Thoda sa main...(A little bit of me)

First cut preview of Firefox 3.5 in Hindi

2009-06-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

While downloading Firefox 3.5 I just noticed the new version was available in Hindi too. So I tried my hands on the Hindi locale of the Firefox 3.5 & here are some sneak previews

Main Window

File Menu

They tried translating everything

Tools > Options

But seems like were not able to succeed

An open Wedding Invitation to all my friends and followers online

2009-04-13T01:32:00.000-07:00

Wedding Website: http://shaadi.rohit11.com
Date: 27th April 2009
Place: Territorial Army Institute, Maidan, Kolkata
Time: 7pm Onwards

I'm TRYING to do a online streaming of the celebration with help of few friends for those who can't make it to the event. Details on the website.

All you need to do is RSVP in time if you can come so that I can make necessary arrangements.

Indian IT act made little easy for common man

2009-03-11T23:46:00.000-07:00

Understanding Indian IT act (& amendments) made little easy for common man

Crime: A mobile phone or computer or any electric device is stolen.
Section to be applied: 66B.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 1 lakh.

Crime: Data owned by you or your company in any form is stolen.
Section to be applied: 66B.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 1 lakh.

Crime: Data or computer or mobile phone owned by you is found in the hands of someone else.
Section to be applied: 66B.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 1 lakh.

Crime: A password is stolen or used by someone else.
Section to be applied: 66C.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 1 lakh.

Crime: An e-mail is read by someone else.
Section to be applied: 66C.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 1 lakh.

Crime: A biometric thumb impression is misused.
Section to be applied: 66C.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 1 lakh.

Crime: An electronic signature or digital signature is misused.
Section to be applied: 66C.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 1 lakh.

Crime: A web page is created in your name and you have not authorized it.
Section to be applied: 66D.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 1 lakh.

Crime: A Phishing e-mail is sent out in your name, say maligning someone or asking for donations.
Section to be applied: 66D.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 1 lakh.

Crime: An Orkut profile is created in your name.
Section to be applied: 66D.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 1 lakh.

Crime: An e-mail id is created on a website like hotmail or yahoo in your name.
Section to be applied: 66D.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 1 lakh.

Crime: On an Internet chat site a false nickname is used.
Section to be applied: 66D.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 1 lakh.

Crime: SMS’s are sent out in your name.
Section to be applied: 66D.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 1 lakh.

Crime: Clicking of an obscene photograph without a person’s consent or knowledge.
Section to be applied: 66E.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 2 lakh.

Crime: Transmitting of an obscene photo of a person unknowingly.
Section to be applied: 66E.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 2 lakh.

Crime: Placing a person’s obscene photo on a web site.
Section to be applied: 66E.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 2 lakh.

Crime: Sending a terror email.
Section to be applied: 66F.
Punishment: Jail term up to life.

Crime: Misusing a Wi-Fi connection for acting against the state.
Section to be applied: 66F.
Punishment: Jail term up to life.

Crime: Planting a computer virus that acts against the state.
Section to be applied: 66F.
Punishment: Jail term up to life.

Crime: Conducting a denial of service attack against a government computer.
Section to be applied: 66F.
Punishment: Jail term up to life.

Crime: Stealing data from a government computer.
Section to be applied: 66F.
Punishment: Jail term up to life.

Crime: Tampering with certain computer source code.
Section to be applied: 65.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 2 lakh.

Crime: Wrongful loss or damage caused by the use of technology by anyone.
Section to be applied: 66.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine up to 2 lakh.

Crime: All activity relating to pornography in general.
Section to be applied: 67.
Punishment: Jail term up to 10 years and/or fine up to 1 lakh.

Crime: Any activity relating to child pornography.
Section to be applied: 67B.
Punishment: Jail term up to 5 years and fine up to 10 lakhs.

Crime: Every technology user must maintain logs of all e-activity that takes place.
Section to be applied: 67C.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and/or fine.

Crime: You must allow the state to install software on your computers or mobile phone that will monitor all e-activity.
Section to be applied: 69.
Punishment: Jail term up to 7 years.

Crime: You must allow the state to decrypt all communication that passes through your computer or network.
Section to be applied: 69.
Punishment: Jail term up to 7 years.

