world, everything we do, places we visit, and online contents that we read and write are in some way stored and can be traced back to find the activities of the individual.

This information is used for targeting individuals for services and products. It opens up a lot of doors for researching any individual’s backgrounds, characters, interests, activities, behaviors, likes and dislikes. From the perspective of a company, it is going to help them in targeted advertisements, recommendation engines, and to increase their customer base. But unfortunately, hackers and cyber criminals are taking advantage of the same trend. They can access personal and private information of an individual if they are not careful, which eventually leads to identity theft and loss of money.

Cyberpsychology

The amount of time we spend online increases every year, and more information about us appears on the Web each time. In this digital era of a technology-dependent community, we have created two personalities of our own now. They can be differentiated as follows:

Online or digital personality
Offline personality

This differentiation has created a study of its own, termed as ‘Cyberpsychology‘. It is the study of human mind and its behavior in the context of human interaction and communication of both man and computer. It’s about online identity, online relationships, personality types on cyberspace and digital addictions. A person’s real world attitude and behavior may not be the same on the Web.

Though digital psychology is a relatively new discipline, many organizations have started adopting these techniques to influence customer behavior and increase online sales.

Cyber Bullying victimization graph (2004-2014)

The idea that nothing online is real and therefore nothing you do there “counts” is a fallacy. The self-deception is made much easier by hackers because they never have to see the faces or hear voices of their victim. Cyberstalkers and cyber bullying are also increasing drastically. Kids and teenagers are especially subject to social consequences from their digital footprints. Some don’t realize that posts that they put on social media sites are there for everyone to see and that they are there indefinitely. Other people can post inappropriate pictures and other negative posts about them that lead to embarrassment or even worse.

Along with seeing what you post on social media sites, such as comments and pictures, your digital footprint can help a prospective employer validate your resume and find out other information about you. This means that you want your footprint to be clean and truthful.

Hackers can steal your money using your digital footprints

Most common Internet users are not aware of the extent of such issues. Imagine that with just one email, hackers can target or remotely control our systems. The IP address can be tracked from the header of the email IDs. There are various IP address locators available where one can get information about the ISP address to which the particular IP address belongs. Some additional information may be available that indicates the general area that an IP address might reside in. It is not necessary to hide yourself on the Internet; indeed this would be almost impossible. But it is wise to be careful about how you appear online, and to be conscious at all times of how you protect your online reputation.

You can also deliberately set about creating a positive online image. Identify how you want people to see you, now and in the future, and shape your online profile to reflect this. Publish photographs and blogs that present you in a good light and illustrate your values, skills, talents, interests, hobbies, and experiences. Our Internet activities are a cloud of data scattered on servers that are beyond our control. Our digital profiles are regularly bought and sold without our permission.

The trading of personal data by organized criminal gangs which is then used to commit fraud against individuals and corporate organizations has become one of the fastest growing crimes in the world. In the early days of identity fraud, concerns were focused on criminals gathering personal data through techniques including raiding bins, trading stolen passports and online phishing. Times have now changed, and although there are still methods through which personal data can be collected, people are now living their lives more mobile and online and leaving an increased digital footprint behind them. As a consequence, the main and wider threat now comes from two main sources:

Spyware – Malware being placed on PCs and laptops, silently collecting data and feeding it back to criminals.
Cyber Espionage – Hacking into major institutional databases, collecting thousands and sometimes millions of data records at a time.

These methods help criminals to build massive databases, slowly building up individual data profiles until they have enough information to successfully apply for financial credit under someone’s identity or via a fake identity. While 2014 was “The Year of Data Breach”, 2015 is off to a fast start with several prominent data breaches. As per statistics gathered by Breach Level Index, there were more than 2 million records per day that were breached in the year 2014, which means 32 records were breached each second.

Colin Holder, Director of Identity Intelligence, explains:

“Knowing the habits of these criminal data traders, how they interact and the methods through which they transact is the key to intercepting data that will at some point be used to commit fraud. Over the past 7 years we have been monitoring this criminal activity and have built up a database of over 500 million compromised data records, all of which have been, are currently or will be used to commit fraudulent transactions.”

