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

Yes you read it right - No steganography software

So here is a quick howto on doing image steganography with common tools, no specialized software.

1: Compress the file you want to secure( I tried both rar & zip), say secure.zip
2: Take the image file which you want to use, say image.jpg
3: run the following command
copy /b image.jpg + secure.zip hidden.jpg
4: Double click hidden.jpg & you'll see the original image
5: Open the file in archiving utility (I tried winzip & winrar)
6: It will open the content of original secure.zip

Analysis
copy commands copies the content of both the files into a third file
The third file starts with the header of an image & even the extension is of image, so the OS (tried KDE & GNOME in case of Linux) interprets it like an image & shows the image, that too without any distortion or noise in the image.

/b option indicates binary operation & takes care of any possible goofup.

PoC
Image on left is the original image & where as one on the right is with hidden content, try opening it in any archiving software.

tags: Security, Tech

I just got my office scanned for software inventory using a tool called belarc advisor.While going through reports I wondered how easy it can be for anyone to get license key of any software using belark report & google

Just try this search & you'll get to know by yourself

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=intitle%3A%E2%80%9DBelarc+Advisor+Current+Profile%E2%80%9D


Scary, very scary...

tags: Security, Tech

Apart from the reason that black is my favorite color, I found yet another reason for background of my site & blog to be black in color

# Black pages are more ergonomics
# Black background saves energy (more in case of CRT than LCD)
# Black is my favorite color
# Black is a nice movie (India);)

There are two Indias in this country.

One India is straining at the leash, eager to spring forth and live up to all the adjectives that the world has been recently showering upon us.
The other India is the leash.

One India says give me a chance and I'll prove myself.
The other India says prove yourself first and maybe then you'll have a chance.

One India lives in the optimism of our hearts.
The other India lurks in the skepticism of our minds.

One India wants. The other India hopes.
One India leads. The other India follows.

These conversions are on the rise. With each passing day more and more people from the other India have been coming over to this side. And quietly, while the world is not looking, a pulsating, dynamic new India is emerging.

An India whose faith in success is far greater than its fear of failure. An India that no longer boycotts foreign-made goods but buys out the companies that make them instead.

History, they say, is a bad motorist. It rarely ever signals its intentions when it's taking a turn.
This is that rarely-ever moment. History is turning a page.

For over half a century, our nation has sprung, stumbled, run, fallen, rolled over, got up and dusted herself and cantered, sometimes lurched on. But today, in our 60th year as a free nation, the ride has brought us to the edge of time's great precipice.

And one India - a tiny little voice at the back of the head - is looking down at the bottom of the ravine and hesitating.

The other India is looking up at the sky and saying it's time to fly.


http://www.indiapoised.com/

Watch videos @ http://www.indiapoised.com/video2.htm

I was digging MS Defender (anti-malware) & found that even MS is thinking before classifying tools like
EXPLORER.EXE (Windows Explorer)
IEXPLORE.EXE (Internet Explorer)

See that ypager.exe is classifed :)

MS trust yahoo but not itself.

Digital Samurai pointed out 14 lessons from the Google Story
My selected few

1. Connections - human, computer, biology - are everything. Life = networks.
2. Never compromise your ideals because someone said it’s impossible, stupid, or a waste of time.
3. Do focus on changing the world, don’t focus on the money. If you provide value, the money will come.
4. Have a healthy disregard for the impossible. If someone hasn’t done it yet, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
5. Money is a problem, not a solution. Money cannot solve your problems, but your solutions can solve the money problem.
6. Value creativity, not money. View creativity as your company’s true bottom-line, or your company will stop growing and die.
7. Go against the grain. Don’t believe in other people’s visions for you, believe in your own.
8. Quality is more important than looking good. A shiny, beautiful car isn’t impressive when it gets overtaken by an old jalopy; the same applies to software.
9. Focus on users above all else, e.g. don’t do something that might annoy your users just to make more money, they won’t forget.
10. Never betray users’ trust, or anyone else’s.
11. Spend 20% of your time on blue-sky ideas without worrying about how they will make a profit. If it might change the world for the better, it needs to be done, even if it can’t make money.
12. Don’t make enemies of your competitors to stay driven. Be driven by your own values and mission.



