We’ve recently made the ‘Always use https’ setting the default behavior in Gmail (the default used to be http). Here’s some background: If you sign in to Gmail via a non-secure Internet connection, like a public wireless or non-encrypted network, your Google account may be more vulnerable to hijacking. Non-secure networks make it easier for someone to impersonate you and gain full access to your Google account, including any sensitive data it may contain like bank statements or online log-in credentials. Accordingly, we enable the ‘Always use https’ option in Gmail by default. HTTPS, or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, is a secure protocol that provides authenticated and encrypted communication.

To disable or re-enable this feature in Gmail:

1. Sign in to Gmail.
2. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page.
3. Set ‘Browser Connection’ to ‘Don’t use https’ or ‘Always use https.’
4. Click Save Changes.
5. Manually change the URL to http://mail.google.com to start accessing Gmail via http.

Please note that selecting ‘Always use https’ will prevent you from accessing Gmail via HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). If you trust the security of your network, you can turn this feature off at any time.

If you use a public computer to check your email, it’s also important to end each of your Gmail sessions by clicking Sign out at the top of any Gmail page and to close all Gmail browser windows.

League 2009

Royal Challengers Bangalore vs

Rajasthan Royals Live Streaming

Berners-Lee was speaking at the launch of the World Wide Web Foundation, which aims to ensure that everyone in the world benefits as the web evolves.

In his speech he referred to the way fears that the LHC could destroy the world spread like wildfire online. As the BBC puts it, he explained that “there needed to be new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources.”

He went on to say that he didn’t think “a simple number like an IQ rating” is a good idea: “I’d be interested in different organisations labelling websites in different ways”. Whatever process is used to hand out the labels, it sounds like a bad idea to me.

Berners-Lee himself directed us towards some of the its biggest problems:

“On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable…A sort of conspiracy theory of sorts and which you can imagine spreading to thousands of people and being deeply damaging.”

There are plenty of arguments online already about whether Scientology is a cult. I find it unlikely anyone will be keen to step in and label sites on either side as not to be trusted. Others might reasonably argue that all religions – whether established or not – should come with a warning message.

As for wading in to put a stop to conspiracy theories, I can’t image anything their proponents could benefit from more.

Berners-Lee also mentioned the system would help people find out the real science behind, for example, the LHC’s risks. You might think handing out rating for sites about science would be easier, with publishers of peer-reviewed science, for example, receiving a top rating without problems.

But there will be papers in the archives of any journal that have been entirely superseded. And a whole lot more that present results that are valid, but can be misleading to some readers. Web licences to ensure that people only read sites they can handle are the next logical step.

Fortunately it’s much more likely that the whole idea will quietly be forgotten, which will at least prevent Berners-Lee receiving one of the first “potentially misleading” badges for thinking it up in the first place.

Let’s hope the World Wide Web Foundation and its laudable goals have a rosier future.

That’s now developed into a full blown bitchmeme, with Milo expounding on his argument – and responses from many different bloggers and attendees. Cate Sevilla of BitchBuzz says we are seeing a decline in women in technology, while Huddle’s Zuzanna Pasierbinska-Wilson pulled together some rough data. Lisa Reichelt says perhaps women who work in technology PR, marketing, journalism and so on should start defining themselves as “in technology” (a dubious avenue to go down, I think) while Alan Patrick at Freecloud believes “there is clearly something deeply visceral in some men about admitting all this stuff“.

TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher points out that the panel wasn’t meant to rehash this argument, but explore what opportunities are being missed as a result of the drastic gender imbalance.

Over the last few years I have headed profoundly into the tech space and I have been puzzled at the dearth of women involved. It really doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to be honest, and from time to time it pops up in conversations on and off-line. Plus, I think it’s something tech startups should address, not because they are inherently sexist – far from it I would say – but there are huge advantages to be had from tapping into this relatively untapped talent.

I’d agree. Yiannopoulous’ argument seems solipsistic at best, and at worst wilfully ignorant of the evidence. The point isn’t about what the current system has produced; it’s whether there are institutional gaps that could be fixed or interesting areas that aren’t being exploited. The British stereotype of geeks as young, male (and usually white) is self-reinforcing. In any other consumer industry where women were heavy – or even dominant – users, you’d be mad not to have plenty of women on board. Why shouldn’t technology be the same?

