After recently having configured the new netgear wireless router for our home, there was a huge increase in the firewall alerts that I started getting. Every 2 seconds there would be a new alert. I withstood the annoyance for some time and then after fantasizing that this might be some malcode related activity, I fired up Wireshark and logged all packets from my computer.
I must add that the firewall alerts had a pattern. All alerts blocked were from a specific port on my computer to the router. The port which was associated with the alerts on my end was running svchost.exe. My firewall would block a Syn packet from my computer to the router's port x and then after a second or two would block a similar packet to port x+1 and so on.
Looking at the packet capture files, I noticed that these connections had something to do with UPnP. Once I determined that, the rest was easy. I realised that I had to turn off the UPnP feature on the router to stop all the unecessary alerts. After doing that my poor stressed out firewall had some relief at last !!
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Thursday, October 19, 2006
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
August Phishing Trends Report - US and number of phishing sites
"August Phishing Trends Report" (http://www.antiphishing.org/reports/apwg_report_August_2006.pdf) released by APWG recently, states:
I find this surprising because I expected that it would be the easiest to shut down phishing sites in the US when compared to any other country and thus US would host the least phishing sites.
Any insights?
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In August, Websense® Security Labs saw a continuation of the top three countries hosing phishing websites. The United States remains the on the top of the list with 27.88%. The rest of the top 10 breakdown is as follows - China 14%, Republic of Korea 9.59%, France 4.07%, Japan 3.66%, Germany 3.23%, Australia 3.06%, Russia 2.46%, Canada 2.22%, Sweden 2.04%.
I find this surprising because I expected that it would be the easiest to shut down phishing sites in the US when compared to any other country and thus US would host the least phishing sites.
Any insights?
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Sunday, October 15, 2006
Lakes Around Fairfax - Lake Thoreau
Lake Thoreau:
This pretty lake is surrounded on almost all sides by communities. Houses on its shores thus have their own private entrances to this lake. This lake in Reston is well maintained. Because of all the houses that are on its shores the trail that surrounds this lake is not exactly on its banks. Now and then the trail touches its banks and then looses itself amidst very pretty houses with landscaped mini gardens. The whole place is very well maintained.
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This pretty lake is surrounded on almost all sides by communities. Houses on its shores thus have their own private entrances to this lake. This lake in Reston is well maintained. Because of all the houses that are on its shores the trail that surrounds this lake is not exactly on its banks. Now and then the trail touches its banks and then looses itself amidst very pretty houses with landscaped mini gardens. The whole place is very well maintained.
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Lakes Around Fairfax - Burke Lake
Lakes Around Fairfax - Lake Fairfax
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
YouTube, Google and "the beta mystery"
Google has acquired YouTube. I am interested in knowing as to how long it would take for the successful YouTube to be labelled as another Google "beta" product !
As of 23:25 EST, 10/10/2006, YouTube is yet not beta. Would be interesting to notice it changing to YAGBP.
(YAGB -> Yet Another Google Beta Product)
I really don't understand this "beta mystery". Should use google itself to search for answers. Do you know something?
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As of 23:25 EST, 10/10/2006, YouTube is yet not beta. Would be interesting to notice it changing to YAGBP.
(YAGB -> Yet Another Google Beta Product)
I really don't understand this "beta mystery". Should use google itself to search for answers. Do you know something?
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Sunday, October 08, 2006
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Social Networking Sites and e-mail harvesting
It must surely be every spammer's dream come true.
On Orkut, a social networking site, I noticed in some of the special interest forums, a person would post a message which would be similar to:
"I have this. If you want it, reply with your e-mail id to this post."
(On one forum I saw such postings, wherein the person promised to send a mp3 file of an advertisement which ran on TV years back.)
And all the people interested in receiving a copy of this file would post their e-mail ids ! What a way to harvest some email ids, if a spammer uses this idea.
People posting their email ids openly, beats the system of being able to control who can view the email ids which has been incorporated in Orkut.
People......!!