In recent years, consumers have been presented with Identity Theft Protection products that allow monitoring of credit reports to help them detect if their personal data is being used to create additional lines of credit for criminal use. However, the problem of data trading does not just create problems in credit line applications. The growing issue is the build up of hundreds of millions of personal data records being traded over and over again that can enable someone to take over many other aspects of an individual’s life. As we live more of our lives via technology, sharing more data online through PCs and smartphones, these risks are set to compound. Rosemary O’Neil, Privacy Product Innovation Manager at Assurant Solutions says:

“We face a growing problem and constant battle to stay as close to the shadow economy as we can. The best form of personal defence against this problem is early detection of your data having been compromised and then support in understanding what to do about it. The breadth of intelligence that is required just to keep up with the criminals is immense.”

Solving the privacy concern

According to a recent global study by Microsoft, most cyber surfers “still don’t feel they are completely aware of the information that’s being collected about them.” According to Robin Wilton, identity and privacy director for the Internet Society, every day businesses are finding new ways to use this collected intel. The cyber data collection includes:

Authorized collection or active data traces– Data you provide by consent when you register with a Website, such as name, email, phone number and preferences.
Unauthorized
collection or passive data traces – Data taken without your explicit knowledge or consent from your computer and browsing history, location specific data, search keywords and use of smart television.

Create a healthy digital footprint

Inputs to digital footprint include location, time, search results and keywords, content created and consumed, and digital activity and data from server and from the user’s social crowd. Some data can come from deep data extraction and Internet data, such as footprinting. While a digital footprint can be used to infer personal information without their knowledge, it also exposes an individual’s private psychological sphere into the social sphere.

The most effective way to control your active digital footprint is to be careful about the information you share online, the platforms where you share the information (a Web forum, an email, a social network), and who you share information with (public, friends and family, an individual). Be particularly careful about publicly sharing any personal information.

User awareness

As our digital lives continue to evolve, so will the ways in which we leave tracks through cyber space. Taking steps to manage you digital footprint can help ensure cyber criminals never pick up your trail.

If you use social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, or regularly post photos, videos, blogs and comments, make sure to manage your contributions carefully, since much of the information stored online becomes public by default. Unless you change your privacy settings, your social network pages will come up on a Web search. Anyone who finds out enough about you could potentially impersonate you, so be careful about the personal information you make publicly available. Potential employers have also been known to reject applicants on the basis of information discovered online.

User awareness and employee training about digital footprints will help people to know how data about them are collected and shared. For example, a persistent browser based cookie can be easily detected and deleted by a user. But a new type of browser cookie called super cookie is designed to permanently store data on a user’s computer. These are more difficult for the users to detect and delete. They can contain any information from browser history to ad-targeting data.

The digital world has become a very integral part of our life. Properly analyzing each data and word that we share online will help to frame our personality and individuality.

This post was originally published on InfoSec Institute:http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/digital-footprints-privacy-concerns/

References

A new era in protecting your digital footprint (2011) | http://www.assurantsolutions.co.uk/A-new-era-in-protecting-your-digital-footprint.html

Concerned About Your Digital Privacy? You Should Be (2011) | http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/how-to/a12895/why-you-should-be-concerned-about-your-digital-privacy/

Steps towards tracking and managing your digital footprint | http://www.idt911.ca/KnowledgeCenter/Articles/ArticleDetail.aspx?a=%7B5162210D-25A0-4B76-83B9-FA90F00588CF%7D

Digital Footprint | http://digitallearn.org/sites/default/files/cop/Your%20Digital%20Footprint.pdf

How people spend their time online (2013) | http://designtaxi.com/news/359162/Infographic-How-People-Spend-Their-Time-Online/?interstital_shown=1

Digital Dark Age: Information Explosion and Data Risks

2015-10-16T20:46:00.001+04:00

“Old formats of documents that we’ve created or presentations may not be readable by the latest version of the software because backwards compatibility is not always guaranteed,” says Vint Cerf, Google’s Vice President and one the fathers of the Internet.

Digital dark age describes the belief that the rapid evolution of technology will eventually make storage formats obsolete, and data will not be accessible to generations to come. It’s easy to assume that the data we store will somehow be preserved forever. Vint Cerf calls this phenomenon as ‘bit rot‘.

Evolution of Digital Storage

Magnetic tape was the first storage medium that revolutionized the digital industry. It was first introduced in the year 1928. Over the years, magnetic tape can suffer from deterioration called sticky-shed syndrome, caused by absorption of moisture into the binder of the tape, rendering the tape unusable. Storage of 1024 bits of information was successfully implemented in 1948 using electrostatic cathode ray tubes called William tubes. Magnetic tapes were first used to record computer data in 1951 on the UNIVAC-1.

