Penetration testing, occasionally pentest is the process of attempting to gain access to resources without knowledge of user-names, passwords and other normal means of access. The goal is to ensure that the software performs reliably and securely under reasonable and even unreasonable production scenarios.

The process involves an active analysis of the system for any potential vulnerabilities that could result from poor or improper system configuration, both known and unknown hardware or software flaws, or operational weaknesses in process or technical countermeasures. This analysis is performed from the position of a potential attacker and can involve active exploitation of security vulnerabilities. A successful penetration may resulted in obtaining or subverting confidential documents, pricelists, databases and other protected information.

There are a variety of reasons for performing a penetration test. One of the main reasons is to find vulnerabilities and fix them before an attacker does. Higher-risk vulnerabilities that resulted from a combination of lower-risk vulnerabilities exploited in a particular sequence may be discovered in this case. Penetration test also provides evidence to support increased investments in security personnel and technology. Having a second set of eyes check out a critical computer system is a good security practice. Another reason for a penetration test is to assess the magnitude of potential business and operational impacts of successful attacks and give the IT department at the target company a chance to respond to an attack.

Penetration tests can be conducted in several ways. The most common difference is the amount of knowledge of the implementation details of the system being tested that are available to the testers. Black box testing assumes no prior knowledge of the infrastructure to be tested. The testers must first determine the location and extent of the systems before commencing their analysis. At the other end of the spectrum, white box testing provides the testers with complete knowledge of the infrastructure to be tested, often including network diagrams, source code, and IP addressing information. In this case, a penetration tester will be given user-level access. The goal would be to elevate the status of the account or user other means to gain access to additional information that a user of that level should not have access to.

Although most penetration testing methods have traditionally been somewhat ad-hoc, that has changed in the last several years. Today penetration testing is performed in a far more methodical manner. The Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual (OSSTMM) is a mecahnism for performing security tests and metrics of a target scope. The goal of OSSTMM is to provide a rigorous methodology for penetration testing that is consistent, repeatable, and reliable. It includes technical details of exactly which items need to be tested, what to do before, during, and after a security test, and how to measure the results. New tests for international best practices, laws, regulations, and ethical concerns are regularly added and updated.

The main thing that separates a penetration tester from an attacker is permission. The penetration tester will have permission from the owner of the computing resources that are being tested. At completion of penetration testing, detailed report, which includes recommended actions for improving security measures are presented to the system’s owner. One common structure for these reports is to include an Executive Summary, a Management Summary that includes some high-level operational details such as server IP addresses and what needs to be fixed immediately, and a Technical Summary with very specific results and procedural countermeasures to reduce risks.

There is no such thing as perfect security. It is very unlikely that all the security issues are discovered in one set of penetration test. For example, an organization passed a penetration test conducted yesterday. However, a brand new vulnerability in some Exchange mail servers that were previously considered secure is published today. In this case, this issue may not be included in the report. As such, penetration test is a continual effort an organization needs to ensure that it’s network and system are securely implemented all the time.

The protocol is defined in RFC (Request For Comments) by IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). It is widely used for monitoring the health and welfare of network equipment like routers, switches, servers, workstations, printers and more. UDP port 161 and 162 are used in SNMP. UDP port 161 for sending and receiving requests, and port 162 for receiving traps from managed devices.

SNMP is based on the manager/agent model consisting of an SNMP manager, an SNMP agent, a database of management information, managed SNMP devices and the network protocol.

A SNMP managed device is a network node that implements an SNMP interface that allows unidirectional (read-only) or bidirectional access to node-specific information with Network Management System (NMS). Example of managed device includes switches, routers, server, printer or copier machines.

A SNMP agent is a network-management software module that resides on a managed device. An agent has local knowledge of management information and translates that information to or from an SNMP specific form.

A SNMP manager or NMS have the task of monitoring or managing a group of managed devices. NMSs provide the bulk of the processing and memory resources required for network management. One or more NMSs may exist on any managed network.

The local management information on the managed device are defined as variables. The variables accessible via SNMP are organized in hierarchies. These hierarchies, and other metadata are described by Management Information Bases (MIBs).

1) Set the Guest OS type to Other > Linux
2) Go in the VMWare BIOS at boot time (F2), then disable the floppy and serial ports.

Worth a try, good luck!

According to WikiAnswers, law is important because it acts as a guideline as to what is accepted in society. Without law there would be chaos and conflicts between social groups, society, construction, etc. Laws are everywhere and it is pivotal that we follow them. Law allows for easy adoption to change that occur in society.

Getting quality legal service is a costly affair and it needs lot of follow-up too. If a person lacks the basic legal knowledge, he may have to sacrifice his interests and may sustain huge loss in the course. Today’s professionals and educated should possess the basic legal knowledge as they may not know as to when they get an idea or opportunity to start their own organization.