And though Gmail’s spam filters are among the best available, there is a chance that, at some point, you’ll receive unwanted email – and it might even be from a Gmail address. In such an instance, your best bet is to use Gmail’s own reverse email search; it’s easier for Gmail, after all, to search its own records than to have an outside source looking in. See what you’re able to discover about the sender. (Gmail is especially attractive to those wishing to remain very much anonymous, because the headers in any given piece of mail are stripped of any and all IP information. Thus, the stalker or hacker believes himself or herself to be secure.)

Even if you don’t have much luck, or any at all, you are far from out of options. In fact, now would be a good time to check out one of the many free independent reverse email search engines available online. When using these sites, the key is to remain tenacious – because it may take a good while before you produce results. Giving up is the last thing that you want to do; after all, even if the reverse email search engine you are using isn’t having any success at all, bear in mind that there are those services which, for whatever reason (and there exist a few possibilities), have more success than others!

If you are still having little to no success, or if the email received was of a particular harmful or malicious nature, you might want to consider contacting a third party for some needed extra help. I am referring to professional investigators who specialize in online matters, since they have tools at their disposal not necessarily available to you. Every step taken online leaves a ‘footprint’ – data that can be tracked and which will inevitably lead to the person who has been taking the steps all along. This is true even if the person in question is using dial-up or a handful of proxies; while these factors could slow down a search, they are never able to stop a search in its tracks altogether!

Private investigators often have access to what is known as the “deep web” – information not available through conventional means such as, say, a simple Google search. So always remember that the only way to ensure your subject gets away is for you to run out of steam and simply give up. Otherwise, you should inevitably be able to find the information that you are looking for! Best of luck!

Toshiba Europe announced the NB200 mini notebook which is basically the Europe version of its dynabook UX.  As the succesor of the NB100, NB200 is equipped wit heither an Atom N270 1.6GHz or N280 1.66GHz processr and 945GSE graphics chipset. It has a 10.1-inch LED-backlit LCD display.

Other features include 160GB hard drive, WiFi, Bluetooth, 0.3 Megapixel webcam, and three USB 2.0 ports. It will be released in May 2009 for GBP319.

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc (without quotes)

See “PIC1″ for assistance*

Find the file “hosts” and remove the read-only attribute*

See “PIC2″

Apply and click ok to save*

Open the file with notepad,
Scrol to the bottom.

Put this number “127.0.0.1″
Give spaces and type in the website address

See “PIC3″

After this, Select Save

Don’t forget to apply the read-only attribute.

Good Luck

A worm usually exploits some sort of security hole in a piece of software or the operating system. For example, the Slammer worm (which caused mayhem in January 2003) exploited a hole in Microsoft’s SQL server. “Wired” magazine took a fascinating look inside Slammer’s tiny (376 byte) program.

Worms normally move around and infect other machines through computer networks. Using a network, a worm can expand from a single copy incredibly quickly. The Code Red worm replicated itself more than 250,000 times in approximately nine hours on July 19, 2001 [Source: Rhodes].

The Code Red worm slowed down Internet traffic when it began to replicate itself, but not nearly as badly as predicted. Each copy of the worm scanned the Internet for Windows NT or Windows 2000 servers that did not have the Microsoft security patch installed. Each time it found an unsecured server, the worm copied itself to that server. The new copy then scanned for other servers to infect. Depending on the number of unsecured servers, a worm could conceivably create hundreds of thousands of copies.

The Code Red worm had instructions to do three things:

• Replicate itself for the first 20 days of each month
• Replace Web pages on infected servers with a page featuring the message “Hacked by Chinese”
• Launch a concerted attack on the White House Web site in an attempt to overwhelm it [Source: eEye Digital Security]

Upon successful infection, Code Red would wait for the appointed hour and connect to the www.whitehouse.gov domain. This attack would consist of the infected systems simultaneously sending 100 connections to port 80 of www.whitehouse.gov (198.137.240.91).

The U.S. government changed the IP address of www.whitehouse.gov to circumvent that particular threat from the worm and issued a general warning about the worm, advising users of Windows NT or Windows 2000 Web servers to make sure they installed the security patch. .

A worm called Storm, which showed up in 2007, immediately started making a name for itself. Storm uses social engineering techniques to trick users into loading the worm on their computers. So far, it’s working — experts believe between one million and 50 million computers have been infected .

When the worm is launched, it opens a back door into the computer, adds the infected machine to a botnet and installs code that hides itself. The botnets are small peer-to-peer groups rather than a larger, more easily identified network. Experts think the people controlling Storm rent out their micro-botnets to deliver spam or adware, or for denial-of-service attacks on Web sites.