IBM 350 was the first disk drive introduced by IBM during 1956, and was the size of a large wardrobe. It had a storage capacity of 3.75MB. It was during 1966 that Robert H. Dennard invented DRAM cells. Dynamic Random Access Memory technology (DRAM), or memory cells that store bits of information as an electric charge in a circuit. Eventually the size of these storage devices started diminishing. The world’s first 2.5-inch HDD was introduced in 1988, and the first USB flash drive was introduced by the year 2000. Though its capacity was only 8MB, within the next 13 years, we had world’s first 1TB USB flash drive. The storage capacity is increasing exponentially.

With continuous technological development and the introduction of cloud and wireless storage, data storage and transfer has become more convenient than we would have ever imagined a few decades ago.

Data Storage at Risk

The digital dark age is actually not new to the storage industry. Roughly 10 years ago, for example, the Storage Networking Industry Association started talking about the notion of a “100-year archive” to address such issues, though, for the most part, such efforts have “fallen flat”.

Simon Robinson, a Research Vice President with 451 Research says, “In this sense, it’s great that Google and others are starting to at least talk about the risks and potential paths forward.” Lynne Brindley, former British library’s chief executive says, “There were more than 150 websites relating to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, but they vanished instantly at the end of the games and are stored only by the National Library of Australia. Historians of the future, citizens of the future, will find a black hole in the knowledge base of the 21st century.”

Many digital libraries and professional digital archivists like British Library and Internet Archive are making sure that some of today’s most important piece of data are being preserved for future generations. NASA suffered a digital dark age problem with their early space records. For over a decade, magnetic tapes from the 1976 Viking Mars landing were unprocessed because the data was stored in an unknown file format. It took NASA many months to solve the problem by analyzing the recording machine’s functionality. The BBC’s Doomsday Project of 1986, intended to record the state of the nation for posterity, was recorded on two 12inch videodisks. By 2000 it was obsolete and unreadable, since the computer capable of reading the format had become rare. However, the system was then emulated in 2002 by a specialist team.

Deciphering Long Term Storage

With increase in encryption and cryptographic storage mechanisms, decoding the data requires knowledge of the encryption algorithm or mechanism used, which means the encryption system must also be preserved for years to come. What kind of ‘code’ will be most easily accessible to future generations, and what technologies will they have available to help them decrypt a message from the past? If you lose the keys to your house, you can call a locksmith to open the door, or you can break a window in the back. But if you lose the encryption keys to your data, the data could be irretrievable. The danger of data becoming inaccessible even to those with clearance is quite real. A lost encryption key could bring about a disaster on the level of a failed hard drive or a corrupt database. Protecting and securing encryption keys is very vital for data protection and preservation for the future.

Big Data and Information Explosion

Two and a half quintillion bytes: that’s the amount of data generated every day across the globe. We are living in the era of data explosion with every Internet activity, including social networks, wikis, blogs, emails, traffic systems, airplanes, satellite and weather sensors. The challenges we face are in storage, processing, analysis, searching and visualization of these vast amounts of data. Due to this data explosion, 90% of data available today on Earth have been created in the last two years. This can lead to an information overload, where managing and understanding too much data will become very difficult.

As of now, there are approximately 4.4 trillion gigabytes of information in the digital universe. By 2020, this will expand to 44 trillion gigabytes and more. As per statistics collected by DOMO, every minute on Internet, the following data is generated:

Facebook users share nearly 2.5 million pieces of content.
Twitter users Tweet nearly 300,000 times.
Instagram users post nearly 220,000 new photos.
YouTube users upload 72 hours of new video content.
Apple users download nearly 50,000 apps.
Email users send over 200 million messages.
Amazon generates over $80,000 in online sales.

Standards to Follow

“When you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, Tweets, and all of the World Wide Web, it’s clear that we stand to lose an awful lot of our history,” says Vint Cerf. For those unsure of what VHS and Beta mean, it’s akin to CDs giving way to DVDs, the Polaroid giving way to the digital camera, the home stereo and vinyl records morphing into the Walkman then into the iPod Touch and finally today’s smartphones that provide all those movie, music and photo capabilities and more. Imagine a future with rapidly growing new technologies when Microsoft Word, Excel programs, and PDFs may fade away by replacement of other alternative apps.