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On Orkut, a social networking site, I noticed in some of the special interest forums, a person would post a message which would be similar to:
"I have this
(On one forum I saw such postings, wherein the person promised to send a mp3 file of an advertisement which ran on TV years back.)
And all the people interested in receiving a copy of this file would post their e-mail ids ! What a way to harvest some email ids, if a spammer uses this idea.
People posting their email ids openly, beats the system of being able to control who can view the email ids which has been incorporated in Orkut.
People......!!
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Tuesday, October 03, 2006
LisaNova - Competition
It was once said (and perhaps believed in) - "The means are more important than the ends". That meant that the action was more important than the fruit. But something killed that....and that was this world's definition of "competition" !!
Watch this hilarious youtube video on competition:
Personally, I feel the "Harvard guy vs. the Yale girl" is exceptional !
What about you, do you believe that the end is more important than the means?
Have you won even though you played by the rules? Or in today's competitive world, players who play by the rules never win?
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Watch this hilarious youtube video on competition:
Personally, I feel the "Harvard guy vs. the Yale girl" is exceptional !
What about you, do you believe that the end is more important than the means?
Have you won even though you played by the rules? Or in today's competitive world, players who play by the rules never win?
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Saturday, September 30, 2006
Dawn
From the archives...
====================
With a cup of tea in her hands, she opened the drapes covering the passage to the balcony. It wasn't morning yet. Just a faint glow was visible, foretelling the onset of the daily wonder, the breaking of dawn.
She got outside onto the balcony to watch this drama unfold. She had seen it a number of times before but since she liked watching the sun slowly appear and spread its light all around, here she was early in the morning looking at nature's canvass again.
"Brrr,....its cold" she thought. She drew her dress closer and sipped her tea.
This pre dawn cold is different. It washes the slumber away and refreshes the mind.
A gentle breeze played with her hair strands.
Out far there, the gentle orange had spread. It was seeking to wipe out the black sky. And slowly light was expanding its domain. It was the end of a night and the beginning of a new day.
She was looking at all this with great intent. She failed to notice him behind. Suddenly she felt his arms around her waist. He was there to join her and watch this spectacle.
They spoke nothing, not even looked at each other. Both looked at the skyline, at the unfolding drama. The play of colours, the birth of light, the soft cold breeze and the silence of the night being replaced with the day's activity filled their senses.
And of course they had each other too.
It was a new day.
(c) Deapesh.
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====================
With a cup of tea in her hands, she opened the drapes covering the passage to the balcony. It wasn't morning yet. Just a faint glow was visible, foretelling the onset of the daily wonder, the breaking of dawn.
She got outside onto the balcony to watch this drama unfold. She had seen it a number of times before but since she liked watching the sun slowly appear and spread its light all around, here she was early in the morning looking at nature's canvass again.
"Brrr,....its cold" she thought. She drew her dress closer and sipped her tea.
This pre dawn cold is different. It washes the slumber away and refreshes the mind.
A gentle breeze played with her hair strands.
Out far there, the gentle orange had spread. It was seeking to wipe out the black sky. And slowly light was expanding its domain. It was the end of a night and the beginning of a new day.
She was looking at all this with great intent. She failed to notice him behind. Suddenly she felt his arms around her waist. He was there to join her and watch this spectacle.
They spoke nothing, not even looked at each other. Both looked at the skyline, at the unfolding drama. The play of colours, the birth of light, the soft cold breeze and the silence of the night being replaced with the day's activity filled their senses.
And of course they had each other too.
It was a new day.
(c) Deapesh.
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Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Zen Poetry
From the book: "Ryokan Zen Monk poet of Japan", translated by Burton Waston.
Wow !!
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Tag: Literature Poetry
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In this village
coming and going
there are so many people -
but when you are not among them,
it's lonely.
coming and going
there are so many people -
but when you are not among them,
it's lonely.
When you are busy
you send word that you can't come
because you are busy
and when you are not busy
you send no word at all.
you send word that you can't come
because you are busy
and when you are not busy
you send no word at all.