Basic legal knowledge and expertise not only essential to entrepreneurs and business people, but also any individual. Various aspects of a business, such as setting up the business, buying or leasing a place for the business, hiring employees for the business, involve legal implications. As such, while lawyers may be sought for legal advice in respect of legal matters, it is important for an entrepreneur to know the basic legal things like what is law, what is court, the difference between contract and agreement, what is company law, what are the features of company, what is tax, how is tax computed, the legal procedure, the practice and etc.

Businessmen with a better understanding of what the law does and does not require, could relax and might be able to prevent at least some basic problems from arising in the first place. However, learning law is not an easy task! Having good reference books on law is important in mastering this arena.

More and more people are beginning to understand the impact of going green by adopting energy saving measures recycling or consuming only organic products to save our planet. Environmental consciousness is even beginning to extend into the business environment and having an environmentally friendly workplace is becoming more than just a trend today.

It is the time that each individual takes up the cause personally and works towards saving the environment. We have the power to control most of our choices and, therefore, the impact we create: from where we live to what we buy, eat, and use to light our home to where and how we vacation. All these activities can have global impact. Although there are small but valuable contributors we can make individually towards creating an eco-friendly environment and make this world a better place to live in.

As for example, we can eat more organic foods to decrease the amount of pesticides we consume. Choosing organic foods means helping promote organic agriculture and responsible land use. It helps protect the environment from overloading with toxic chemicals. We can also grow our own delicious, healthful organic food. Start small, even with just a single plant or two. Buying local means supporting the local economy and reducing the greenhouse gas emissions required to get food from its origin to your plate.

In the workplace, set computers to energy-saving settings and make sure to shut them down when leaving for the day. Lights and projector should also be switched off after attending a meeting at the meeting room. Installing efficient light bulbs is just one way to cut down on energy consumption and costs. It has been observed various times that a lot of unattended papers are lying next to the printers. As such, try only to print the most necessary documents / mails at work. Place recycle bins in high-traffic areas, such as copy or lunch rooms, to promote recycling of paper, plastics, bottles and cans.

Better transportation means less global warming. Try to take alternative methods of transportation (walk, ride a bike, or take public transportation) or organize an internal carpool. This will help slow global warming and help stave off our date with peak oil.

“Going green” means to pursue knowledge and practices that can lead to more environmental friendly and ecologically responsible decisions and lifestyles, which can help protect the environment and sustain its natural resources for current and future generations. If we intend to leave our future generation with the same standard of living we have enjoyed, we must preserve the foundation of that standard of living. Remember, every single thing we do every day has an impact on the planet — good or bad. It is your choice to select what action to take. Make sure we minimize our impact on the Earth’s climate & environment.

Don’t forget to take a moment today to think about how we can contribute to make our planet a little more healthy.

In the case of web site design, in order for users to view an image, they need to download it. In this case, slow internet connection or limitation of mail box size is something to be considered. In the worst case, an email system may reject to receive any email that is too big in size. Graphics in their natural state are too big to be quickly downloaded over the Web, so you have to compress them. As such, file size is usually the most important criteria in choosing a format for the web, or to send images by email.

The other important criterion when choosing an image format is image quality. There is typically a trade off between file size and quality – you can compress an image to a smaller size, however, you may need to sacrifice its quality. So, having a fair balance between loading time and quality of the image is not an easy task.

GIF — Graphics Interchange Format

GIF is an indexed format. This means that it uses a fixed list of colors instead of encoding every color separately.

Graphic images are normally not continuous tone. Graphics are drawings, not photos, and they use relatively few colors, perhaps less than 16 colors in the entire image. GIF is very efficient for images with a small number of colors, like a five-color corporate logo.

GIF files can be saved with a maximum of 256 colors (This is called as 8-bit color – 256 is 2 to the 8th power). Typical photographs have many more colors than that, so saving a photograph in GIF format will usually result in very poor quality. Even worse, with 256 colors, the file will usually be larger than a full-color JPEG version of the same image! The lesson is clear: don’t use GIF for photographs, only for simple icons and logos.

The GIF format offers two very useful features: transparency and animation. With transparency, you can make an icon with a clear background. This means that if you place a transparent GIF in a blue table cell, the background color of that image will turn blue. GIF only allow single-bit transparency. This means it does not allow for partial transparency; a pixel is either fully transparent or not transparent at all.

GIF can be animated – which allows you to create images that move. This is another reason GIF became so successful. Most web browsers support animated GIF images.

GIF can also be interlaced. This is a way of saving a graphic so that it loads progressively — appear first with poor resolution, low-detail version is loaded, and then successive layers of detail are added. This allow the viewer to get a quick idea of what the picture will look like while waiting for the rest. This is beneficial in many situations, as it gives the impression of a speedier download.