Crime: You must provide access to everything stored on your computer or mobile phone to the relevant authorities.
Section to be applied: 69.
Punishment: Jail term up to 7 years.

Crime: You must block access to sites that the state decides.
Section to be applied: 69A.
Punishment: Jail term up to 7 years.

Crime: In a sense all computer users are ISP’s. We must allow the state to monitor and decrypt all traffic that passes though our home grown networks.
Section to be applied: 69B.
Punishment: Jail term up to 3 years and a fine.

Crime: Service providers like Blackberry and others must hand over the decryption master keys to the state.
Section to be applied: 69.
Punishment: Jail term up to 7 years.

Got this via email, source not very clear. This is a suggestive list, advised to recheck; DON’T take these as final verdict of supreme court ;)

UPDATE (24th Mar 09') : Ministry of IT has finally published the amendment online on the website http://mit.gov.in
Direct Link: http://mit.gov.in/download/it_amendment_act2008.pdf
Now its _more_ official now

Punetech is...

2009-03-05T23:41:00.000-08:00

I was thinking of writing a blog on the first B'day of PuneTech and tried some online tricks

Google: "PuneTech is..."

# PuneTech is a free, non-commercial website run by volunteers to disseminate information about information technology and software engineering in Pune.

# punetech is of course a great service

# PuneTech is a service co-ordinated by the people who run punetech.com

# Punetech is worth USD $8 Million in #pulling-a-leg-or-then-maybe-not

# PuneTech is managed by Navin Kabra.

# PuneTech is a non-commercial site that collects information about all interesting technology in Pune. PuneTech makes no profits on PuneTech merchandise.

# PuneTech is a non-commercial, by the community, for the community site.

# punetech is using Twitter

# PuneTech is a community portal exclusively focused on the innovative IT companies and startups in Pune.

# Punetech is a blog started by highly experienced fellow technology enthu, Navin Kabra and he is being supported by excellent team like Amit Paranjape, Manas and others

And once upon a time I twitted the
# @punetech is a boon to Pune tech community. A real good source for all the geeks info. @ngkabra I'm missing such a good stuff in Delhi man. (twit)

Happy Bday PuneTech, its indeed a Boon.

chat protocol

2009-02-25T08:48:00.000-08:00

Scenario 1: You forgot(or don't want) to go offline and you are projecting your screen on projector with some serious discussion in a busy conference room and bang! an old friend messages you on messenger "Hi Sexy"

Scenario 2: You are sitting with someone say Mr. A and another friend say Mr. B sends you a message about Mr. A. You know what kind of message I'm talking about

These kind of sudden and uninvited chat messages can disturbing at times. So in one of my previous organization we had a protocol for chatting. I found it very helpful and slowly many of my friends have started following it.

Here's how it goes, PLEASE try to follow the same when chatting with me and may be others too. This will make the online life bit comfortable for you and your friends

[?] To start a conversation, send a question mark only. Yes a simple " ? " only. This can mean anything as per your understanding like "Can we chat?" or "are you there?".

Now the answer to this question can be yes no or later

[Y] So if the answer is YES, the person replies " y ". Which means "I'm comfortable chatting with you at this moment, tell me"

[N] If the answer is NO for reasons like "I'm busy", or "Can't chat" or whatever, the person replies " n ". If you get a " n " DO NOT send any more message, not even "OK, I'll ping you later" It like saying DO NOT DISTURB

[5] or for that matter any number like " 10 " - "15 " means busy right now, lets talk after 5 (or 10-15) minutes. This comes very handy when you want to chat but because you are preoccupied in something which you can't leave in between.

[ ] If in case there is no reply from the other side, there can be 2 reasons. Too busy to say a " n " or not near the computer. The best option in this case is treat it as " n " and DO NOT disturb

Looking at so many shortcuts, we devised another shortcut. It was " b " this time which means BYE that comes at the end of conversation.

I strongly recommend all my friends to use this protocol while starting a chat with me. Share the protocol with your friends and see the difference.

How far you are from Obama...

2009-01-21T23:23:00.000-08:00

I was just going through my LinkedIn account and noticed that Barack Obama is just 2nd degeree away from me :))

I know this might not make a lot of sense but still...

How far is he from you???