In the next section, we’ll look at patching your system and other things you can do to protect your computer

Someone created the virus as a Word document and uploaded it to an Internet newsgroup. Anyone who downloaded the document and opened it would trigger the virus. The virus would then send the document (and therefore itself) in an e-mail message to the first 50 people in the person’s address book. The e-mail message contained a friendly note that included the person’s name, so the recipient would open the document, thinking it was harmless. The virus would then create 50 new messages from the recipient’s machine. At that rate, the Melissa virus quickly became the fastest-spreading virus anyone had seen at the time. As mentioned earlier, it forced a number of large companies to shut down their e-mail systems.

The ILOVEYOU virus, which appeared on May 4, 2000, was even simpler. It contained a piece of code as an attachment. People who double-clicked on the attachment launched the code. It then sent copies of itself to everyone in the victim’s address book and started corrupting files on the victim’s machine. This is as simple as a virus can get. It is really more of a Trojan horse distributed by e-mail than it is a virus.

The Melissa virus took advantage of the programming language built into Microsoft Word called VBA, or Visual Basic for Applications. It is a complete programming language and it can be programmed to do things like modify files and send e-mail messages. It also has a useful but dangerous auto-execute feature. A programmer can insert a program into a document that runs instantly whenever the document is opened. This is how the Melissa virus was programmed. Anyone who opened a document infected with Melissa would immediately activate the virus. It would send the 50 e-mails, and then infect a central file called NORMAL.DOT so that any file saved later would also contain the virus. It created a huge mess.

Microsoft applications have a feature called Macro Virus Protection built into them to prevent this sort of virus. With Macro Virus Protection turned on (the default option is ON), the auto-execute feature is disabled. So when a document tries to auto-execute viral code, a dialog pops up warning the user. Unfortunately, many people don’t know what macros or macro viruses are, and when they see the dialog they ignore it, so the virus runs anyway. Many other people turn off the protection mechanism. So the Melissa virus spread despite the safeguards in place to prevent it.

In the case of the ILOVEYOU virus, the whole thing was human-powered. If a person double-clicked on the program that came as an attachment, then the program ran and did its thing. What fueled this virus was the human willingness to double-click on the executable.

Now that we’ve covered e-mail viruses, let’s take a look at worms.

The second factor was the use of computer bulletin boards. People could dial up a bulletin board with a modem and download programs of all types. Games were extremely popular, and so were simple word processors, spreadsheets and other productivity software. Bulletin boards led to the precursor of the virus known as the Trojan horse. A Trojan horse is a program with a cool-sounding name and description. So you download it. When you run the program, however, it does something uncool like erasing your disk. You think you are getting a neat game, but it wipes out your system. Trojan horses only hit a small number of people because they are quickly discovered, the infected programs are removed and word of the danger spreads among users.

Floppy disks were factors in the spread of computer viruses.

The third factor that led to the creation of viruses was the floppy disk. In the 1980s, programs were small, and you could fit the entire operating system, a few programs and some documents onto a floppy disk or two. Many computers did not have hard disks, so when you turned on your machine it would load the operating system and everything else from the floppy disk. Virus authors took advantage of this to create the first self-replicating programs.

Early viruses were pieces of code attached to a common program like a popular game or a popular word processor. A person might download an infected game from a bulletin board and run it. A virus like this is a small piece of code embedded in a larger, legitimate program. When the user runs the legitimate program, the virus loads itself into memory­ and looks around to see if it can find any other programs on the disk. If it can find one, it modifies the program to add the virus’s code into the program. Then the virus launches the “real program.” The user really has no way to know that the virus ever ran. Unfortunately, the virus has now reproduced itself, so two programs are infected. The next time the user launches either of those programs, they infect other programs, and the cycle continues.

If one of the infected programs is given to another person on a floppy disk, or if it is uploaded to a bulletin board, then other programs get infected. This is how the virus spreads.

The spreading part is the infection phase of the virus. Viruses wouldn’t be so violently despised if all they did was replicate themselves. Most viruses also have a destructive attack phase where they do damage. Some sort of trigger will activate the attack phase, and the virus will then do something — anything from printing a silly message on the screen to erasing all of your data. The trigger might be a specific date, the number of times the virus has been replicated or something similar.

In the next section, we will look at how viruses have evolved over the years.