JPEG – Joint Photographic Experts Group

The 16-bit JPEG format was designed with photographs in mind. It is capable of displaying millions of colors at once, without the need for dithering, allowing for the complex blend of hues that occur in photographic images.

Photo images have continuous tones – adjacent pixels often have very similar colors, for example, a blue sky might have many shades of blue in it. Normally this is 24 bit RGB color, or 8 bit grayscale, and a typical color photo may contain perhaps 100,000 colors, out of the possible set of 16 million colors in 24 bit RGB color. As such, for sharing full-color photographs, the best format to use is usually JPEG, not GIF.

A JPEG file is usually having an extension of “.jpg” or “.jpeg”. JPEG images are highly compressed and are encoded in full color, so it’s a very efficient format for photographs or other images with a wide range of colors.

JPEG permits a greater degree of compression than the GIF alternative, enabling quicker downloading times for larger graphics. However, the drawback to this format is that the compression is lossy. That means that every time you read a JPEG file, make a change, and write the file back to disk, the image quality degrades slightly. Do not use JPEG for images you plan to edit over and over. But as a format for exchanging photographs with other people, JPEG excels. In practical use, a compression setting of about 60% will result in the optimum balance of quality and filesize, without letting the lossy compression do too much damage.

PNG — Portable Network Graphics

PNG(pronounced Ping) is a relatively new format, originally intended as a replacement for GIF because of legal issues regarding the GIF format.

PNG can be used for full-color images, like JPEG, or for indexed images, like GIF. In full-color mode, it is not nearly as efficient as JPEG; a PNG will be much larger than a JPEG of the same image. However, PNG is the only lossless format that web browsers support – if you want to display a photograph exactly without loss on the web, PNG is your choice. This makes full-color PNG a very good format for storing original copies of your own images if you might want to edit them later.

If you have an image with large areas of exactly uniform color, but contains more than 256 colors, PNG is your choice as PNG supports 16 million colors, not just 256. Nearly all web browsers support PNG, so it is safe to use PNG images on web pages. PNG supports transparency, like GIF, and it also supports partial transparency so you can have translucent areas.

However, some browsers (such as Internet Explorer) do not support PNG transparency, so transparent PNG images on a web page may not always display properly.

PNG does not support animation. For animated images, GIF is pretty much the only choice.

Summary

Choosing the right file format to save your images is of vital importance. Each file format is suited to a specific type of image, and matching your image to the correct format should result in a small, fast-loading graphic. Web pages require JPEG or GIF or PNG image types, because that is all that browsers can show. On the web, JPEG is the best choice (smallest file) for photo images, and GIF is most common for graphic images especially if the image is black and white. High quality images and personal artwork that is not black and white should be in PNG.

1. Fix in your mind the exact amount of money you desire. It is not sufficient merely to say “I want plenty of money.” Be definite as to the amount. (There is a psychological reason for definiteness which will be described in a subsequent chapter).
2. Determine exactly what you intend to give in return for the money you desire. (There is no such reality as “something for nothing.)
3. Establish a definite date when you intend to possess the money you desire.
4. Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire, and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action.
5. Write out a clear, concise statement of the amount of money you intend to acquire, name the time limit for its acquisition, state what you intend to give in return for the money, and describe clearly the plan through which you intend to accumulate it.
6. Read your written statement aloud, twice daily, once just before retiring at night, and once after arising in the morning. AS YOU READ— SEE AND FEEL AND BELIEVE YOURSELF ALREADY IN POSSESSION OF THE MONEY.

In his poem “My Wage”, Jessie B. Rittenhouse has stated that:

I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store.

For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.

I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have willingly paid.

The greatest achievement was, at first, and for a time, but a dream. To make your dream come true, you need to believe that it will be. The state of mind must be BELIEF, not mere hope or wish.

http://clipnabber.com/

Just paste the Youtube web page address (URL) for the video into the Paste URL and then click FLV download link to download the video in FLV format.

The FLV file downloaded can then be view using FlvPlayer4Free. FlvPlayer4Free is a freeware that allows users to easily play their favourite FLV files in the hard disk or from internet.

1. csh shell version (by editing ~/.cshrc or ~/.tcshrc configuration files)

setenv PRINTER your-printer-name

2. bash shell version (by editing ~/.bashrc configuration file)

export PRINTER=your-printer-name

If CUPS is available in your system, you may issue the following command to have this change:

lpoptions -d printer-name

The ‘d’ option sets the default printer.

In the case of Ubuntu Linux, you can just go System->Administration->Printing to set up a printer as the default printer. Just click the Make default button on the Settings tab.