Cheat Sheets: Networking, Hacking, Security, Administration, Tools

2009-01-13T17:41:00.000-08:00

Here is a bunch of CheatSheets which might be useful from time to time to use as a reference:
# TCP/IP and tcpdump Cheat Sheet - SANS.org
# Google Hacking and Defense Cheat Sheet - SANS.org
# Intrusion Discovery Cheat Sheet Windows - SANS.org
# Intrusion Discovery Cheat Sheet Linux - SANS.org
# SQL Injection Cheat Sheet - ha.ckers.org
# Cross Site Scripting Cheat Sheet - ha.ckers.org
# Web application Cheat Sheet - secguru.com
# Linux Security Quick Reference Guide - Linuxsecurity.com
# LINUX Administrator’s Quick Reference Card - cheat-sheets.org
# Oracle Security Cheat Sheet - red-database-security.com
# Nmap & Nessus Cheat Sheet - secguru.com
# Security Incident Survey Cheat Sheet - zeltser.com
# Initial Security Incident Questionnaire for Responder - zeltser.com
# BGP, EIGRP, First Hop Redundancy, 802.1X, IPsec, IPv4 Multicast, IPv6, IS-IS, OSPF , STP, tcpdump, Wireshark, Common Ports, IP Access Lists, Subnetting, Markdown, MediaWiki, MPLS,QoS, VLANs, Cisco IOS, Physical Terminations Cheat Sheets - packetlife.net

If you have more, post them in comments & I'll update the list :)

Life in (Delhi)metro !!!

2009-01-10T05:34:00.000-08:00

I came to Delhi 2 weeks back. Wanted to write a lot but not getting enough time.
Actually not getting enough time to write a blog post, twittering is still on at full speed (@rohit11)

Lets divide the post into sections
WINTER:
Freak, Don't even talk about that. I have spent my 3 years in Meerut which is some 70km from here. Have tasted this north Indian winter, but in last 6+ years Pune weather has pampered me and now this is feeling at extreme. What Delhi winter (or north Indian winter) is like
# Tip of your nose will be chilled like anything
# Toes will be cold even after they are locked in shoes for hours together
# Hands will be cold even inside gloves. Best option is sit on them to keep them warm.
# You'll be wearing those "body warmers". Till now I used to see them TV commercials only, but now I bought them too.
# One quilt/blanket is never sufficient

FOG:
# Your morning/late evening flights will be delayed
# Your not so late evening flights will also be delayed(ref: my trip to Ahmedabad)
# Driving with parking indicator on
# Special fog lamps on cars, and in some cases yellow cellophane sheets on the car headlamp ;)

METRO:
# Delhi metro is nothing different from Mumbai's local. Just this one has AC ;)
# Same kind of rushing/pushing/struggling crowd
# The only good is that the doors get closed
# On Rajiv Chowk (CP), there are barriers and security officials to assist you to board the train.
# If too much crowded, then they will assist the door closer too by pushing passengers inside and for the automatic doors to close, that was a funny scene

FOOD:
# Delhi is a place for foody like me ;)
# Don't bother about the dripping butter on our paratha
# Delhi-cious food, no doubt
# Wonderful non-veg, ultimate cooks live in North India only
# Yummy road side snacks
# Don't miss "Thank God Its Friday" @ CP

CITY:
# Is more green than last time I saw it
# Infrastructure is developing very fast, some people thank commonwealth games for it.
# Metro (as discussed) is a wonderful public transport, very decent & serious service
# Roads are very nice & wide, atleast as compared to Pune
# Houses, (metro syndrome) less space and people have tuned to live with it.
# Cars, not even a single one is without a scratch or a dent, not even a new one. Some people put small dent as soon as they buy a new car. some kind of shagun (lucky charm). I have seen this myself.
# Pollution, yes it is there, more of suspended particle than smoke. City full of dust.

That's enough about Delhi now, I might post a few updates in this series, not very sure though ;)

Goodbye Pune, Stay classy Pune

2008-12-26T17:48:00.000-08:00

I never thought I'll be posting something long and boring like this but feeling like putting few words on this subject.

I'm leaving Pune and shifting to Delhi for few years. For those who know I worked as Director Technology for the Commonwealth Youth Games held in october 2008 and same is the reason why I'm moving to Delhi. I'll be working for the Commonwealth Games to be held in October 2010.