Though travels,
take me to
a different stopping place each night
the dream I dream is always,
the same one,
of home.
take me to
a different stopping place each night
the dream I dream is always,
the same one,
of home.
Wow !!
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Tag: Literature Poetry
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Friday, September 15, 2006
Sad Parking
Across my window is a parking lot. It is spacious and there is never a need for more space in it. Consequently it also has parked cars that have been parked from a long time, though a few cars are of the daily kind.
It is a sad parking lot.
It is the dead end of a road which connects the apartments in the apartment block. Most of the cars which come to this parking lot, dont come to park here. Most of the cars come here to back up, to change their direction and it is this which makes the parking lot sad. It feels sad that people use it more like a road, a piece of tar on which destinations are reached and not use it as a destination, as a resting place for the cars. It was intended that way, as a resting place as a destination. But people drive in and then turn back and leave immediately, without stopping. It feels bad, it feels used in a way it was never meant to be used. And thus also becomes lonely, sadness trusts loneliness as a friend, they usually travel together in silence for long times.
And that is the reason why the parking lot across my window is sad and lonely.
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Tag: Literature Prose
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It is a sad parking lot.
It is the dead end of a road which connects the apartments in the apartment block. Most of the cars which come to this parking lot, dont come to park here. Most of the cars come here to back up, to change their direction and it is this which makes the parking lot sad. It feels sad that people use it more like a road, a piece of tar on which destinations are reached and not use it as a destination, as a resting place for the cars. It was intended that way, as a resting place as a destination. But people drive in and then turn back and leave immediately, without stopping. It feels bad, it feels used in a way it was never meant to be used. And thus also becomes lonely, sadness trusts loneliness as a friend, they usually travel together in silence for long times.
And that is the reason why the parking lot across my window is sad and lonely.
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Tag: Literature Prose
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Something...
Harvesting emails and chain mails
This Sophos post reveals an interesting hoax !
I used to be amazed by the email ids that would be accessible to me through chain mails. Seems like the spammers have got a nice idea here.
A better twist would be to send an email with the following text:
"(whatever-service-name) has decided to stop its (whatever-free-service-name) as many people are using it, which is more than what was expected. So (whatever-service-name) is going to close down the free service and will make it a commercial product. If you want to stop this, please forward this email to as many friends as you can and send a copy (CC) of the mail to (whatever-spammer's-email-id). Thank you"
What is the bet that such a mail will get mass circulated and each person will send a CC of the mail to the spammer !!!!
People !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Tag: Technical
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The new spam campaign asks for chain letters to be forwarded to the spammers (who are posing as a researcher called Gemma). However, Sophos warns that rather than conducting a study of chain letters, the recipients are actually planning to gather innocent peoples' contact details for the purposes of spam and identity theft.
I used to be amazed by the email ids that would be accessible to me through chain mails. Seems like the spammers have got a nice idea here.
A better twist would be to send an email with the following text:
"(whatever-service-name) has decided to stop its (whatever-free-service-name) as many people are using it, which is more than what was expected. So (whatever-service-name) is going to close down the free service and will make it a commercial product. If you want to stop this, please forward this email to as many friends as you can and send a copy (CC) of the mail to (whatever-spammer's-email-id). Thank you"
What is the bet that such a mail will get mass circulated and each person will send a CC of the mail to the spammer !!!!
People !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Tag: Technical
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LonelyGirl15 again...
Excerpts from this news item:
The most important ingredient being the "confessional style". If one does not fool the viewer into believing that all that is being communicated are the innermost feelings, the viewer would not want to watch more. Serials on TVs and movies are for that.
The fact that viewers believed that LonelyGirl15 was being truthful to the medium and was sharing her real day to day thoughts made them all value her conversations. If they knew that this was all made up, they would not hear her out often.
I wouldn't agree that it was a bore though I agree with the other points made above.
And to end this post:
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Tag: My Thoughts
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There's a formula for YouTube "stardom": video camera, bedroom, cute young woman, confessional style.