Original Story : http://digitalsamurai.co.za/blog/2006/09/16/14-things-you-can-learn-from-the-google-story/

Casual browsing took me to a page where the page auther has claimed he know top 50 adsense keywords most of them are from "Loan Consolidation"

Looking the list & the kind of compilation I don't think it has any practicle value associated with it

The list has few duplications with different CPC value of the same
orlando culinary institute $46.84
orlando culinary institute $46.69
orlando culinary institute $46.51

This shows how trustworthy it is


Can you imagine this guy has actually done so much of hard work (pun intended) to crack google's secret & given you the top paying list


Small sample from his site

Adword & its Average CPC
school loan consolidation $69.16
college loan consolidation $68.35
car insurance quotes $66.88
school consolidation $66.29
auto insurance quotes $65.90
college consolidation $64.04
student loan consolidation rates $60.14
sell structured settlement $59.82
sell annuity $58.92
federal student loan consolidation $58.58



theproguy: Most expensive adwords - 'Loan consolidation' clear winner

Nice blogs about how to handle those direct marketting calls

I'm sure you too might have got such calls


A complete hindi blog entry
http://www.jitu.info/merapanna/?p=580

And the source of insipration, a flow chart to handle such calls
http://www.xs4all.nl/~egbg/counterscript.html


Enjoy

While trying to reset password of a google account I came across this Captcha
It reads CHOTA, which means small in Indian language

So what you call this

Captcha being decided in hyderabad office of google ;)

Extracts from the latest issue of The Amazing Spider-man, #533

"I didn’t learn about the first side effect until well after the fact ... Once the news hit the television networks ... thirty million people went online and did simulatenous Google searches on Peter Parker ... and crashed the entire internet."

"Including the porn sites."

The comic strip says

"--thirty million people went online and did simultaneous Google searches on Peter Parker--"

"--and crashed the entire internet."

"Many mobile phones today have more processing power than early Internet servers"

Nokia thought why not to make use of the cellphone in everyhand today

Nokia has ported the Apache webserver to Symbian, in order to enable mobile phones to serve content on the World Wide Web. The technique could also be used on Linux mobile phones.


Nokia ported mod_python, in order to enable dynamic pages generated from both Python scripts and PSP (python server pages). Other built-in modules include mod_alias, mod_auth, mod_autoindex, mod_dav, mod_dav_fs, mod_dir, mod_log_config, mod_mime, mod_rewrite, and mod_setenvif.

More...

Nice One

In a survey report of websense it has been revealed that

$ men do more for personal surfing @ office. (like What I'm doing right now)
This include weather, sports, investment/stock, and blogs
$ 45% of women visits site containing spyware. (are they that much attracted towards those ads...)

Web Security, Internet Filtering and Internet Security Software - Websense, Inc.

As per Michael Newman, vice president and general counsel, Websense, Inc.
“However, one significant similarity shown in the survey is that both genders can easily be lured in by the internet for its sheer entertainment value or as a resource to complete personal errands. Workplace internet solutions should balance employees’ needs for personal use of the web at work without draining overall productivity or morale, all while keeping employees safe from new web-based security threats such as spyware and phishing attacks.”


Happy Surfing...

I stumbled upon this site while surfing yesterday
http://explorerdestroyer.com/

People have found very good way to earn from google adsense.
Lets attract people with firefox, lure them towards firefox(i dont say firefox is bad).
People will click on the firefox ad, download, install & Kaboom, your adsense account got referal amount.

But somehow IMHO its not a good way to earn...

Its good to love an opensource product, its good to promote it, but i don't think people will put there business in stake if the users viewing thier websites are using IE.

I was trying to install Windows 2003 R2 on my machine (2.8Ghz, 1GB RAM, 80GB Disk) when I came across this wornderful error

It says "Out of Virtual Memory" :)
On a blank machine, before the installation is complete :D

And the best part, the memory is so low for it to display a proper message on the message box
Have a closer view to the message box