Its been 6 years and 1 quater I lived in this classy city Pune. Have seen this city growing like anything and now its feeling bad to leave this city of geeks.

I love Pune because:

# City of Geeks: You always bump onto a few geeks everytime you are out. We organized many BarCamps and other Camps here and noticed that the talks/crowd of Pune were more inclined towards geeky stuff than general talk-talk stuff.

# City of Good Girls: no more comments ;)

# City of Wannapreneurs: I love the wave of Pune's special wannapreneurs. Everyone(nearly) is jumping up with a new concept and doing something very interesting. Saw rise and fall(very less though) of some very nice startups.

# City of Wannabe's: People in Pune are there to learn any damn (technical) thing they can. I found so many such people here who are ready to do anything to learn something new. And when it came to my hacking zone I found more number of such energetic people who are ready to bunk classes and offices just to learn something cool. Ya I'm not talking about roadsense and some other stuff :) That might take some time.

# City of Foodies: I loved this charateristics of Pune. Though you'll not find a lot of roadside fun eating joints, but I really like the kind of eatouts Pune has :P~ Someone who is foody like me will always find Pune as a fun place to be in. Starting from typical Puneri food to all the different cuisines. From Dots ice-cream to Naturals. From Gulabjamun to Basundi. From handi dahi at sinhagadh to goodnight at ajuba. STOP IT ROHIT!!!

# City of Communities: ClubHack, Barcamp, Blogcamp, Phpcamp, Ideacamp, Jugcamp, developergarage, null, firefox gang, twitter gang, I'm sure I'm mising a lot of names here.

# City of Non-Tech Communities: How can I forget my Royal Enfield gang "RoadShakers". Then we had Pune Eatouts, Wine Tasting Club, Pune Trekkers, Adventure Sports Clubs.

# City of Enthu Students: If you are in Pune and need a quick helping hand in any thing, just get in touch with a 1-2 students and see how the whole work is done. I loved the enthusiasm of students community here to DO something.

# City of Wonderful Night Life: I remember coming home at 2am or 4am from parties and still it used to be so safe. So many beautiful places for wonderful night life in Pune. So many people in the wee hours at the parties.

# City of Art and Culture: People here still have time to spend on art and culture. I know people leaving jobs just to do paintings & photography. Attended so many concerts so many many big artists. Even watched marathi plays here.

# City of my great friends: I made a great circle of of friends here in Pune. Every hangout I used to bump on to some new and some old friends. Would it be OK to name a few here??? Let's not hurt readers with a LOOOOONG list of names here. But all my friends know how much thankful I'm to them for being in my life.

I know I have listed things those were of my interest and there can be hundred such lists by different people and thats the thing I love about Pune. A city for everyone, always there to welcome one and all with open arms (ya I know this statement went little bollywood style). I can still write a lot about Pune but that will surely put you to sleep.

Its little hard to leave Pune and its forcing me to plan my comeback in this city. I'll be back Pune. I'll miss Pune and seems like Pune will miss me to.

GoodBye Pune, Stay Classy Pune

UNtrusted Certificates from UNtrusted CA

2008-12-23T22:16:00.000-08:00

Following HDMoore's twit I stumbled on this case of Man-in-the-middle attack with a valid SSL certificate from a shady reseller.

Eddy Nigg was able to buy a certificate in the name of mozilla.com from a reseller of comodo named 'Certstar'.

In response of this issue, comodo says

That reseller's ability to sell Comodo certificates has been suspended while we
investigate why they are apparently not fulfilling their contractual obligations
to us. We revoked your certificate for mozilla.com.

If this is the situation, why do an attacker need to work hard to do arp poisoning and other tricks to do an MITM. Phishers will be happy to use this kind of shady resellers.

Or maybe they are already using these kind of stupid CAs to get a valid certificates.

Call me crazy/paranoid /fanatic or whatever you want to but I've deleted COMODO from both of my browsers (IE & FF). Chrome uses the same from IE so it became easy for me ;)

This is indeed scary, very scary...