The most important ingredient being the "confessional style". If one does not fool the viewer into believing that all that is being communicated are the innermost feelings, the viewer would not want to watch more. Serials on TVs and movies are for that.
The fact that viewers believed that LonelyGirl15 was being truthful to the medium and was sharing her real day to day thoughts made them all value her conversations. If they knew that this was all made up, they would not hear her out often.
LonelyGirl15 was an enigma wrapped in a mystery disseminated via e-mail, hyperlinks and RSS (a format that sends news to websites Web sites) feeds. Yet her story, which few of the hundreds of thousands who made her "channel" a YouTube top 10 destination seemed to notice, was kind of a bore, as it had been with Brookers and Emmalina before her: a little bit of teenage ennui and rebellion, a lot of charm and intimacy, real or fabricated, and, always, the gentle suggestion of sex.
I wouldn't agree that it was a bore though I agree with the other points made above.
And to end this post:
But most of the fans, it seems, weren't buying the removal of the line between probably-fictional-pretending-to-be-real and definitely-fictional. The LonelyGirl discussion areas were full of the kind of anger that people display when, for instance, they learn that a girlfriend is not who she pretended to be.
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Tag: My Thoughts
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Thursday, September 14, 2006
X-Men 3, Ramayana, Mahabharata and the definition of power
Know what the X-Men 3 reminded me of?
Mahabharata/Ramayana Serials I saw as a kid on Doordarshan !!!
In one of the scenes the mutant who can control "coldness" and the mutant who can control "heat" fight it out. This scene reminded me of the picturization of the Indian epics in serials. In those serials, fights between the big and mighty warriors was pretty similar. One would shoot out an arrow which would spit out fire and then the other warrior would shoot an arrow which would neutralize the first arrow. Such a fight would go on until one of the them would be able to shoot an arrow which the other warrior could not neutralize and thus would be killed.
It is very interesting to note that that in these epics which are very very old (Ramayana - 7323 B.C, Mahabharata 1900 B.C. - according to particular references which I got after a quick google search ) and in the future depicted in X-men 3, the one who is the most powerful is the one who can control the 5 elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water ).
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Tag: My Thoughts
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Mahabharata/Ramayana Serials I saw as a kid on Doordarshan !!!
In one of the scenes the mutant who can control "coldness" and the mutant who can control "heat" fight it out. This scene reminded me of the picturization of the Indian epics in serials. In those serials, fights between the big and mighty warriors was pretty similar. One would shoot out an arrow which would spit out fire and then the other warrior would shoot an arrow which would neutralize the first arrow. Such a fight would go on until one of the them would be able to shoot an arrow which the other warrior could not neutralize and thus would be killed.
It is very interesting to note that that in these epics which are very very old (Ramayana - 7323 B.C, Mahabharata 1900 B.C. - according to particular references which I got after a quick google search ) and in the future depicted in X-men 3, the one who is the most powerful is the one who can control the 5 elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, and water ).
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Tag: My Thoughts
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Saturday, September 09, 2006
Yahoo and phishing - Sign-In Seal
New idea by yahoo to prevent users from getting "phished" !
Sign-In Seal FAQ.
The idea is:
* on my PC, I will create a special tag/seal/mark/sign and this will be stored on my PC
* whenever I go to the genuine Yahoo site, it will be displayed to me
* if I go to a fake yahoo website, the website will not be able to display the sign to me and I will thus know it is a fake yahoo website.
Three concerns:
1> I guess this will be via a cookie which will be persistently stored on the user's computer. That will mean that users should not clear their browser cache of cookies to have this scheme work everytime. This IMHO is not a good practice to get the users to get used to.
2> What if the fradulent web site owners are able to decipher this cookie (reverse engineer) and display the same?
3> All yahoo portals will now be able to track the particular individual. It would mean that users will leave a trail of their presence across yahoo portals. What if I am just browsing through Flickr (not having logged on)? Surely yahoo will be able to track this visit of mine across the website while I am under the impression that I not being tracked.