Industry experts are suggesting the embrace of open standards and open programs. The irony of digital obsolescence, of course, is that digital technology was supposed to make personal effects and memories less ephemeral and more secure.

Bit rots could be due to bits in the files being silently flipped as data traverses computer memory, and being written to disk after. Tiny errors are impossible to correct in files with lots of random data, like pictures. Bit rot is insidious and can cause even backups to fail.

As our data archives become bigger, we will need to pay more attention to bit rot or end up with large numbers of corrupted files.

Physical media damage. Hard drives wear out and go bust and optical discs scratch and grow fungus.
Digital rights management – Some content is licensed only, and needs a key to unlock it. If the key’s gone, then so’s the access to the content.
Fat-fingering – That “oops” moment when you press the wrong key, or unplug the computer when it’s running, and lose everything.
Keep up to date with storage technology, and in the process, migrate data to the new technology. Idaho’s Ada County, for example, is just now migrating from Zip disks, which were introduced in 1995 and stopped being made in 2003, leaving the county scouring eBay and Craigslist to find replacement drives.
While migrating data to new storage formats, save it in newer data formats as well. “A longer term option may be to store your data in the cloud with giant Internet corporations (e.g. Google, Amazon, Microsoft),” as those companies will update storage technology for you, writes Michael Zhang at PetaPixel.
Organizations such as the Library of Congress and the Internet Archive are storing data such as Twitter posts and web pages.
The industry is working on open data formats, rather than proprietary ones, which will make it easier to read data files even if the vendor goes out of business, which adds that the biggest problem the future may have is trying to pick the wheat from the chaff of voluminous digital files.

On the positive side though, with a bit of effort, personal and shared digital culture could be safer than any time in history, as there is no single point of failure. Ultimately, the solution may be what Cerf calls “digital vellum,” or projects intended to preserve data and the means to read it for long periods to come. Stored under the right conditions, vellum documents can reportedly last for more than 1,000 years. Cerf has been promoting this concept for the past year or so.

Effective digital preservation relies, to some extent, on the activities of the creator as well as the archivist. Today those decisions include providing context, using standard and open file formats, organizing material sensibly, and making provisions for rights issues to avoid the problem of orphan works. Though we are not going to face digital dark age soon, we should be aware of the predictions and the damage that might happen in the future. Digital preservations are and will be a topic of discussion in the near future. The digital preservation communities like The National Archives UK, The British Library, DRI, The UK Data Archive and many others have raised concerns over the digital dark age. But unfortunately the truth is, though these communities have been working tirelessly for years to preserve data, there is still lot of data that has not been archived. Prevention of the digital dark age can be achieved only by proper awareness and training by organizations and individuals in the field.

This post was originally published on InfoSec Institute: http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/digital-dark-age-information-explosion-and-data-risks/

References

http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/325/2208

http://www.zetta.net/history-of-computer-storage/

http://www.onextrapixel.com/2013/11/01/a-look-into-the-evolution-of-storage-devices-1956-2013/

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jan/25/preserving-digital-archive

http://aspg.com/10-tips-for-securing-encryption-keys/

http://aci.info/2014/07/12/the-data-explosion-in-2014-minute-by-minute-infographic/

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/32897/20150216/internet-pioneer-vint-cerf-warns-of-bit-rot-and-digital-dark-age-but-dont-panic-yet.htm

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11403558

http://simplicity.laserfiche.com/content/keeping-your-company-digital-dark-age

Shower your loved ones with affection

2011-02-06T12:26:00.000+04:00

John Dewey, one of America's most profound philosopher said that the deepest urge in human nature is "the desire to be important." Lincoln once began a letter saying: "Everybody likes a compliment."
William James said: "The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated."
Dewey and James said something similar, the desire to be important and the craving to be appreciated. Craving is a strong desire for something. Everybody wants to be a great human. We got to to keep one thing in mind, nothing can be achieved by criticizing, condemning or complaing others.