Indian IT Act Ammendment Bill

2008-12-23T07:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday on 22nd of December 2008, Lok Sabha and today on 23rd December 2008, Rajya Sabha passed the Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006"

It was passed by Rajya Sabha also within one minute. See extracts from Rajya Sabha Bulletin

2-04 p.m.
(3) The Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2008, as passed by Lok Sabha. Shri A. Raja, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, moved motion for the consideration of the Bill. The motion for consideration of the Bill was adopted.
Clauses 2 to 49, the First Schedule and the Second Schedule were adopted.
Clause 1, the Enacting Formula and the Title were adopted.
2-05 p.m.
The motion moved by Shri A. Raja that the Bill be passed was adopted and the Bill was passed.

The details of the these amendments which are in addition to the original 2006 copy can be downloaded from here

Messing with perl

2008-12-18T22:41:00.000-08:00

Ooh not me, but thinking of doing it soon

But XKCD is so true again :)

I'm thinking of messing with both PERL & Python.
Don't be amused, I'm OK, healthy and fine. Just want to do some dirty scritping

ClubHack on NDTV

2008-12-17T10:15:00.000-08:00

NDTV took an interview and a few bytes on 6th December in ClubHack but somehow they telecasted it as wardriving report.

Few clarifications here.
1: its not a group of students-turned-hackers
2: not even teenagers, butno harm if someone is reducing my age by 10 years or so

Powerstatus for Windows Mobile

2008-12-04T19:46:00.001-08:00

I found this tiny(absolute tiny) and wonderful utility for windows mobile.

It uses top 2 pixel row of your screen and shows you the battery as well as memory status. A quick look at the phone will give you an idea that how much battery is remaining and if you have enough memory free or not.

See the top 2 pixel of the screenshot

Name: powerstatus.exe
Size: 3584 bytes
License: Freeware
Download: http://freewareppc.com/utilities/powerstatus.shtml

Put this in your windows mobile startup and have fun. I'm loving it :)

ClubHack2008

2008-12-04T18:41:00.000-08:00

One day to go for the India's second hackers' convention

Date: 6th & 7th December 2008
Place: Pune
Venue: International Convention Center, SB Road. Address
Schedule: Schedule
Registration: Registration

Wardriving Pune

2008-11-21T18:24:00.000-08:00

On 10th November 2008, ClubHack with support of Cyber Crime Cell of Pune Police conducted a Wardriving in Pune, Maharashtra.

This Wardriving aimed at analysis of wireless network security in Pune city at common places like ITparks, residential areas, market areas, hotels, airport etc.

To our amaze, we found nearly 81% of Pune's wifi to be insecure ( I count WEP as insecure)

Find the report and analysis @ http://wardrive.in/

“Free Internet Access” “Free Public WiFi” The Viral SSID

2008-11-07T11:22:00.000-08:00

Ever wondered what is this “Free Public WiFi” or “Free Internet Access” wireless network visible in most of the places?
These are known as Viral SSID, don’t expect it to be a free access to internet :)

Read more about Viral SSID on ClubHack blog

No to all

2008-10-30T17:24:00.000-07:00

Working on windows XP I have faced this problem a hunder times. While copying files from one folder to another where the some of the file already exists we see this "Confirm file replace" dialog box.At times when there are many duplicate files, it feels stupid to keep clicking "No" or pressing "N" on keyboard. If Microsoft can keep a "Yes to all" button, why can't they keep a "No to all".

OK, here's the solution. Simply press and hold "Shift" key and then click on "No" button. Bang!
This combination works as "No to all".

Happy Copy/Paste :)

My take on OpenID

2008-10-29T21:14:00.000-07:00

Google announced so called OpenID launch which scared me again about OpenID
I'm not totally against OpenID concept, I'm just paranoid about it at this stage.

Here's my take on

Risks With OpenID

I'm back (online)

2008-10-19T19:37:00.000-07:00

Hey Friends,
I'm back online after a small pause of 10-15 days. I wished I could have gone offline like Tarun, Moksh , Harsha and many others who take a break, disconnect themselves from computer/Internet world and enjoy their non-digital life. But this pause of mine was little different.

I was not away from my laptop or Internet or cellphone or computer industry but I was still offline tied up in something very different. So busy that was not in a position to twit also, my last twit was on 4th of October :)
As the Director Technology of Commonwealth Youth Games Pune 2008, I was juggling with a lot of stuff and was busy managing a very different technology. Soon I'll be posting some details about this games time technology.

Though I live in Pune, but I spent my last 15 days in a hotel near the stadium, no time to go home :(. As of now blogging from the hotel only and will be checking out today.