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Tag: Technical
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Sign-In Seal FAQ.
The idea is:
* on my PC, I will create a special tag/seal/mark/sign and this will be stored on my PC
* whenever I go to the genuine Yahoo site, it will be displayed to me
* if I go to a fake yahoo website, the website will not be able to display the sign to me and I will thus know it is a fake yahoo website.
Three concerns:
1> I guess this will be via a cookie which will be persistently stored on the user's computer. That will mean that users should not clear their browser cache of cookies to have this scheme work everytime. This IMHO is not a good practice to get the users to get used to.
2> What if the fradulent web site owners are able to decipher this cookie (reverse engineer) and display the same?
3> All yahoo portals will now be able to track the particular individual. It would mean that users will leave a trail of their presence across yahoo portals. What if I am just browsing through Flickr (not having logged on)? Surely yahoo will be able to track this visit of mine across the website while I am under the impression that I not being tracked.
---------------
Tag: Technical
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Will 'lonelygirl15' ever act again ?
You surely must be following Youtube. The latest scandal is that lonelygirl15 is a FAKE !! An actress who was just playing her part too well !!!!!!
Now the question which I am interested in is, will she be accepted as an actress on TV/movie?
Will the internet-youtube-savy world forget this and accept her on the idiot box? Or is her career as an actress doomed since she was a key role in this faked up reality?
will the common man remember or will he soon forget?
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Now the question which I am interested in is, will she be accepted as an actress on TV/movie?
Will the internet-youtube-savy world forget this and accept her on the idiot box? Or is her career as an actress doomed since she was a key role in this faked up reality?
will the common man remember or will he soon forget?
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Monday, September 04, 2006
Beerwah Railway Station
This photo is undoubtedly one of my favourite sign board shots !!
I wonder if people are really so honest that they would buy their tickets at their destination station. And we were even more surprised when we got to know that neither in the train nor at the destination station, were people checked for tickets !
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Tag: My Thoughts
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I wonder if people are really so honest that they would buy their tickets at their destination station. And we were even more surprised when we got to know that neither in the train nor at the destination station, were people checked for tickets !
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Tag: My Thoughts
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Steve Irwin is no more
The world struggles with this sad news. Croc Hunter, the human face which endeared a lot of spooky, creepy, crawly and dangerous animals died while filming a lesser dangerous animal than what he has handled in the past.
A sad day indeed. He brought the animal world closer to us. With his television shows he had influenced millions of humans' opinion towards crocs and the rest of the animals he dealt with.
It will take a long time I guess, before the animals find a new friend in someone who is as effective as he was.
I had visited the Croc hunter's zoo in 2004. It was a nice place. My favourite being the walk through aviary which had a huge number of birds which were extremely exotic to me. To see the Otters have fun in the water enclosure was great fun too. I was taken aback when I got close to a snake handler and saw that she was handling a Corn Snake! The reason for my surprise was that the Corn Snake was from the US and is found in Virginia. I told her that it was really a coincidence that the snake which I get to see very close is the one that was found in the place I lived thousands and thousands of miles away.
I posted some photos from my trip here
Here is a photo of a croc in the enclosure:
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A sad day indeed. He brought the animal world closer to us. With his television shows he had influenced millions of humans' opinion towards crocs and the rest of the animals he dealt with.
It will take a long time I guess, before the animals find a new friend in someone who is as effective as he was.
I had visited the Croc hunter's zoo in 2004. It was a nice place. My favourite being the walk through aviary which had a huge number of birds which were extremely exotic to me. To see the Otters have fun in the water enclosure was great fun too. I was taken aback when I got close to a snake handler and saw that she was handling a Corn Snake! The reason for my surprise was that the Corn Snake was from the US and is found in Virginia. I told her that it was really a coincidence that the snake which I get to see very close is the one that was found in the place I lived thousands and thousands of miles away.
I posted some photos from my trip here
Here is a photo of a croc in the enclosure:
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