Showing love and respect to others will help in yielding a healthy relationship

Instead of condemning people, let's try to understand them. Let's try to figure out why they do. That's a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism, and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness.
"To know all is to forgive all"- Nixon Waterman

Bob Hoover, a famous test pilot and frequent performer at air shows, was returning to his home in Los Angeles from an air show in San Diego. At three hundred feet in the air, both engines suddenly stopped. By deft maneuvering he managed to land the plane, but it was badly damaged although nobody was hurt. Hoover's first act after the emergency landing was to inspect the airplane's fuel. Just as he suspected, the World War II propeller plane he had been flying, had been fueled with jet fuel rather than gasoline. Upon returning to the airport, he asked to see the mechanic who had serviced his airplane.

The young man was sick with the agony of his mistake. Tears streamed down his face as Hoover approached. He had just caused the loss of a very expensive plane and could have caused the loss of three lives as well.You can imagine Hoover's anger. One could anticipate the tongue lashing that this proud and precise pilot would unleash for that carelessness. But Hoover didn't scold the mechanic; he didn't even criticize him. Instead, he put his big arm around the man's shoulder and said, "To show you I'm sure that you'll never do this again, I want you to service my F-51 tomorrow."

I had the opportunity to read "Father Forgets" by W. Livingston Larned while going through Dale Carnegie’s best seller "How to win friend & Influence People". This short story brought tears in my eyes when i first read it.

W. Livingston Larned said: I have given personal permission to thousands who wished to read it from school,
church, and lecture platforms. It has been 'on the air' on countless occasions and programs. Oddly enough, college periodicals have used it, and high-school magazines. Sometimes a little piece seems mysteriously to 'click.' This one certainly did."

Click on the link below to listen:
http://www.box.net/shared/fo0slr6h2b

FATHER FORGETS

Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside.

These are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.

At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, "Goodbye, Daddy!" and I frowned, and said in reply, "Hold your shoulders back!"

Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive -and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!

Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. "What is it you want?" I snapped.

You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.

Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding - this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.

And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bed-side in the darkness, and I have knelt there,

ashamed!

It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: "He is nothing but a boy - a little boy!"

I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother's arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.

- W. Livingston Larned

It was really a wonderful narration...isn't it?. So its prime time to put things into action. Lets start spreading love and respect to our kith and kin first. And see to it that you don't just follow it at home. If you are a teacher, show affection to your students. If u r the boss, show friendliness to your workers. If you are the king, show love to your people..."Lets bring the change"

Purpose - WHY? + HOW? = SUCESS

2011-02-01T14:30:00.000+04:00

The value of thinking about "WHY"....
Benefits of asking "Why?" will help you in understanding what you are trying to accomplish.

It defines success.
It creates decision making criteria.
It aligns resources.
It motivates.
It clarifies focus.
It expands options.

In order to reach our short term or long term goals, we have to analyze the purpose of the action to be performed.

Purpose defines Success

Lets jump on to the "How" part. Once we have gone through all the stages such as defining goals, aligning resources, clarifying focuses etc. Then comes the implementation. i.e We need to know how those resources and goals can be attained.

We all are familiar with the most brilliant, complex and the creative planner in world: our brain. Knowingly or unknowingly we are in ourselves a planning machine. We are planning when we get dressed, go out for dinner or even talk. Human mind instantaneously plans and organizes actions.

For example: when we plan to go out to dinner. Our mind will go through the following components randomly

Purpose and Principles.

Your intention is your purpose here. Principles create boundaries of the plan. We probably would have thought about the standard of food, service, affordability, convenience and comfort.

Outcome Visioning and brainstorming.

Now, we will be thinking regarding: What restaurant can we go to? How can we get there? Is it open tonight? Will it be crowded? Can we reach on time?...These questions creep into the mind once you commit to some outcome that hasn't happened yet. Once you have generated a sufficient amount of ideas and details..

Organizing.

i.e, getting ready, finding the restaurant....

our mind will begin to sort priorities and sequence of events/actions.

Planning the next actions to be performed.

Focus on the next actions that you need to take to make the first component actually happen.

These components can be mapped to any real world problems irrespective of their complexity.

This is how i'm planning to get my things done. David Allen's "Getting Things Done" has helped me in sorting short term and long term goals with purpose and principles. This is my first post and i know its pretty big. But its worthy to share ideas.

David Allen's : Getting Things Done

I primarily wrote this down to map these ideas with my views on health and fitness. I love this saying

There are three types of people in the world: Those who get things done, those who watch things getting done, and those who wonder what's going on....

I wish we all fall in the first category. Keep in mind.....A Healthy mind leads to a healthy body....