I apologize from all my friends who tried to contact me and I was not in a situation to give proper time to them, I apologize for missing some big things in between which includes book launch of Preeti, wedding of a close friend, anniversary of a friend, 2 birthdays, a barcamp and a lot of personal stuff (meeting prospects, you know which kind of prospects).

Thanks to all for understanding and thanks to all who sent me SMS wishes during the games, my friends are great.

AND now its time to do the wrapup of the games and prepare for ClubHack08. Life will be little busy again, but lets keep in touch.

unlimited hosting space

2008-09-18T18:56:00.000-07:00

Now this is cool!
I use this hosting provider called "dreamhost" which gives a lot of webspace and bandwidth. When I signed up few years back I got some 200gb space and a few TB bandwidth which is increasing weekly like your gmail account space and now my account is above 600gb and >6TB in bandwidth :) .

Now this company has turned 11 and offered UNLIMITED space for new signups.
Along with that they offer existing customers to create promo code and offer extra discount to new signups.
So I created a promo code "plus50" which will give you $50 flat discount on any hosting plan you buy from dreamhost.

I loved this hosting company for few things
# Wonderful support.
# Out of the league working style.
# Friendly team
# They give you free SSH accounts so power users can do a lot more
# I haven't faced any downtime, so for me its ZERO downtime
# One can host unlimited domains on this space, no limitation. I host some 80+ domain on this
# Unlimited: space, bandwidth, email, domains, mysql, SSH account.
# One click install of: joomla, wordpress, mediawiki, phpbb, zencart and many more.

So if you are interested in buying a LOT of space for yourself online, go ahead and act fast to enjoy this unlimited offer. Use promo code plus50 to get extra $50 discount.

Mom's guide to secure home wifi connection

2008-09-17T11:38:00.002-07:00

Ok! Have been hearing a lot of noise about wifi connection getting attacked and misused. So thought of writting a small howto for securing home wifi device.

Steps:

# Open the configuration of your home wifi device. Generally its done by opening the IP address of your wireless router in the browser
# Login to this configuration page and go to device setting
# Change the defaul password of this device, i need not tell you what is called as strong password
# Go to wireless setting or wireless security setting
# Select WPA (or WPA-PSK, WPA-Personal, depending on your device model)
# Put a strong password here too.
# Done

Remember, one should NOT use "WEP" or "OPEN" configuration

Example screenshots to help you

Linksys

Netgear

Zyxel

Obviously this is not 100% security because nothing is 100% secure, But this will surely secure your home wifi from 80% of the attacks.

CHROME : Google's new open source browser to be released today

2008-09-01T22:02:00.000-07:00

Google announced the launch of its new browser called chrome. It will be launched in US on tuesday, thats end of the day today.

Glimps of the product was released via comic (which I think is a nice way to communicate).

BTW this comic was created by Scott McCloud of classic Understanding Comics fame.

Comic: http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

Official Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html

Product Homepage: http://gears.google.com/chrome/ (speculated)

UPDATE: Insider information says product homepage will be www.google.com/chrome once released

Will this browser kill Firefox: Not possible

Will this browser kill IE: Might not, thats the default browser in the most popular and "default" OS

Will this browser kill opera etc: Time will tell.

Let's wait and watch how good/bad is this new browser.

New Features in Nmap

2008-08-27T22:22:00.000-07:00

In Fyodor’s talk at Blackhat he talked about the research he’s been doing, and the ways that research has helped him to improve Nmap with lot many enhancements. Let's have a look at the most interesting one.

Abstract:

One of Fyodor’s main focuses was improving Nmap’s speed through improved
efficiency. One of the best ways to do this is to allow for scans of fewer
ports, but this requires that you choose those ports carefully so as to miss as
little as possible. So what he did, through trial and error and tons of scans,
was figure out the most frequently open ports on the Internet.
Here they are for each protocol:
TCP
80
23
22
443
3389
445
139
21
135
25
UDP
137
161
1434
123
138
445
135
67
139
53
Ok, so now that we know what the top 10 ports are, wouldn’t it be cool to be
able to scan based on them? And what if we wanted to scan the top 50? Or the top
100?

Fyodor has built this in with the --top-ports option. It’s
wicked nice, and you invoke it like this:
nmap –top-ports 100 $target
And of course, 100 is just an arbitrary number, so you could just as easily
do this:
nmap –top-ports 3000 $target
As you increase this number you obviously gain more and more accuracy, but
because the ports are organized according to the most commonly found on the
Internet, you can scan relatively few and still have good chances of finding
everything open.

Stats from his presentation on TCP port efficiency using --top-ports:
–top-ports 10: 48%
–top-ports 50: 65%
–top-ports 100: 73%
–top-ports 250: 83%
–top-ports 500: 89%
–top-ports 1000: 93%
–top-ports 2000: 96%
–top-ports 3764: 100%
This means for just curiosity scans I can go with --top-ports 1000 and get roughly 93% accuracy in a fraction of the time.

read about more options here.

Horrible flight from Delhi to Jaipur

2008-08-26T20:05:00.000-07:00

As promised in http://twitter.com/rohit11/statuses/895182069 here is the report of my flight experience from Delhi to Jaipur.

The day started nicely where my driver brought me from Connaught place to airport in flat 14 minutes. Though the roads were clear at 6 in the morning, but still 14 minutes is too less for this distance. It was fun.

I reached airport, and after all the formalities and waiting we started boarding. The bus at the boarding gate took us to a deserted bay where only small planes, helicopters and airforce cargo planes were standing.

There we got to know that we are about to fly in an ATR-42-320 50 seater plane. Its not that I haven't flew in an ATR but this was a bit scary. The first glimpse of it made me feel that I’m going for skydiving or an air force exercise. It was due to the look of front gate also with that strappy net guard.
Here is a view from my window the flight standing next is a similar one (ATR-42-320)
And this is the strappy net thing which made me feel like skydiving. And yes thats the elder aunt standing outside the cockpit.

When I grabbed my seat I noticed that the hook of table tray is broken the tray is fixed like this under the seat cover. This reminded me of the movie "final destination" :(. Even the news paper kept in the seat pocket was 2 days old.

When I looked out at the fan on both the side, I noticed the right fan was revolving faster than the left one. First I thought it’s just my fear. But later it turned out to be an actual problem (maybe)
I saw this girl standing outside when we were boarding but later on she turned out to be some instructor or ground crew member without a uniform or proper props. She was signaling the pilot to start and take a turn as if she was signaling a truck and guiding the parking of it.

Anyway we reached the runway and were about to start the taxi when the pilot announced that due to some technical problem they are returning to the bay. Now this added to my scare. Pilot explained that they are seeing some warning signal for the left fan (see I was right) and they are going to check whether it’s an issue or just a false alarm.

When we reached the bay, this truck sign babe turned out to be some flight engineer or whatever. She came in, checked the status and went out. And we started our way back to runway without a word from the pilot. Fan speed was still uneven. Now along with me other co-passengers were scared and someone yelled to know the status. The pilot said that the situation is "under control" and we are going to take off now.

All my life when airhostess gives those safety instructions on emergency landing on water etc, I always thought when I'll get a chance to do that. But this time I was not at all in that mood. Here during the safety instruction the elderly aunt (hostess) said that we don't have automated oxygen support system, if anyone need it kindly contact us. I suppose they had spare oxygen cylinders :((

Anyway in the second time we were able take off from ground. I was still very much scared. The complete process made us one hour late than scheduled time. The whole journey we were flying in low altitude but that I suppose is dependant on the model of plane. That was good because we were able to see a lot of stuff down.
Then came the time on serving breakfast, the elderly aunt brought a basket of muffin and puffs. It was served in just a tissue paper, no plates, and no condiments nothing. And then water was served. The first thing I did in this case was checking the seal of bottle and packing date. Atleast that was all ok.

In the midair, a slightest of turbulence sent a shiver down my spine.

Anyway the flying time was just 50 minutes and we somehow landed at Jaipur airport.
LAND Ho!!!!
Don't ask me about the feeling when I landed my foot on earth. It was like completing an adventure sport with only scare and no fun. This was my flight, I clicked it with happiness of landing safely at Jaipur
Day before of my flight, one of my friend suggested me not to take a flight to Jaipur as the driving time is only 3 hours with wonderful roads, but I had already booked so ignored her suggestion. In the flight I was thinking, why I ignored her. I should have taken the road route, in any case it took me same time in the flight too.